scholarly journals Reshaping the Division of Labour: Work and Class in New Zealand Since the 1980s

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Patrick Ongley

<p>This thesis is concerned with the relationship between economic restructuring, the changing division of labour and social stratification, with particular reference to New Zealand in the period since the 1980s. It begins with a critique of theories of capitalist development, leading to the adoption of an approach which focuses on both the longterm evolution of the division of labour and the ways in which production and employment are subject to periodic upheavals from episodes of economic crisis and restructuring. The regulation approach is used to analyse the restructuring of the New Zealand economy following the global crisis of the 1970s, which transformed it from a model based on mass production and interventionist regulation to one based on flexible production and liberal regulation. This provides a context for analysing related changes in employment, focussing particularly on the massive job losses in New Zealand’s goods-producing industries, the subsequent period of high unemployment and the eventual resurgence in job growth based on more flexible use of labour, expansion in producer and consumer service industries, and growth in both skilled and routine whitecollar occupations. The remainder of the thesis is concerned with the effects of these changes on patterns of social stratification. A consideration of the theoretical and conceptual issues surrounding class, stratification and the division of labour leads to the development of a model of class structure based on relations of production and hierarchical divisions of labour. Census data is reclassified to fit the model and analysed to show changes in patterns of stratification since the 1980s, looking particularly at shifts in the relative size and composition of middle-class and working-class employment and the implications for class formation. The model is also used to analyse changes in structural inequalities between the sexes and between ethnic groups, with a focus on the ways in which different groups were affected by the restructuring process and how this was influenced by historically gendered and ethnicised divisions of labour. The thesis concludes with an assessment of the extent of change in employment and stratification and whether this is indicative of a transition to a post-industrial economy.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Patrick Ongley

<p>This thesis is concerned with the relationship between economic restructuring, the changing division of labour and social stratification, with particular reference to New Zealand in the period since the 1980s. It begins with a critique of theories of capitalist development, leading to the adoption of an approach which focuses on both the longterm evolution of the division of labour and the ways in which production and employment are subject to periodic upheavals from episodes of economic crisis and restructuring. The regulation approach is used to analyse the restructuring of the New Zealand economy following the global crisis of the 1970s, which transformed it from a model based on mass production and interventionist regulation to one based on flexible production and liberal regulation. This provides a context for analysing related changes in employment, focussing particularly on the massive job losses in New Zealand’s goods-producing industries, the subsequent period of high unemployment and the eventual resurgence in job growth based on more flexible use of labour, expansion in producer and consumer service industries, and growth in both skilled and routine whitecollar occupations. The remainder of the thesis is concerned with the effects of these changes on patterns of social stratification. A consideration of the theoretical and conceptual issues surrounding class, stratification and the division of labour leads to the development of a model of class structure based on relations of production and hierarchical divisions of labour. Census data is reclassified to fit the model and analysed to show changes in patterns of stratification since the 1980s, looking particularly at shifts in the relative size and composition of middle-class and working-class employment and the implications for class formation. The model is also used to analyse changes in structural inequalities between the sexes and between ethnic groups, with a focus on the ways in which different groups were affected by the restructuring process and how this was influenced by historically gendered and ethnicised divisions of labour. The thesis concludes with an assessment of the extent of change in employment and stratification and whether this is indicative of a transition to a post-industrial economy.</p>


2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. N. Le

This article uses census data from the 2006–08 American Community Survey to illustrate the range of Asian American entrepreneurial activities in the Los Angeles and the New York City areas and finds that Los Angeles self-employment is characterized by emerging high-skill “professional service” industries while New York continues to be dominated by low-skill traditional “enclave-associated” niches. Within these patterns, there are also notable interethnic and generational differences. I discuss their socioeconomic implications and policy recommendations to facilitate a gradual shift of Asian American entrepreneurship toward more professional service activities that reflect the demographic evolution of the Asian American community and the ongoing dynamics of globalization.


