Apologies for cross postings. Please see the call for papers below.
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AAG 2008 Call for papers
Boston, USA 15th-19th April 2008
http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/2008/papers.htm
'Labor market intermediaries and changing economic geographies of work'
Ever since vertical disintegration gave birth to a new producer service economy Economic
Geographers have been interested in the geographical strategies of market intermediaries.
Recently, the growing importance of a number of labor market intermediaries has grabbed the
attention of a range of scholars, resulting in the opening-up of a range of new debates. Broadly
defined, labor market intermediaries mediate relationships between firms, individuals and
organisations. They also shape labor market dynamics more broadly through their externalized
service provision. Examples include (but are not limited to) temping agencies, headhunters,
recruitment consultancies, training agencies, actors and craft-persons guilds and a newly
emerging group of online intermediation services such as LinkedIN and Naymz.com. The most
significant effect of these intermediaries has been the reconfiguration of the way firms manage
and recruit employees, something that impacts on both corporate strategies and the career paths
of workers. However, as existing studies have shown, the way such intermediaries operate and the
effects of their activities are geographically heterogeneous. This session aims to critically explore
these issues with a particular focus upon the way different kinds of market intermediaries: (a) are
enrolled by firms, individuals or collectives in order to facilitate the (re)production of their success;
(b) are responsible for the reconstitution of existing, and the creation of new, industries, practices
and socio-political challenges in the contemporary economy; and (c) create new challenges for
individuals, collectives and policy makers in terms of employment and labor market regulation.
Papers might address (but are not restricted to):
• Examinations of the diverse spatial and temporal behaviours of labor market intermediaries;
• The emergence, development and impacts of intermediary markets;
• Online labour market intermediation;
• Methodological approaches to researching the spatial strategies of market intermediaries;
• Theoretically informed case studies of firms acting as labor market intermediaries and the
effect on labor market dynamics;
• Regulatory landscapes and the impacts of and effects on labor intermediaries;
• Analyses of the power geometries associated with intermediaries in local-global
marketplaces;
• Discussions of the effects of intermediaries on careers and the employment prospects of
different groups of workers.
Expressions of interest should be sent in the form of an abstract acceptable to the AAG (see
http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/2008/papers.htm#abstracts) to James Faulconbridge
([log in to unmask]) and Sarah Hall ([log in to unmask]) by 9th October
2007.
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