Labour in Motion

Our Centres draw together expertise from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to understand the long-term implications of global labour movements. From the slave trade to refugee crises, to implications for questions of gender and the gig economy, to inequality and development, our Centres have projects and research focused on answering the big questions for understanding the people at the heart of the economy. Where, when and how do people participate in labour markets? What role does coercion play in labour migration? And what can theories of labour the Global South tell us about the future of the global economy writ large?  

These questions have informed research projects in the Centre of Latin American Studies and the Centre of South Asian Studies, where there have been doctoral and postdoctoral researchers examining migration, state conflict in these region as well as subsequent flights of ethnic groups across these boundaries due to violent conflict.    

In the Centre of African Studies, postdoctoral researchers have been examining the University’s relationship with enslavement and indentured labour, the focus of the University’s Legacies of Enslavement Inquiry and research looking at households and informal, seasonal and migrant labour in nineteenth century Sierra Leone and on labour and economic history in Kenya.  

Opportunities to support work in this area: 

Endowing our postdoctoral fellowships, library resources, and language training will allow Labour in Motion to bring its unique approach to the histories, cultures, and futures of work. Funding for these research programmes will deepen collaborations between the world’s leading scholars on issues of labour migration, gender and work, slaveries, and informal labour.