Research Programme
The research questions guiding the RTG Research Programme:
- What are the constitutive prerequisites or ‘enablers’ of cross-border labour markets?
- How do actors draw upon these ‘enablers’ to enact, fashion and consolidate cross-border labour markets?
Within the RTG research programme, three types of ‘enablers’ are considered:
1. Transnational market makers: What kind of (collective) actors contribute to the social constitution, operation and consolidation of cross-border labour markets, and how?
E.g.:
- Migrants and their families and networks
- Nation states (sending and destination states)
- Polities above and below the nation state
- Employers and other private actors
- Intermediaries
2. Transnational market infrastructures: What kinds of physical and social infrastructure enable the emergence of cross-border labour markets?
E.g.:
- Networks, practices, channels, contracts, implicit agreements
- Communication, transportation, platforms, money lending and transfers
- Material and physical supports
3. Transnational market institutions: Which institutions govern cross-border labour markets and how do they contribute to their social constitution?
E.g.:
- Rules, norms and shared understandings that emerge as binding for actors and practices across territorial jurisdictions
- Multiple scales and types of institution-building involving different sets of institutional actors
- Regulations set by policy makers of different kinds (nation states, supra national polities and organizations, trade unions) and at different scales