The situations of nineteenth century dock workers and today’s immigrant day laborers bear striking similarities and challenges, especially for those seeking to organize them into labor unions. The obstacles confronting such organizing efforts also underscore the legitimate concerns many Americans have about the threats to social order posed by immigrants today.

AIM estimate the number of irregular economic immigrants in Mallorca. DESIGN We used the capture-recapture method, an indirect method based on contrasts of data from two or more sources. Data were obtained from the Delegación de Gobierno (police and immigration authority), Comisiones Obreras (labor union), and institutions that provide health-related services to immigrants. Individuals were i...

This paper discusses the political economy behind the principal trade policy decisions in Russia since independence. I discuss why export restraints were widely employed in the early transition years and why the export quotas proved more difficult to remove than anticipated. Why it was so difficult to resolve the monetary basis for the collapse in trade among the newly independent states. Why t...

How Successful Have Trade Unions Been? A Utility-Based Indicator of Union Well-Being Can conventional economic analysis help in defining and measuring the success of labor unions? In this paper, a general indicator of union welfare is proposed and particular expressions for the wage and employment objectives of unions are rearranged to derive measures of union success or welfare. These indicato...

The EU is currently modernizing customs legislation and practices. Main pillars in the new vision are an intensive use of IT (Customs becomes eCustoms), partnerships between Customs administrations and businesses (G2B), and collaboration between national Customs administrations (G2G). But how to design new customs control procedures? Very little theory exists, and an inspection of current proce...

Althusser’s pioneering concept of “ideological state apparatuses” is extended to the unique role of consumerism as a particular ideology enabling and supporting U.S. capitalism. It is argued that rising levels of worker consumption have functioned effectively to compensate workers for (and thereby allow) rising rates of exploitation and their negative social effects. For such compensation to su...

E conomic integration among countries has continued to deepen over the past decade. This is especially visible at the regional level, with the escalation of Regional Integration Agreements (RIAs) ranging from Free Trade Areas (FTAs) to Customs Unions (CUs). Nowadays, many developing countries have entered a new regional integration agreement with developed and developing countries. S...