Doctoral Dissertation Research: Emergence and Persistence of Labor Market Dualism

本项目将研究导致全球劳动力市场二元论出现和持续的过程。劳动力市场二元论的增长已经成为学术和政策文献中广泛争论的主题，现有文献要么关注正式工人，要么关注非正式/不稳定工人。相比之下，本项目侧重于这两个工人群体之间的互动，为两极分化的就业系统的制度化和局限性提供了新的见解。通过对1987年后韩国四个结果不同的行业进行比较分析，本项目将有助于确定促进（或阻碍）二元论的具体条件，并帮助政策制定者找到解决不稳定工作和工作场所不平等问题的办法。这个项目解决了“振兴”理论和“二元化”理论的支持者之间关于不稳定工作的起源和限制的学术辩论中未解决的问题。振兴理论的支持者认为，不稳定的工人正在被正在进行的经济转型赋予权力，为他们组织起来，代表他们自己提出更高的工资和工作保障的要求创造了先决条件。相比之下，二元化理论的支持者认为，正式工人和雇主之间的微观社团主义妥协为不稳定工人的有效自我组织创造了不可逾越的障碍，从而促进了劳动二元化的长期巩固。通过对纺织、电子、汽车和造船四个行业的比较，本项目将评估这两个假设的有效性。本研究将包括：(1)识别1987年以来四大产业劳动二元论的不同模式；(2)创建并分析1987年以来这四个行业正式和不稳定工人抗议的新数据库；(3)通过叙事分析，阐明产业结构、劳动二元论、非正规劳动者和正式劳动者代理三者之间的因果机制。

This project will examine the processes leading to the worldwide emergence and persistence of labor market dualism. The growth of labor market dualism has become the subject of widespread debate in the scholarly and policy literature, with the existing literature focusing either on formal workers or informal/precarious workers. This project, in contrast, focuses on the interaction between these two groups of workers, providing fresh insights into the institutionalization and limits of polarized employment systems. By conducting a comparative analysis of four industries in post-1987 South Korea with divergent outcomes, this project will help identify the specific conditions facilitating (or impeding) dualism, and assist policymakers in finding solutions to the problems of precarious work and workplace inequality. This project addresses unanswered questions in the academic debate between the proponents of the "revitalization" thesis and the "dualization" thesis about the origins and limits of precarious work. The proponents of the revitalization thesis have argued that precarious workers are being empowered by ongoing economic transformations, creating the preconditions for them to organize and make demands for better wages and job security on their own behalf. By contrast, the proponents of the dualization thesis have suggested that micro-corporatist compromises between formal workers and employers have created insurmountable obstacles for the effective self-organization of precarious workers, thereby facilitating the long-term entrenchment of labor dualism. Through a comparison of four industries--textiles, electronics, automobile and shipbuilding-this project will assess the validity of these two hypotheses. The research conducted for this project will include (1) identifying the divergent patterns of labor dualism in the four industries since 1987; (2) creating and analyzing a new database of protests by formal and precarious workers in these four industries since 1987; and (3) conducting a narrative analysis in order to illuminate the causal mechanisms linking industrial structure, labor dualism, and the agency of both precarious and formal workers.