New Publication: Enclave Governance and Transnational Labor Law – A Case Study of Chinese Workers on Strike in Africa

Ulla Liukkunen, Professor of Labour Law and Private International Law at the University of Helsinki and Director of the Finnish China Law Center and Yifeng Chen, Associate Professor at Peking University Law School and Assistant Director of the Peking University Institute of International Law published this month an article entitled ‘Enclave Governance and Transnational Labor Law – A Case Study of Chinese Workers on Strike in Africa’ in the Nordic Journal of International Law.

The article examines deficits in the current legal framework of posted workers in a global setting through a case study involving Chinese posted workers striking in Equatorial Guinea. Posting highlights the challenges that economic globalisation and transformation of the labour market pose to labour law. As a phenomenon whose normativity is deeply embedded in the cross-border  setting where it occurs, posting should profoundly affect the transnational labour law agenda. The emergence of transnational labour law should be seen from the perspective of reconceptualising existing normative regimes in the light of an underpinning transnationality and sketching the architecture for the normative edifice of transnational labour protection. The transnational legal  context under scrutiny calls for a wider normative framework where the intersections between labour law, international law and private international law are taken seriously. Global protection of  posted workers should be a featured project on the transnational labour law agenda.

‘Enclave Governance and Transnational Labor Law – A Case Study of Chinese Workers on Strike in Africa’ is among many results of research cooperation between Professor Liukkunen and Professor Chen. They had previously published China and ILO Fundamental Principles and Rights At Work (Kluwer 2014) and Fundamental Labour Rights in China – Legal Implementation and Cultural Logic (Springer 2016).

Cover of the Nordic Journal of International Law