THE POLITICAL ECONOMY RESEARCH GROUP (PERG)
cordially invites you to an interactive lecture with
Professor Guglielmo Meardi
Director of the Industrial Relations Research Unit at the University of Warwick
May 2 Thursday, 3:30 p.m., TIGY Room
"What did the EU enlargement mean for 'social Europe'?"
About the lecture:
Is the EU enlargement the success EU institutions proclaim? Based on fifteen years of fieldwork research across Central and Eastern Europe and on migrants in the UK and Germany, the presentation will provide a less glittering answer, based on the recent book Social Failures of EU Enlargement. The EU has betrayed hopes of social cohesion: social regulations have been forgotten, multinationals use threats of relocations, and workers, left without institutional channels to voice their concerns, have reacted by leaving their countries en masse. Yet migration, for many, increases social vulnerability. Drawing on Hirschman’s concepts of ‘Exit’ and ‘Voice’, the origins of such failures can be traced in the management of EU enlargement as a pure economic and market-creating exercise, neglecting the inherently political nature of labour relations. As a result of this process, the social dimension of the whole EU is endangered. The seminar will address some open issues of the book, in the light of recent developments and of the debates it raised.
About the lecturer:
Guglielmo Meardi is Professor of Industrial Relations and Director of the Industrial Relations Research Unit at the Warwick Business School of the University of Warwick. He has held visiting positions at the Hungarian, Polish and Slovenian Academies of Sciences, and at universities in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain. He is a co-editor of "Warsaw Forum of Economic Sociology", and member of the editorial boards of "European Journal of Industrial Relations", "Emecon", "Industrielle Beziehungen" and (until 2010) "Work, Employment and Society". His research interests cover European integration and industrial relations, including both multinational companies going East, and employees going West. Currently he is comparing industrial relations and internationalisation in the six largest EU countries.