‘Good when they want to be’: migrant workers in the supermarket supply chain

Despite the increased attention paid to the role and effects of migrant labour in the contemporary economy, there has been insufficient attention to the role of employers and the employment relationship. Recent studies have highlighted distinctive labour power characteristics of new labour migrants from Central and Eastern Europe that make them ‘good workers’ in the eyes of employers. Drawing on multiple case studies across the supermarket supply chain, this article explores what kind of human resource migrant labour is perceived to be, particularly by employers, and what happens in practice as the dynamic tensions of the employment relationship unfolds in particular sector contexts. It argues that utilisation is conditioned more by the requirements of temporal flexibility – framed by the dynamics of employment within the supply chain – than any essential features of migrant labour power.     

A typology for defining agritourism

Agritourism has been studied in various ways and contexts. It can be argued, however, that studies have yet to provide a clear and basic understanding of the characteristics that underpin and define agritourism. This paper proposes an original typology for defining agritourism by identifying the key characteristics currently used to define agritourism in the literature and organising them into a transparent and structured framework. For the first time, the agritourism typology clarifies and classifies definitions of agritourism that currently exist in the literature. It therefore offers a comprehensive framework that can be used as a basis for more informed debate and discussion and for future empirical research.     

Becoming respectable: low-income young mothers,consumption and the pursuit of value

Teenage mothers find themselves caught between two discourses: the irresponsibility of youth and the responsibility of motherhood. We unravel some of the complexities surrounding the performance of socially approved ‘good mothering’, from a social position of restricted resources. We demonstrate the relevance of Skeggs’ notion of respectability in order to forge a deeper understanding of how young, low-income new mothers seek to secure social value and legitimacy via the marketplace. We identify a number of consumption strategies centred around identification and dis-identification, yet we recognise that young mothers’ careful marshalling of resources, in relation to consumption, risks being misread and could leave young women open to further scrutiny and negative evaluation, ultimately limiting their opportunity to secure a legitimate maternal identity.     

Removing the rough edges? Nostalgia and storytelling at a UK museum

This paper offers a practitioner's viewpoint of the new Riverside Museum in Glasgow and discusses its successful transition to a new building and location. The role of nostalgia in the museum's appeal through storytelling and collective memory is discussed and shown to be an important element in this success. This paper also highlights the museum's efforts to avoid sanitisation of the past in how it presents this history and argues that the use of nostalgia should not be to just present a rose-tinted selective version of what was past, but rather to present as complete and truthful a representation as possible.     

Barriers to cross‐border trade union cooperation in Europe: the case of the graphical workers

This paper is concerned with exploring the barriers to cross‐border trade union cooperation among graphical workers in Europe. Highlighting the increasing globalisation of graphical multinationals, the paper illustrates that graphical unions cannot restrict their activities to developments within national boundaries. As such it highlights some of the obstacles that unions face in attempting to instigate transnational cooperation strategies. These obstacles include: the role of employers, the prevailing practices of the unions, employee reticence, the role of the law and resource constraints. It concludes by stressing the continuing need to strengthen cross‐border trade union networks with the ability to impose effective sanctions against the unbridled growth of multinational power.     

Technology and international competitiveness

This article analyses the structure of trade and trade performance of the largest six OECD economies in the 1980s. The article is concerned in particular with the role of technology and innovation and the relationship between specialization in sectors of high, medium or low technology intensity and trade performance. It assesses the argument that the maintenance of international competitiveness requires the advanced economies to become internationally competitive, and to specialize, in higher technology sectors, given that there is increasing competition, especially from newly industrializing countries in low technology products. Section I considers the theoretical basis of this hypothesis; Section II assesses whether it is compatible with data on manufacturing trade performance in the 1980s.     

Intra-industry trade in the 1980s: A panel study

Intra-Industry Trade in the 1980s: A Panel Study. — This paper uses a panel data set to estimate the determinants of intra-industry trade in the 1980s. The data for trade covers 68 ISIC industries for the US, Japan, Germany, France, the UK and Italy from 1980 to 1987. UK data is used to measure industry characteristics. The results support, in particular, the positive effects of R&;D intensity and heterogeneity on intra-industry trade and the negative effects of scale and concentration. While fixed effects estimation indicates that industry characteristics explain most of the variation in intra-industry trade, differences in industry characteristics or in their effects vary significantly across countries.     

Using workplace population statistics to understand retail store performance

We explore the value of recently released workplace geographies and accompanying census-based workplace zone statistics (WZS) and an associated classification of workplace zones (COWZ). We consider how these data could support retailers in their operational and strategic decision-making, including the evaluation of retail demand and retail store performance in localities where trade is driven by non-residential demand. In collaboration with major UK grocery retailer The Co-operative Group we explore the relationship between workplace population composition and store trading characteristics using a series of case study stores within Inner London. We use empirical store trading data to identify store and product category level temporal sales fluctuations attributable to workplace populations. We also use census-derived flow data to identify the spatial origins of workplace population inflow. We identify that store performance exhibits characteristics attributable to demand driven by these populations. We conclude that workplace population geographies, WZS and the COWZ afford considerable potential for understanding drivers of store performance, observed store trading patterns and evaluation of retail store performance. We suggest that the next step is to build these populations and their micro geography spatial and temporal characteristics into predictive models and evaluate their potential for store performance evaluation and location-based store and network decision-making within this sector.     

‘You monitor performance at every hour’: labour and the management of performance in the supermarket supply chain

With reference to the performance management research agenda, this article focuses on the politics of production in food manufacturing and distribution companies in the supermarket supply chain. Burawoy's concept of ‘factory regimes’ is utilised to explore the broader context of labour process change in inter‐linked organisations in the retail supply chain. The article examines the extent to which new despotic or coercive regime characteristics are emerging that weakens the power of both suppliers and labour. In revealing changes in the nature and dynamics of performance regimes within these organisations, the article exposes the connections and linkages between workplaces as distinct moments in the integrated circuit of capital.