Queen Mary, University of London Spacer image Spacer image
Professor Jane Wills

Professor Jane Wills
Professor of Human Geography

School of Geography
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
Phone: 020 7882 2752
Fax: 020 7882 7479
Email: j.wills@qmul.ac.uk

Research interests:

My research focuses on (1) the changing geo-political-economy of work, employment and labour supply; and (2) new forms of urban coalitional politics. In recent years I have conducted research into the London living wage campaign and the broad-based community alliance called London Citizens that leads the campaign (see London Living Wage Research [new window] for more information). I have also been involved in a project to map the experiences, contributions and implications of foreign-born workers in London’s low waged jobs (see  Global Cities at Work [new window] for more information). This work is published in a new book called Global Cities at Work (Pluto, 2010) that focuses on London’s emerging Migrant Division of Labour and its implications for the city, the country and the rest of the world.

My previous research has explored the development of labour internationalism, community unionism and European Works Councils. I have co-edited a book with Peter Waterman about new forms of labour internationalism (published as Place, Space and the new Labour Internationalisms, Blackwell, 2001). I have also co-edited a book with the late Angela Hale, exploring the pioneering work that the NGO Women Working Worldwide has done to support workers in the global garment industry (published as Threads of Labour (Blackwell, 2005)).

Since 2005, our Geography Department has been a member of the broad-based community alliance, London Citizens, and we use our membership to engage students in active learning and citizenship. Each year, our second year undergraduate students do some research for a London Citizens campaign or organization, leaning how to do research through their active involvement in the alliance. In previous years this has involved projects on the Mayoral election campaign and the development of a People’s Agenda for London; the citysafe campaign to foster safer communities; and the development of a Community Land Trust for affordable housing on the St Clement’s Hospital site. We are in the process of setting up a new MA in Community Organising that will be offered at Queen Mary from September 2010.

In 2006, Queen Mary pledged to be a living wage campus and the story of the cleaning service and its move back in-house has been the subject of further research.

Publications:

 

BUY a discounted copy of Global Cities at Work, click here:

 


Books:

  • Union retreat and the regions: The shrinking landscape of organized labour. Jessica Kingsley (Kogan Page), London, 1996. Written with Ron Martin and Peter Sunley.
  • Geographies of economies. Arnold, London, 1997. Edited with Roger Lee.
  • Dissident geographies: An introduction to radical ideas and practice. Longman, London. Prentice Hall (Pearson), London, 2000. Written with Alison Blunt.
  • Union Futures: Building networked trade unionism in the UK.
    Fabian Ideas pamphlet 602. 2002. pp. 59. This publication is available from the Fabian Society, email: bookshop@fabian-society.org.uk
  • Place, space and the new labour internationalisms. Blackwell, Oxford, 2001. Edited with Peter Waterman.
  • Threads of labour: Garment industry supply chains from the workers’ perspective. Blackwell, Oxford, 2005. Edited with Angela Hale.
  • Global cities at work: New migrant divisions of labour. Pluto, London, 2010. Written with Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert, Jon May and Cathy McIlwaine.

Journal Papers and book chapters:

