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During the last ten years, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and some other international organizations, have increasingly addressed human trafficking from a “forced labour” perspective. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the terminology in relation to human trafficking and forced labour, to highlight the links between them, and to provide a critique of the ILO approach. It also aims to make the case for the implementation of a specific international instrument to address the link between trafficking and forced labour.

This paper compares the definitions of human trafficking and forced labour, the link between them in the United Nations, European and ILO instruments.

Although human trafficking is a criminal activity, the ILO identifies it as a form of forced labour. The paper concludes that, no matter what role the trafficking victims have in participating in the criminal activities, they should be viewed as victims and witnesses. They should not be viewed as “workers” or “labourers”. Any minor under the age of 18 years, in accordance with the European and international instruments, has no legal capacity to give consent to being exploited.

This paper argues that the international and European instruments do not specifically address the link between trafficking and forced labour. There is a need for a specific international instrument prescribing the link between trafficking and forced labour. In the absence of such an international instrument, there is a piece meal approach by international bodies and countries toward the regulation of trafficking and forced labour.

This paper proposes a holistic institutional approach to provide insight into the policy reforms necessary to progressively achieve compliance with internationally recognized labor-related human rights. Drawing on institutions theory from political economy, the paper reframes international legal norms as holistic institutions, comprised of rules, social norms, and actual behaviors, the so-called rules of the game. In this way, problems in implementing labor-related human rights that may result in violations of international law are also considered as employment practices and, like other employment practices, are embedded in a web of formal and informal rules – institutions that govern work and employment. Based on the understanding that institutions contribute to violations, this holistic institutional approach also includes a framework to improve regulation and compliance based on Harold Koh's compliance theory from international law. The approach is illustrated using the example of forced obligatory overtime in textile assembly (maquilas) in Honduras and Nicaragua.

This chapter is about child labour as slavery in modern and modernizing societies in an era of rapid globalization.

For the most part, child slavery in modern societies is hidden from view and cloaked in social customs, this being convenient for economic exploitation purposes.

The aim of this chapter is to bring children's ‘modern slavery’ out of the shadows, and thereby to help clarify and shape relevant social discourse and theory, social policies and practices, slavery-related legislation and instruments at all levels, and above all children's everyday lives, relationships and experiences.

The main focus is on issues surrounding (i) the concept of ‘slavery’; (ii) the types of slavery in the world today; (iii) and ‘child labour’ as a type, or basis, of slavery.

There is an in-depth examination of the implications of the notion of ‘slavery’ within international law for child labour, and especially that performed through schooling.

According to one influential approach, ‘slavery’ is a state marked by the loss of free will where a person is forced through violence or the threat of violence to give up the ability to sell freely his or her own labour power. If so, then hundreds of millions of children in modern and modernizing societies qualify as slaves by virtue of the labour they are forced – compulsorily and statutorily required – to perform within schools, whereby they, their labour and their labour power are controlled and exploited for economic purposes.

Under globalization, such enslavement has almost reached global saturation point.

Antecedents The development of labour supply over the next fifteen years has its roots firmly implanted in the past. This dynamic characteristic of labour supply changes extends to labour force participation rates as well as to changes in labour supply attributable to purely demographic changes, so we shall initially examine both of these components of labour force change over the post‐war period. Changes in the size of the labour force which would occur as a result of changes in the age/sex structure of the population and the propensity of women to many if age/sex/marital status‐specific labour force participation rates were constant is denoted as demographic, and Table I shows its contribution to labour force growth in the post‐war period. The primary force behind the demographically‐induced change in the male labour supply is earlier movements in fertility, but both past fertility and contemporary marriage behaviour affect the magnitude of the demographically‐induced change in the female labour supply. In particular, up to the early 1970s the increase in the proportion of women under the age of 70 who are married restrained labour force growth because of the generally higher labour force participation rates of unmarried women; the size of this negative impact did, however, decline over time.

This paper aimed examining the contribution of female labour force participation rate on economic growth in the sub-Saharan Africa during the period of 1991–2019.

The study employed a sample of 42 sub-Sahara African countries using annual data from the World Bank development indicators. The long-run causal effect of female labour force and economic growth was analysed using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag model and Granger causality test for causality and direction since the variables did not have the same order of integration.

The estimated results indicate that a long-run causal relationship exists between female labour force and economic growth in sub-Sahara Africa and the direction of causality is unidirectional running from economic growth to female labour force. The results also showed that female labour force participation rate negatively and significantly contributes to economic growth (GDP) is sub-Saharan Africa in the long run with an insignificantly negative contribution in the short run hence a liability.

