Doctoral Dissertation Research: Emergence and Persistence of Labor Market Dualism

这个项目将研究导致劳动力市场二元论在世界范围内出现和持续的过程。劳动力市场二元性的增长已成为学术和政策文献中广泛辩论的主题，现有文献要么关注正式工人，要么关注非正式/不稳定工人。相反，本项目侧重于这两类工人之间的互动，为两极分化的就业制度的制度化和局限性提供了新的见解。通过对1987年后韩国的四个不同结果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，并协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。该项目旨在解决“振兴”论和“二元论”论的支持者之间关于不稳定工作的起源和局限性的学术辩论中未回答的问题。振兴论的支持者认为，目前的经济转型正在增强不稳定工人的能力，为他们组织起来并代表自己要求提高工资和工作保障创造了先决条件。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。 本计画将以纺织、电子、汽车、造船四个产业为例，来验证这两个假说的正确性。本研究的内容包括：（1）确认1987年以来四个产业中劳动二元论的不同模式;（2）建立并分析1987年以来这四个产业中正式工人和不稳定工人抗议的新数据库;（3）进行叙事分析，阐明产业结构、劳动二元论以及不稳定工人和正式工人的代理。

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.