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  • Research Programme

    Cross-border Labour Markets - RTG 2951

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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


Research Training Group - ​Cross-border Labour Markets - RTG 2951