Workplace Vagabonds

Workplace Vagabonds, or people who make up the new worlds of flexible work, are pioneers in establishing new ways of relating to work, career and community. With new organizational models and enhanced global competition, workplaces, contracts, and notions of career lose their traditional bearings. People find alternative ways of navigating in the labour market and of relating to work. And these ways are fraught with tensions and contradictions. This book explores the flexibility of work and labor markets based on studies of the temporary staffing sector in Sweden, Great Britain, and the US. It gives an inside view of what it means to be working as a "temp", and of notions of career and community, time and space. Moreover, it shows how the flexible worker is "made up" within the wider context of increasing globalization of labor markets, and new ways of organizing and of regulating work.