  • Taking on the cosmocorps: Experiments in trans-national labor organization. Economic Geography, 1998, 74, 111-130.
  • Managing European Works Councils in British firms. Human Resource Management Journal, 1999, 9, 4, 19-38.
  • Great expectations: Three years in the life of one EWC. European Journal of Industrial Relations, 2000, 6, 83-105.
  • Uneven geographies of capital and labour: the lessons of European Works Councils. Antipode, 2001, 33, 484-509.
  • Community unionism and trade union renewal in the UK: Moving beyond the fragments at last? Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2001, 26, 465-483.
  • Bargaining for the space to organise in the global economy: A review of the Accor–IUF trade union rights agreement. Review of International Political Economy, 2002, 9, 675-700.
  • From mutual interests to mutual exploitation: partnership and trade unionism in Barclays Bank PLC. Industrial Relations Journal, 2004, 35, 4, 329-343.
  • The Geography of Union Organising in Low-Paid Service Industries in the UK: Lessons from the T&G’s Campaign to Unionise the Dorchester Hotel, London Antipode, 2005, 37.
  • Building reciprocal community unionism in the UK. Capital and Class, 2004, 82, 59-84. Written with Melanie Simms.
  • Organising in transport and travel: Learning lessons from TSSA’s Seacat campaign, in G. Gall (ed) Union organising. London: Routledge. 2003, p. 133-152.
  • Campaigning for low paid workers: The East London Communities Organisation (TELCO) Living Wage Campaign, in W. Brown, G. Healy, E. Heery and P. Taylor (eds) The Future of Worker Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004, 264-282.
  • The geography of union organising in low paid service industries in the UK: lessons from the T&G’s campaign to unionise the Dorchester Hotel, London. Antipode, 2005, 37, 139-59.
  • Globalisation and Protest, in P. Cloke, P. Crang and M. Goodwin (eds) Introducing human geographies (second edition). London: Arnold. 2005, 573-587.
  • Keeping London working: Global cities, the British state, and London’s new migrant division of labour. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2007, 32, 151-67. Written with Jon May, Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert and Cathy McIlwaine.
  • Subcontracting by stealth in London’s hotels: impacts and implications for labour organising. Just Labor: A Canadian journal of work and society, 2007, 10, 85-97. Written with Yara Evans, Kavita Datta, Joanna Herbert, Jon May and Cathy McIlwaine
  • From coping strategies to tactics: London’s low pay economy and migrant labour. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2007, 45, 2, 404-32. Written with Kavita Datta, Cathy McIlwaine, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert and Jon May.
  • The new development finance or exploiting migrant labour? Remittance sending among low-paid migrant workers in London, International Development Planning Review, 2007, 29, 1. Written with Kavita Datta, Cathy McIlwaine, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert and Jon May.
  • Networking for workers rights in the garment industry. Global Networks, 2007, 7, 3. Written with Angela Hale.
  • Making class politics possible: Organizing contract cleaners in London. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 2008, 32, 2, 305-24.
  • Faith in politics, Urban Studies, 2008, 45, 10, 2035-56. Written with Lina Jamoul.
  • Multicultural living? Experiences of everyday racism among Ghanaian migrants in London. European Urban and Regional Studies, 15, 2, 103-117. Written with Joanna Herbert, Jon May, Kavita Datta, Yara Evans and Cathy McIlwaine.
  • The living wage. Soundings:  A journal of politics and culture, 2009, 42, 33-46.
  • The London Living Wage in A. Kumar, J. A. Scholte, M. Kaldor, M. Glasius, H. Seckinelgin and H. Anheier (eds) Global Civil Society Yearbook 2009: Poverty and activism. London: Sage.
  • Subcontracted employment and its challenge to labour. Labor Studies Journal, special issue on community unionism, 2009, 34, 4.
  • London’s Migrant Division of Labour. European Urban and Regional Studies special issue on Regions and migration, 2009, 3: 257–271. Written with Jon May, Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert and Cathy McIlwaine.
  • Religion at work: The role of faith-based organisations in living wage campaigns for immigrant workers in London. Special issue entitled Transforming Work, The Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 2009. doi: doi:10.1093/cjres/rsp016. Written with Jon May, Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert and Cathy McIlwaine.
  • Men on the move: narratives of migration and work among low-paid migrant men in London. Social & Cultural Geography, 10, Issue 8, 2009: 853 – 873. Written with Kavita Datta, Cathy McIlwaine,  Joanna Herbert, Yara Evans and  Jon May

 

Other publications:

In January 2008 Queen Mary, University of London took unprecedented steps to bring the majority of its cleaning in-house, and pay those cleaners the ‘living wage’ – a salary that affords a better standard of living in the capital.

To mark the one-year anniversary of this ethical move, which bucks the global trend of outsourcing such services to contractors, a detailed report is being published by Queen Mary on 19 January, documenting the impact of the ‘living wage’ on cleaning staff, service quality and the College as a whole. The report may be downloaded here:

The business case for the living wage: the story of the cleaning service at Queen Mary [PDF 1.52 MB]
The living wage report press release [DOC 83 KB]

 

Research into the Development of Job Rotation in London, funded by the European Social Fund (2001-2)