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We study trends in occupational and geographic mobility of single and married men and women in the United States over the last 40 years. We find that while occupational mobility has increased for almost all subgroups of males, most of the increase was accounted for by a sharp increase in the mobility of singles. Similarly, the rates of geographic mobility were virtually identical for single and married workers in the early 1970s, but diverged since then – the increase in the geographic mobility of single men was more pronounced than the increase for married men. We discuss several theories of worker mobility in light of these trends and suggest that the increased labor force attachment of women might have played a prominent role in driving these changes.

How is the performance of a knowledge worker affected by the departure of a colleague? While prior research has highlighted the aggregate impact of knowledge worker mobility on firms, in this chapter we look inside the firm, to explore the individual-level impact of a coworker's departure on the performance of a remaining employee. We propose that the departure of a coworker can change the remaining employee's access to knowledge, but the implications of such changes will depend on the nature of the coworker's relationship with the employee: the employee's performance will be negatively affected to the extent that the relationship is collaborative, but it will be positively affected to the extent that the relationship is competitive. Moreover, these effects will be magnified to the extent that the employee was dependent on the coworker for knowledge access prior to the move, but weakened to the extent that the relationship persists after the move. Our knowledge-based perspective on coworker departures advances research on employee mobility and knowledge flows by highlighting the variety of changes in knowledge access that may result when a colleague leaves the firm, and illuminating the implications of these changes for the performance of employees who remain behind.

The literature on precarious and insecure work rarely examines how workers with jobs in large bureaucratic firms experience insecurity. Current theories suggest two approaches. First, workers might focus on their individual occupation and detach their commitment from firms that no longer reciprocate long-term commitments. Second, employees might respond with increased organizational commitment because leaving an employer creates risks of uncertainty. Based on in-depth interviews with 22 financial services professionals, this paper refines our understanding of when workers focus on intra-organizational career development. This happens when large firms offer opportunities for advancement and foster loyalty. I develop the terms spiral staircase and serial monogamy career. A spiral staircase career results when workers take entrepreneurial approaches to advancement that include lateral job changes and vertical promotions within a firm. When the local labor market has multiple firms in their sector, career advancement may take an intermediate form, in which workers spend medium-to-long-term stints with multiple organizations. I call this the serial monogamy career. My research shows how sector characteristics and geography can impact worker commitment and mobility in insecure environments.

Using two nationally representative data sets, we examine the wages, benefits, and social insurance of contingent workers compared with standard employees in South Korea. In addition, we measure employers’ investments in their contingent workforce. Our results indicate that contingent workers have become the dominant form of labor in South Korea after the 1998 Asian financial crisis and are faced with working conditions that are discriminative compared with those of standard employees. We also find that employers’ investments in contingent workers as human resources, as well as the upward mobility of contingent workers, are limited in the Korean labor market. Overall, our findings provide a comprehensive understanding of the working poor, including the social exclusion of contingent workers in an advanced developing economy.

The past few decades have witnessed a phenomenal progress in our understanding of employee mobility as a critical driver and consequence of various outcomes for individuals, organizations, industries, and economies. In the process, researchers have tackled several important issues in conducting empirical research on employee mobility. This chapter provides a critical discussion of the extant literature focusing on five broad areas: identification of mobility, timing of mobility, outcomes of mobility and their operationalization, model identification, and other related issues. In doing so, this article identifies some of the empirical choices and methodologies adopted in prior mobility studies, evaluates those practices, and suggests areas of improvements for the practice. It is hoped that future studies will benefit from this chapter's insight by building on the best practices from the literature while continuously and successfully tackling the issues that have been challenging the researchers on this increasingly important topic of scholarly inquiry.

My research builds upon masculinity studies as well as migration and gender theory to evaluate emerging strategies of gendered labor control at work sites within temporary worker programs. In particular, my multisite ethnography consisting of 97 interviews with US guest workers, oil industry employers, and Indian labor brokers shifts focus to the recruitment of male workers into the US oil industry. The study evaluated a multi-country recruitment chain from India to the Middle East and into the US Guest Worker Program. Findings identified a relationship between the construction of masculinities and employer strategies for labor control. The article addresses the following question: how is hegemonic masculinity used as a strategy for labor control? The study identifies the double bind of hegemonic masculinity within contingent employment relationships as a means of labor control for curbing male migrant dissent.

The aim of this article is to analyse how different policies and actors have structured the current migrant labour regime in the Finnish construction sector and to discuss the consequences for migrants. Our study shows that a strong industrial relations system such as in Finland is able to curb the posting of workers regime (the most disadvantageous for migrant workers). The position of labour migrants has become more diverse in the segmented labour market, although it remains inferior compared to that of the natives. Consideration of the policy development revolving around the changing migrant labour regimes constitutes the first part of the analysis and is based on government and trade union officials’ accounts. The more substantial part of the study draws upon biographical interviews with Estonian construction workers and analyses the division of migrant labour according to their employment in four ‘patterns of firm ownership’ that range from the most unfavourable to most favourable position: workers posted by Estonian firms; workers employed by firms registered in Finland but operated by Estonians; self-employed/small business owners and workers employed by Finnish firms. The structuring of the regime according to the pattern of firm ownership can be interpreted as a manifestation of employers’ intentional strategies to adapt to or avoid national regulations and to some extent as also reflecting workers’ individual and collective agency.