The author recommends the promotion of women's economic empowerment to encourage female labour force participation to increase economic growth in the entire sub-Saharan region.

This paper adds to existing literature by using more comprehensive and up to econometric analysis and variables. This paper also makes further recommendation on how female labour force participation can boost economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

This paper adds to existing literature by using more comprehensive and up to econometric analysis and variables. This paper also makes further recommendation on how female labour force participation can boost economic growth in SSA.

Perhaps no other topic was given so much attention in the Kuwaiti socio‐political, economic literature as that of human resources. This is so for a number of reasons. First, Kuwait being a small economy cannot survive on its own labor force. Foreign labor helps the country but has some serious consequences. The imported labor force is very cheap compared to national labor. This had resulted in a malallocation of manpower in various sectors of the economy. Secondly, Kuwait, like many Muslim Gulf societies, does not fully utilize its female labor force; and thirdly, there are problems regarding the attitudes of Kuwaitis towards labor of particular types. In addition, there are many challenges in the area of human resources that the country faces as it moves into the 21st century.

To investigate the extent to which disability discourages an individual from going on the job market, using data from an Italian survey.

We use an extended definition of labour force participation based on being employed or currently seeking work even if the persons declare themselves as housewives, students, retired or in any other condition otherwise. We use probit, sequential and multinomial logit models for analysing labour force participation and outcomes. We distinguish between the impact of disability in its strict sense and chronic illness explaining the difference.

In all variants we find that chronic illness is a stronger deterrent for labour force participation than disability. Women are more discouraged compared to men. Intellectual disability is the strongest barrier and hearing the least influential. In a sequential decision-making process, we find that disability affects both labour force participation decision and the ability to be employed but not so much the choice between part-time and full-time.

Policies providing tailored solutions for improved access to education and health care for disabled persons will enhance their work opportunities.

Data set is cross-sectional and characterised by attrition. It would be interesting to compare results with a longitudinal and more representative data set.

We have a unique data set from a survey which was specifically targeted at people who were identified as disabled in a previous survey. The Italian context is also special due to its high legal employment quotas and noncompliance sanctions.

Labor force transitions are empirically examined using Current Population Survey (CPS) data matched across months from 1996 to 2012 for Hispanics, African-Americans, and whites. Transition probabilities are contrasted prior to the Great Recession and afterward. Estimates indicate that minorities are more likely to be fired as business cycle conditions worsen. Estimates also show that minorities are usually more likely to be hired when business cycle conditions are weak. During the Great Recession, the odds of losing a job increased for minorities although cyclical sensitivity of the transition declined. Odds of becoming re-employed declined dramatically for blacks, by 2–4%, while the probability was unchanged for Hispanics.

Purpose – A central claim of the “added worker effect” is that married women increase their employment when husbands experience unemployment. This study evaluates the added worker effect in the context of the Great Recession. I examine whether married mothers increased their employment during the recession, and if the increase in employment occurred in households where the husband experienced unemployment.

Methodology/approach – I employ descriptive statistics and logistic regression models using 2006 and 2010 American Community Survey data.

Findings – I show that married mothers’ increased employment occurred in households that were less economically disadvantaged prior to the recession. The demand for married women's employment should have been stronger in households where men were employed in industries that were hard-hit by the recession. However, employment rates were lower among women married to men with lower earnings who were employed in the industries with the highest unemployment.

Social implications – These results show that women are not equally able to respond to husbands’ unemployment. Women with lower levels of education and lacking in job experience may be unable to obtain a job in a tight labor market. This may account for some of the household economic polarization and concentration of poverty in the last recession.

Originality/value of paper – Recent studies suggest that couples may be able to make up for spousal unemployment by increasing labor supply of other household members. However, these results indicate that the households that have the greatest need for additional workers may be those that have the most difficulty securing employment.

The subject of part‐time work is one which has become increasingly important in industrialised economies where it accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of total employment. It is estimated that in 1970, average annual hours worked per employee amounted to only 60% of those for 1870. Two major factors are attributed to explaining the underlying trend towards a reduction in working time: (a) the increase in the number of voluntary part‐time employees and (b) the decrease in average annual number of days worked per employee (Kok and de Neubourg, 1986). The authors noted that the growth rate of part‐time employment in many countries was greater than the corresponding rate of growth in full‐time employment.