This book uses the concepts of vulnerability and resilience to analyze the situation of individuals and institutions in the context of the employment relationship. It is based on the premise that both employer and employee are vulnerable to various social, economic, and political forces, although differently so. It demonstrates how in responding to those complementary institutional relationships of employer and employee the state unequally and inequitably favors employers over employees. Several chapters included in this collection also consider how the state shapes, creates and maintains through law the social identities of employer and employee and how that legal regime operates as the allocation of power and privilege. This unique and fundamental role of the state in defining the employment relationship profoundly affects the respective abilities and degree of resiliency of actual employers and employees. Other chapters explore how attention to the respective vulnerability and resilience of those who do and those who direct work in assessing the employment relationship can raise fundamental questions of social justice and suggest new avenues for critical engagement with labor and employment law. Collectively, these pieces articulate a framework for imaging what would constitute an appropriately "Responsive State" in the employment context and how those interested in social justice might begin to use the concepts of vulnerability and resilience in their arguments.

This book uses the concepts of vulnerability and resilience to analyze the situation of individuals and institutions in the context of the employment relationship. It is based on the premise that both employer and employee are vulnerable to various social, economic, and political forces, although differently so. It demonstrates how in responding to those complementary institutional relationships of employer and employee the state unequally and inequitably favors employers over employees. Several chapters included in this collection also consider how the state shapes, creates and maintains through law the social identities of employer and employee and how that legal regime operates as the allocation of power and privilege. This unique and fundamental role of the state in defining the employment relationship profoundly affects the respective abilities and degree of resiliency of actual employers and employees. Other chapters explore how attention to the respective vulnerability and resilience of those who do and those who direct work in assessing the employment relationship can raise fundamental questions of social justice and suggest new avenues for critical engagement with labor and employment law. Collectively, these pieces articulate a framework for imaging what would constitute an appropriately "Responsive State" in the employment context and how those interested in social justice might begin to use the concepts of vulnerability and resilience in their arguments.

This book is inspired by a statement released by the World Health Organization directed at preventing and eliminating disrespectful and abusive treatment during facility-based childbirth. Exploring the nature of vulnerability during childbirth, and the factors which make childbirth a site for violence and control, the book looks at the role of law in the regulation of professional intervention in childbirth. The WHO statement and other published work on ‘mistreatment’, ‘obstetric violence’, ‘birth trauma’, ‘birth rape’, and ‘dehumanised care’ all point to the presence of vulnerability, violence, and control in childbirth. This collected edition explores these issues in the experience of those giving birth, and for those providing obstetric services. It further offers insights regarding legal avenues of redress in the context of this emerging area of concern. Using violence, vulnerability, and control as a lens through which to consider multiple facets of the law, the book brings together innovative research from an interdisciplinary selection of authors. The book will appeal to scholars of law and legal academics, specifically in relation to tort, criminal law, medical law, and human rights. It will also be of interest to postgraduate scholars of medical ethics and those concerned with gender studies more broadly.

This book considers how vulnerability theory provides the basis for a reconceptualization of the liberal ideas of autonomy, equality, and freedom. Vulnerability theory argues a “vulnerable legal subject” should displace the “liberal legal subject” that currently dominates law and policy. The theory is based on the fundamental empirical realities of the material body and offers an alternative to a social contract or rights-based notion of state responsibility, both of which tend to privilege abstractions such as rationality or dignity. A vulnerability analysis poses law and policy questions based on the “vulnerable legal subject” and requires new thinking about state or governmental responsibility. To achieve a truly comprehensive and inclusive notion of what constitutes social justice or a universal or common good, vulnerability theory mandates a reassessment of both equality and freedom as these concepts are currently conceived. Presenting the work of scholars from a wide range of doctrinal areas, it is this task that the book takes up. In particular, in recognizing that many social or institutional relationships entail uneven positions of dependence and reliance, it maintains that individualized notions of equality or freedom are inadequate and must be reformulated to include a sense of collective or social justice, incorporating asymmetric or unequal allocations of responsibility, and requiring appropriate limitations on the individual. This book’s reorientation of the subject, as well as the central objectives of law and policy, will appeal to scholars and students in law, vulnerability studies, gender studies, critical legal and political theory, politics, philosophy, and sociology.

This book brings together legal scholars engaging with vulnerability theory to explore the implications and challenges for law of understanding vulnerability as generative and a source of connection and development. The book is structured into five sections that cover fields of law where there is already significant recourse to the concept of vulnerability. These sections include a main chapter by a legal theorist who has previously examined the creative potential of vulnerability and responses from scholars working in the same field. This is designed to draw out some of the central debates concerning how vulnerability is conceptualised in law. Several contributors highlight the need to re-focus on some of these more positive aspects of vulnerability to counter the way law is being used enable persons to escape the stigma associated with vulnerability by concealing that condition. They seek to explore how law might embrace vulnerability, rather than conceal it. The book also includes contributions that seek to bring vulnerability into a non-binary relationship with other core legal concepts, such as autonomy and dignity. Rather than discarding these legal concepts in favour of vulnerability, these contributions highlight how vulnerability can be entwined with relational autonomy and embodied dignity. This book is essential reading for both students studying legal theory and practitioners interested in vulnerability.

This book examines the role of law in regulating and influencing the lived experiences of posted workers in Europe. The ‘posting’ of workers is an unusual type of labour mobility, where workers are hired out to provide a specific service in another country. Although it involves a specialised area of law, it is one that serves as a magnifying glass for the long-standing tension between the economic and social dimensions of law’s regulatory role. As an atypical form of labour migration, posting also touches upon broader themes concerning the role and purpose of labour law in a changing world of work. Taking up these themes through interviews with posted workers, lawyers and employers, the book adopts a sociolegal approach to consider how the law shapes the precarious lived experiences of posted workers in Europe. Giving voice to those with first-hand experience, the book goes on to propose solutions that might address the precarity of posted work. This book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and practitioners working in the areas of labour law, sociolegal studies, EU law, and migration.

This discerning book provides a wide-ranging comparative analysis of the legal and social policy challenges posed by the spread of different forms of precarious work in Europe, with various social models in force and a growing ‘gig economy’ workforce. It not only considers the theoretical foundations of the concept of precarious work, but also offers invaluable insight into the potential methods of addressing this phenomenon through labour regulation and case law at EU and national level.