The Post-Cold War Era and the Labour Market: An Overview

Abstract

After 1991 a new political and economic order was established. During the previous decades, most countries saw an era of global prosperity and economic development without precedents. During the last thirty years, globalisation and technology have changed the functioning of the global economy, but also the world of work.

This book tries to shed light on how political and economic transformations have also affected the labour market and vice versa. This first volume of the book, “Globalisation, Technology and Labour Resilience,” is structured in three main sections dealing with globalisation and migration, jobs and technological change and labour agency and resilience.

Work, and not idleness, is the indispensable condition of happiness for every human being

—Leo Tolstoy (1892), A Dialogue Among Clever People

Nobody who works hard should be poor

—David K. Shipler (2005), The Working Poor: Invisible in America, Random House

We have become rich countries of poor people

—Joseph Stiglitz (2006), The Financial Times

Imagine the uproar when Uber’s cars start arriving without drivers.

—Martin Ford (2015), Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, Perseus Books