When discussing exploitation in workplaces, governments typically deploy a rhetoric of personal responsibility: they place attention on employers who take advantage of workers, or on workers who choose non-standard, precarious work arrangements. On this account, the responsibility of the state is to address the harm inflicted by private actors. This book questions that approach and develops the concept of 'state-mediated structural injustice at work': a phenomenon which manifests when legislation that has an appearance of legitimacy, in fact has very damaging effects for large numbers of people and results in structures of exploitation at work. Using a series of examples such as migrant workers, captive workers, people under welfare conditionality schemes, and other precarious workers, Mantouvalou shows how the law creates these structures of injustice, entrenching long-term, standard, and routine exploitation. She also assesses these examples against human rights principles, including civil, political, economic, and social rights. The ultimate aim of the work is to show that these structures routinely lead to workers' exploitation which may in turn give rise to state responsibility for human rights violations and to argue that there is a pressing need for reform.

About the Author
Virginia Mantouvalou is Professor of Human Rights and Labour Law at University College London. She has received several awards for her research, including a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship and a UCL Provost Award for Public Engagement for her research collaboration with the NGO Kalayaan (working on the rights of domestic workers). She is Articles Co-Editor of the Modern Law Review, a member of the editorial board of the Stanford Studies in Human Rights, Co-Editor of the UK Labour Law Blog, and Joint Editor of Current Legal Problems. She has held visiting positions at Georgetown University Law Centre in Washington DC and the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

Reviews
The book clearly appeals to scholars of labour law, social security law, migration law and human rights law to reflect on the nature and impact of such intersections. * Vandita Khanna, The Cambridge Law Journal *



Book Information
ISBN 9780192857156
Author Virginia Mantouvalou
Format Hardback
Page Count 208
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 452g
Dimensions(mm) 242mm * 162mm * 17mm