Searching for a job has been an everyday affair in both modern and past societies, and employment a concern for both individuals and institutions. The case studies in this volume investigate job search and placement practices in European countries, Australia, and India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors explore how looking for work becomes a means by which participants (individuals, placement agents, trade unions, municipalities, administrations, state authorities, and schools) articulated specific interests, perspectives, and agendas. Taking an exploratory approach, the chapters illustrate different approaches to the history of employment and job searching, ranging from organizational and regulatory histories to the analysis of practices and autobiographical accounts. In the process, they uncover the interrelations of search practices and attempts to arrange placement services.
Innehållsförteckning
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Finding Work and Organizing Placement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner, Alexander Mejstrik
Chapter 1. Organizing the Market? Labour Offices and Labour Markets in Germany, 1890-1933
Thomas Buchner
Chapter 2. Between Labour Market Constituencies: The Struggles to Establish Vocational Counselling in Weimar Germany
David Meskill
Chapter 3. Organizing Labour Markets: the British Experience
Noel Whiteside
Chapter 4. Creating a National Labour Market: Public Labour Exchanges in Sweden, 1890-1920
Nils Edling
Chapter 5. Mediation, Allocation, Control: Trade Unions and the Changing Faces of Labour Market Intermediation in Western Europe in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Ad Knotter
Chapter 6. Labour Intermediation, Uncertain Employment and the Bourses du Travail in Late Nineteenth Century France
Malcolm Mansfield
Chapter 7. Transforming Soldiers into Workers. The Austrian Employment Agency for Disabled Veterans During the First World War
Verena Pawlowsky, Harald Wendelin
Chapter 8. The Usage of Public Labour Offices by Job Seekers in Interwar Austria
Irina Vana
Chapter 9. A Vocation in the Family Household? Household Integration, Professionalization and Changes of Positions in Domestic Service (Austria, 1918-1938)
Jessica Richter
Chapter 10. Tramping in Search of Work. Practices of Wayfarers and of Authorities (Austria, 1880–1938)
Sigrid Wadauer
Chapter 11. Labour Mediation Among Seasonal Workers, Particularly the Lippe Brickmakers, 1650-1900
Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen
Chapter 12. Sardars, Kanganies and Maistries: Intermediaries in the Indian Labour Diaspora During the Colonial Period
Amit Kumar Mishra
Chapter 13. ‘Organizing the Labour Market’ in a Liberal Welfare State: The Origins of the Public Employment Service in Australia
Anthony O’Donnell
Concluding Remarks
Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner, Alexander Mejstrik
Notes on Contributors
Index
Om författaren
Alexander Mejstrik is a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna, ERC-project “The Production of Work.” He is co-Editor of the Austrian Journal of Historical Studies and recently co-edited a special issue entitled Die Erzeugung des Berufs (1/2013) with Thomas Buchner and Sigrid Wadauer.