International Workshop

Labour Market Liberalisation after the Lehman Crisis:
France, Germany and Japan in Comparative Perspective
Tokyo, December 14-15, 2018

Call for Papers
In the 10 years after the collapse of the investment firm Lehman Brothers, there has been a
noticeable shift in discourses on structural labour market reforms. Whereas before the crashinternational organisations, liberal economists and many policymakers had been arguing thatmarket-oriented reforms were necessary if painful to improve the performance of labour markets,
the social costs of liberalisation seem to attract much more attention since 2008. The social andpolitical costs of labour market inequalities are now widely acknowledged especially in countries
with dual labour market structures like France, Germany and Japan.
Yet the jury is still out whether this discursive shift has prompted a similar change in policy. While
policies emphasising social goals rather than economic efficiency have clearly gained in popularity(e.g. minimum wage reform in Germany and reinforced equal treatment rules for non-standard workin Japan), structural reforms echoing previous attempts at liberalisation are also still on the agenda(e.g. French reforms of labour contract law, Japanese “work-style” reforms or German temporary
agency work reform).
The workshop aims to shed light on this mixed picture of continuity and change by bringing together
scholarship on France, Germany and Japan from all disciplines of the social sciences. The countries
share many structural problems (e.g. dual labour market structure, limited mobility between
standard and non-standard jobs) but differ with regard to their regulatory approaches and politicaland economic institutions. The comparison therefore allows exploring the changing politics ofstructural reform in economically advanced democracies as well as to readdress key questions incomparative political economy research, e.g. to what extent governments, employers and tradeunions are willing and able to influence processes of liberalisation and mitigate resulting labour
market dualisation.

We seek in particular papers that engage with one of the following four thematic themes:----

Discourses on labour market inequalities
E.g., how have political discourses on labour market liberalisation changed since the Lehman
shock?
Contents and direction of structural reformE.g., how has the substance of labour policies changed since 2008? What explains the recent
popularity of minimum wage reforms and reinforced equal pay rules?
Policymaking processes and power
E.g., how has the influence and role of business and organised interests changed since 2008?
Which political actors profit/suffer due to controversies on non-standard work and labour
market inequalities? How has the Lehman shock affected industrial relations?
Changing employment practices
E.g., are reforms driven by changing employment practices or do reforms shape practices?
How important are demographic change and labour shortages for changing practices?

Single country studies as well as comparative papers from all disciplines of the social sciences arewelcome.

Submission
We invite interested scholars (junior and senior levels, at least PhD candidate status) to submit theirpaper proposal (max. 500 words) to labour-market-workshop@dijtokyo.org by July 9, 2018.
Accepted paper givers will be eligible for an allowance to help pay for travel and accommodation
costs (one speaker per paper; app. 950 EUR for speakers from outside East Asia; 550 EUR forspeakers from Japan/East Asia). We plan to publish selected papers of the workshop with a leading
English-language publisher. For inquiries, please contact the organisers at the email addressprovided above.
Notifications of acceptance will be send out by July 16.

About the Workshop
The workshop will take place at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in central Tokyo. It is
the second in a series of academic events comparing the political implications of labour market
inequalities in France, Germany and Japan. The first workshop took place in Paris in 2017(http://ffj.ehess.fr/upload/Actualites/Events/2017/W-LabourMarketandPolitics.pdf) and a final
event will be held in Berlin in June of 2019.

About the Hosting Institutions
The Fondation France-Japon de L’EHESS in Paris, The Japanese-German Center Berlin (JDZB) and theGerman Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo support social science research on Japan froman international comparative perspective.