Professor Jane Wills

Professor Jane Wills
Professor of Human Geography

School of Geography and The City Centre: Researching city lives and connections
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
Phone: 020 7882 2752 (messages can be left on 020 7882 8200)
Fax: 020 7882 7479
Email: j.wills@qmul.ac.uk

Research interests:

Over the past decade my research has been on (1) the changing geo-political-economy of work, employment, labour supply and labour politics; and (2) new forms of urban political alliances.

Recent research includes analysis of London’s low waged labour market, the importance of subcontracting and immigration, and efforts to secure a living wage. This material is now published in Global Cities at Work: New migrant divisions of labour (Pluto, 2010) and there is more background about this collaborative research on the project website  Global Cities at Work). In addition, I have a website that provides background information and statistics about the progress of the campaign for a living wage that you can access here: London Living Wage Research.

At the time of writing (late 2011) I am completing a project to explore the costs and benefits of the London living wage which is funded by Trust for London. I am also convening a new teaching programme in partnership with Citizens UK – the alliance behind the London living wage campaign – and we welcome applications from people wanting to study for an MA or Postgraduate Certificate in Community Organising (for more information, click here: MA in Community Organising – and you can also find information about recent graduates, their experiences and their current activities linked to this site).

In 2006, Queen Mary pledged to be the first living wage campus in the UK and the story of the cleaning service and its move back in-house has been the subject of a short report that you can access here: 

The business case for the living wage: the story of the cleaning service at Queen Mary [PDF 1.52 MB]

In 2011 Queen Mary was proud to become a founding partner of the new Living Wage Foundation which seeks to disseminate the concept of, and commitment to paying, the living wage across the UK.

Publications:

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

 


Books:

  • 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.
  • Threads of labour: Garment industry supply chains from the workers’ perspective. Blackwell, Oxford, 2005. Edited with Angela Hale.
  • Place, space and the new labour internationalisms. Blackwell, Oxford, 2001. Edited with Peter Waterman.
  • 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
  • Dissident geographies: An introduction to radical ideas and practice. Longman, London. Prentice Hall (Pearson), London, 2000. Written with Alison Blunt.
  • Geographies of economies. Arnold, London, 1997. Edited with Roger Lee.

  •     Union retreat and the regions: The shrinking landscape of organized labour. Jessica Kingsley (Kogan Page), London, 1996. Written with Ron Martin and Peter Sunley.

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.

  • F rom 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

  • F aith in politics, Urban Studies, 2008, 45, 10, 2035-56. Written with Lina Jamoul.
  • 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. Note: this paper was the most downloaded article in 2010 in this journal (of all articles published in 2009 and 2010).

The following are all written with Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert, Jon May and Cathy McIlwaine, from ESRC-funded research called Global Cities at Work:

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • From coping strategies to tactics: London’s low pay economy and migrant labour. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2007, 45, 2, 404-32.
  • The new development finance or exploiting migrant labour? Remittance sending among low-paid migrant workers in London, International Development Planning Review, 2007, 29, 1.
  • Multicultural living? Experiences of everyday racism among Ghanaian migrants in London. European Urban and Regional Studies, 15, 2, 103-117. London’s Migrant Division of Labour. European Urban and Regional Studies special issue on Regions and migration, 2009, 3: 257–271.
  • 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, 2, 3, 443-62.
  • 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.
  • Global Cities at Work: Migrant labour in low paid employment in London, The London Journal, 2010, 35, 1.
  • Migrant Workers and the Global City, Sociology Review, 2010, 13-16.
  • A migrant ethic of care? Negotiating care and caring among migrant workers in London's low pay economy, Feminist Review, 2011.

Other publications available here:

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