York University’s Global Labour Research Centre, along with the Centre for Social Justice and the Socialist Project, will present a talk on “Labour and the Political Economy of Peripheralisation: The Case of Ukraine and the European Union” on Thursday, Aug. 18 from 7 to 8:30pm.
Presented as part of the Global Labour Speaker Series, the talk will feature Gregory Schwartz (School of Economics, Finance and Management, Faculty of Social Sciences & Law) of the University of Bristol who will discuss the relationship between Ukraine and the European Union.
It takes place at the Centre for Social Innovation, 3rd Floor, Room 4, 720 Bathurst St., Toronto.
Ukraine’s Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) that forms part of the Association Agreement with the European Union is designed to harmonize laws, norms and regulations in trade. At the same time, together with recent changes in the labour law, the DCFTA promises significantly to transform labour and employment in Ukraine and set in motion changes that will affect labour in the European Union itself.
Using data from a study of the labour market in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, Schwartz will examine current developments in the ‘Europeanisation’ of work and employment, assessing the manner in which the realities of informal, insecure, flexible and low pay work in Lviv fit into the wider matrix of European labour restructuring.
The presentation will also consider how the notion of peripheries plays a key role in understanding the development of global capitalism (viz. theories of ‘combined and uneven development’ and ‘variegated neoliberalisation’), and will argue that the specific nature of constructing internal peripheralization by means of spatially segmenting labour markets (as represented by Ukraine and other CEE countries) suggests a degree of maturation of EU capitalism that necessitates a closer theoretical inquiry.
Schwartz is assistant professor in the School of Economics, Finance and Management at the Faculty of Social Sciences & Law, University of Bristol. His research lies in two key areas: the political economy of the transformation of labour, management and organisation in Central and Eastern Europe; and comparative study of the processes of ‘precarisation’ of labour in Europe.
Schwartz’s research is cross-disciplinary and methodologically heterodox, touching on problems in the sociology of work, political economy, cultural anthropology and economic geography.
The event is co-sponsored by the Centre for Social Justice, the Socialist Project, and the Department of Social Science, York University. For more, visit the Facebook event page at www.facebook.com/events/1028899547208594/.
For more information about the Global Labour Research Centre, visit www.yorku.ca/glrc.