2021 ◽  
pp. 102831532110162
Author(s):  
Svetlana Kostrykina

The article investigates the concept of internationalization in higher education for society (IHES) and discusses the role of social license to internationalize, its contextual variations, and implications for internationalization practices in New Zealand and Indonesia. The notion of social license to operate is common in the extraction and some service industries; however, the concept of social license to internationalize constitutes an innovative direction for research concerned with IHES and the global international education industry. Social license to internationalize emerged as a pivotal feature of internationalization practices in New Zealand and Indonesia. It reflected the public recognition of IHES, manifested in the cultural and social value of internationalization. The construction of social license to internationalize presented itself as a strategic priority for the governments and higher education institutions (HEIs) in both research settings. The conceptual underpinnings of social license to internationalize, and hence the means of constructing the latter varied depending on the local context, but they served a common purpose of reification of internationalization practices. The study of social license to internationalize contributes to a broader discussion on IHES and sheds lights on the mechanisms of building meaningful and mutually beneficial connections between the stakeholders of the global international education industry and the wider public.


1981 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-518
Author(s):  
Gérald Bernier

The study of social classes in the nineteenth century requires the development of conceptual tools able to explain the impact of the Conquest on the pre-existant social structures in determining transformations of the class structure during the subsequent decades.This article examines the work done on this question by Marxist writers. The author criticizes certain conclusions which have been drawn and which suggest deficiencies at a theoretical level. The objections relate to the marked tendency of these conclusions to perceive the structural effects of the Conquest in terms of the formation of a double-class structure characterized by “ethnic origins.” Specifically, the author challenges the notion of the division itself, as well as the criterion on which the division is based.The author proposes that an analysis centred upon the concepts relating to a problem of the transition and linkage of different modes of production permits a more satisfying interpretation, if accompanied by a certain number of considerations of the “upside” and “downside” of the Conquest. To this end, the argument is based on a characterization of New France in terms of the domination of the relations of production of the feudal type and on an analysis of metropolitan centres with intent to evaluate their level of capitalist development at the moment of their respective colonial penetration in Canada. The results of this approach permit one to posit the existence of a single-class structure, characterized principally by the existence of elements connecting diverse modes and forms of production, whose origin reflects the unequal state of economic development in the two metropolitan centres.The empirical demonstration rests on the census data of 1851–1852 and on the complementary information drawn from the works of historians.


Author(s):  
Richard Bururu

This paper provides a preliminary analysis of self-employment in New Zealand. Using census data from Supennap3 and HLFS data, we find that self-employment is growing with an increased proportion of the labour force being self-employed now than in 1986. This growth is however quite modest. Pull factors attracting people to self-employment appear to be stronger than push factors whereby people enter self-employment because of lack of alternative opportunities. However, results are not definitive. A possible causal relationship between self-employment and unemployment is explored using a time-series regression model. Results suggest a negative and significant relationship between self-employment and lagged unemployment rate. We also observe a weak but positive influence of the ECA, tax and intellectual property rights reforms on self-employment. There are regional differences in regard to factors that could be influencing individuals' decisions to enter into self-employment. While pull factors may explain entry into self-employment for Tasman, Marlborough, Southland and West Coast regions, unemployment appears to be a strong factor for Northland, Taranaki, Waikato, and the Bay of Plenty. The analysis also looks at self-employment by occupation, qualifications, income, industry, age, gender and ethnicity. The paper concludes by mentioning policy implications and suggesting future research.


Complexity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Levy Abitbol ◽  
Eric Fleury ◽  
Márton Karsai

Individual socioeconomic status inference from online traces is a remarkably difficult task. While current methods commonly train predictive models on incomplete data by appending socioeconomic information of residential areas or professional occupation profiles, little attention has been paid to how well this information serves as a proxy for the individual demographic trait of interest when fed to a learning model. Here we address this question by proposing three different data collection and combination methods to first estimate and, in turn, infer the socioeconomic status of French Twitter users from their online semantics. We assess the validity of each proxy measure by analyzing the performance of our prediction pipeline when trained on these datasets. Despite having to rely on different user sets, we find that training our model on professional occupation provides better predictive performance than open census data or remote sensed expert annotation of habitual environments. Furthermore, we release the tools we developed in the hope it will provide a generalizable framework to estimate socioeconomic status of large numbers of Twitter users as well as contribute to the scientific discussion on social stratification and inequalities.


