The Standard Employment Relationship (SER) in industrialised countries is associated with strong protection for employees who fulfil its criteria but tends to neglect those who do not. Although the theoretical concept of SER has had repercussions around the world, its global empirical incidence and the variation of regulatory patterns associated with it have not been scrutinised so far. Comparative quantitative research in labour law has mainly focused on the overall level of employment protection in the countries of the Northern Hemisphere. Against this background, we ask how legal segmentation in labour law, that is, the exclusion from and gradation in employment protection which seems to be connected with the SER, can be conceptualised and measured in a global perspective. Drawing on leximetrics, a method to measure and quantify norms, we make use of and extend existing data sets such as the Centre for Business Research Labour Regulation Index (CBR-LRI) and Employment Protection Legislation Index (EPLex) in order to grasp the nature of legal segmentation. We identify three main functions of individual employment law in the protection/segmentation context: the standard-setting (S), the privileging (P) and the equalising (E) functions. We develop the SPE-employment law model on the assumption that the three functions are mutually independent in normative terms. The SPE typology offers a genuinely new perspective for comparative labour regulation research, making it possible to see the differentiation of patterns of legal segmentation and their path dependencies in 115 countries. First findings on a global scale show that in 2013 no fundamental difference between the levels of regulation in the Global South and North can be found. Moreover, familiar patterns can be observed such as a tendency to stable and low protection levels in liberal welfare states, and a tendency to universalist types of regulation in former socialist countries.

Labour markets in sub‐Saharan Africa are characterized by a gendered division between formal and informal sectors. This article argues that this division originates from a rationality introduced by racist and gendered colonial legal segmentation, produced by a variety of legal regimes in and beyond employment law. Labour market segmentation in postcolonial settings cannot be understood or overcome without analysing the specific colonial institutional origins of the commodification of labour. In sub‐Saharan Africa, the “colonial exploitative legal employment standard” that commodified labour focused on black African male employees for European employers, excluding or marginalizing women and domestic labour relations.

a los participantes del taller de economía política SOCIUM y, en particular, a los revisores por sus valiosos comentarios. Se aplican los descargos de responsabilidad habituales. Esta investigación fue financiada por la Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Fundación Alemana para la Investigación), proyecto núm. 374666841 -SFB 1342.La responsabilidad de las opiniones expresadas en los artículos solo incumbe a sus autores, y su publicación en la Revista Internacional del Trabajo no significa que la OIT las suscriba.

The Great Depression (1929–1939) can be seen as an international turning point in labour regulation in the colonies of European imperial powers in Sub-Sahara Africa. The context of the Great Depression essentially marked the beginning of the end of the era of post-slavery labour “market-making”, witnessing the move away from forced labour, first steps towards protection of employees and changes in form, length, administrative and penal framing of individual labour relations. The article traces the main features of labour-related legislation and its changes, reflecting modes of production, racial labour relations, the changing role of colonial administration and the contribution of the International Labour Organisation to legal developments especially in British, French and German Sub-Sahara colonies.

Die Alianza Bolivariana para los pueblos de nuestra América -Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos 1 (ALBA-TCP, kurz ALBA), wird in diesem Jahr fünf Jahre alt. Sie stellt inhaltlich wie organisatorisch Neuland dar. Im Mittelpunkt der regionalen Integrationsinitiative stehen soziale Projekte. Ihre ökonomischen Komponenten sind kein Selbstzweck, sondern Mittel zur Erreichung sozialer, kultureller und politischer Ansprüche auf dem Weg zur lateinamerikanischen Integration. Dabei kommt insbesondere den sozialen Bewegungen eine Sonderrolle zu, auf deren Forderungen sich Prinzipien und Programmatik der ALBA zurückverfolgen lassen. Die Institutionalisierung der Einbindung sozialer Bewegungen steht zwar noch am Anfang, lässt aber das demokratisch-partizipatorische Potential der ALBA bereits erahnen. Zugleich entsteht mit ihr aber auch die Gefahr einer bürokratischen Lähmung und Vereinnahmung.