1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 1727-1743 ◽  
Author(s):  
P Gordon ◽  
H W Richardson

In this paper data from the economic censuses are utilized to show that most job growth in the manufacturing, wholesaling, retail, and service industries in the 1982–87 period has been in the urban peripheries of the twelve consolidated metropolitan statistical areas (CMSAs). Similar data for 1976, 1980, and 1986 from another source, the Wharton Urban Decentralization Project, confirm many of these trends, and for a larger set of metropolitan areas. The results show that Los Angeles is more in the middle of the twelve CMSAs than it is an outlier. It is suggested that these common results reflect a common process, that is, an initial movement of households towards the metropolitan edge in search of amenities (or flight from central city ills), followed by the decentralization of firms to increase their access to suburban labor pools.


1993 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew D. Trlin

From the perspective of social demography, selected changes in social roles, formal organizations and social stratification arising from immigration in New Zealand during the 1980s are identified and explained. It is argued, however, that both immigration and its social effects were deeply influenced by the nature and operation of the society's institutional structure of immigration. This structure consists in its ideal form of three main interrelated and complementary components — an immigration policy, an immigrant policy and an ethnic relations policy — that enhance the selectivity of immigration, shape public perceptions, set up safeguards for social interaction and provide for required adjustments between the host and immigrant populations. An examination of New Zealand's institutional structure in the 1980s reveals defects in all three policy areas, defects which were directly related to migrant adjustment difficulties and to less desirable social effects of immigration observed or experienced by New Zealanders.


1993 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicky Gregson ◽  
Michelle Lowe

This paper is concerned with extending debate on the renegotiation of the domestic division of labour within the context of contemporary economic restructuring. Our focus is on a form of household which is becoming increasingly common in Britain in the 1990s. This is the dual career household, in which both partners are in full time professional/managerial employment. A sample of 71 households drawn from the North east and South east, forms the basis for the study. The paper is divided into three main sections. In the first we establish a typology of forms of the domestic division of labour, as well as a means of allocating individual households to particular forms of the domestic division of labour. Then we move on to discuss the degree of variation in particular forms of the domestic division of labour found within our sample households and illustrate these with reference to five case studies. In our final section we consider the implications of our findings for the respective arguments of Lydia Morris and Jane Wheelock; point to the significance of gender identities to an understanding of between household variation in form of the domestic division of labour; and suggest how our findings shed light on the debate over women and social class.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (162) ◽  
pp. 20190526
Author(s):  
Tessa Barrett-Walker ◽  
Michael J. Plank ◽  
Rachael Ka'ai-Mahuta ◽  
Daniel Hikuroa ◽  
Alex James

More than a third of the world's languages are currently classified as endangered and more than half are expected to go extinct by 2100. Strategies aimed at revitalizing endangered languages have been implemented in numerous countries, with varying degrees of success. Here, we develop a new model regarding language transmission by dividing the population into defined proficiency categories and dynamically quantifying transition rates between categories. The model can predict changes in proficiency levels over time and, ultimately, whether a given endangered language is on a long-term trajectory towards extinction or recovery. We calibrate the model using data from Wales and show that the model predicts that the Welsh language will thrive in the long term. We then apply the model to te reo Māori, the indigenous language of New Zealand, as a case study. Initial conditions for this model are estimated using New Zealand census data. We modify the model to describe a country, such as New Zealand, where the endangered language is associated with a particular subpopulation representing the indigenous people. We conclude that, with current learning rates, te reo Māori is on a pathway towards extinction, but identify strategies that could help restore it to an upward trajectory.


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