In 2020, a group of residents of the rural Transylvanian Hungarian-majority municipality of Ditró (in Hungarian), or Ditrău (in Romanian), mobilised themselves against two Sri Lankan bakers. Mainstream media portrayed the incident as xenophobic and racist, the locals as right-wing extremists, and the Sri Lankans as merely ‘migrant workers’, turning the ‘Ditrău incident’ into Romania’s first and most important nationwide immigration debate. This article analyses what the media-coverage of these events tells us about the country’s approach to immigration, and how the symbols, signs, languages, meanings, knowledges, and memories articulated around the ‘Ditrău incident’ make this and other relatable events feed into this approach. We employ discourse analysis, including Lotman’s cultural semiotics, and engage with the institutional, political, and historical framing of ‘the incident’, as well as the broader socio-political and historical context of Romania’s immigration debate. In this way, we argue that, first, the ‘Ditrău incident’ was instrumental to Romania’s dominant societal core in portraying itself as closer to ‘the West’, its absolution of any responsibility for xenophobia and racism, the reproduction of the hegemony of neoliberalism and the middle-class ideology, and the construction of ‘diligent migrant workers’. Second, ‘the incident’ was fundamental in the silencing, individualisation, and invisibilisation of working-class voices and particularising Transylvanian Hungarians as racists and extremists. Finally, it allowed Romanian mainstream actors to brand their nation as open, tolerant, and humane, while normalising the commodification and overexploitation of third-country migrant labour.

This article examines how ethnonationalism functions as a structural condition shaping migrant labour governance in Israel and South Korea. Drawing on these two countries as comparative case studies, selected for their shared feature of ethnically defined statehood enshrined in foundational law and their parallel trajectories of state-led industrial development and dependence on migrant labour, the article traces how ethnonational logics are institutionally operationalised across three dimensions: visa and recruitment systems, family and naturalisation policies and organised labour. The analysis demonstrates that ethnonationalism operates not merely as a logic of exclusion towards ‘foreign’ workers, but as a dual logic of selective inclusion and exclusion, and that these two movements are mutually constitutive, together reproducing an aspired ethnonational state. The article further argues that this multi-layered stratification weakens the power of the entire labour force and produces systemic human rights risks that existing business and human rights (BHR) frameworks have not fully addressed. The findings challenge the BHR field to move beyond firm-level conduct and engage more with the political economy of law and policies as a generator of business-related human rights risks and propose labour citizenship and meaningful stakeholder engagement (MSE) as complementary pathways for reform.

This piece explores how judicial enforcement is reshaping Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) in the Italian fashion sector, offering a rare empirical perspective on the operationalization of corporate responsibility. Recently, Italian courts have imposed judicial administration on major fashion brands in response to labour exploitation perpetrated by their suppliers, highlighting the accountability of lead firms for structural governance failures. While global debates on business and human rights (BHR) have largely focused on risk-based, ex ante compliance in transnational supply chains, Italy has adopted a ‘smart mix of measures’: corporate ‘criminal’ liability with a due diligence defence complemented by court-ordered judicial administrations. These interventions compel brands to translate abstract HRDD obligations into concrete operational and organizational changes, addressing structural drivers of exploitation, such as fragmented subcontracting, precarious migrant employment and pressures from aggressive commercial practices. At the same time, judicial measures and HRDD reforms remain largely compliance-driven, potentially leaving the most vulnerable workers under-protected. By illustrating the need for inclusion-focused narratives and rights-holder-centred approaches, this piece offers both reflection and practical guidance for companies navigating emerging EU sustainability regulations. More broadly, it contributes to the discussion on bridging formal corporate compliance with substantive human rights protection that translates into concrete corporate ethical behaviours.

Ethnographies involve the exploration of social phenomena in the field, typically for an extended period of time. Traditionally, ethnographers listen to, observe, and directly communicate with the subjects of their research. At its essence, ethnography is about storytelling, and the data are collected through human interaction. With the development of new technologies, and with the plethora of social media platforms, the manner in which many stories are told has become significantly more varied. Accordingly, digital ethnography has emerged as a new approach to conducting ethnographies. In the present study, we focus specifically on the use of digital ethnographies in third sector studies. Building on our own experience using digital ethnography, collecting data from Facebook pages and groups, blogs, and websites of nonprofit organizations and individual volunteers and donors, we describe two different ways of conducting digital ethnography: One, at the micro-level, explores human milk donations to nonprofit milk banks. The second, at the meso-level, explores a community of migrant workers. We aim to outline the potential, limitations, and ethical considerations of this methodology.

Diaspora philanthropy, sending donations to the homeland, has evolved with worldwide migration. While scholars have explored diaspora philanthropy in diverse communities, no research focuses on migrant worker communities ineligible for permanent settlement in their host country. This study posits that donations within such communities should be considered to be a component of diaspora philanthropy. Based on a qualitative and quantitative study on the Filipino community in Israel, this research compares transnational and communal philanthropies among migrant workers. Analysis of the targets, mechanisms and amounts of donations, revealed meaningful differences. The transnational philanthropy, mostly proactive and long term, focuses on collective needs in the home country, thus fostering a better and steady future, while strengthening migrant worker links with their homeland. The communal philanthropy, mostly reactive and short term, focuses on migrant workers' immediate individual needs, contributes to their survival and enhances solidarity in the host country.

International migrant workers (IMWs) may face insecure work and housing, limited access to healthcare and increased risk of psychological problems. Two scalable, evidence-based interventions to support individuals experiencing psychological distress are Doing What Matters in Times of Stress (DWM) and Problem Management Plus (PM+). This study aimed to explore IMWs’ problems, daily functioning and help-seeking behaviour, to inform cultural adaptation of the DWM/PM+ stepped-care intervention in the Netherlands. Following the Design, Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation (DIME) model, we conducted various qualitative interviews and a focus group discussion with IMWs (n = 30) and professionals (n = 18). Data were analysed thematically, and findings informed adaptations. Participants described problems related to work, housing, administration, finances, healthcare access and the COVID-19 pandemic. Daily routines focused on practical needs. Help-seeking was hindered by stigma, fear of job loss, low trust and reliance on informal or cross-border healthcare. Based on these results, the intervention was adapted to the needs of Polish IMWs in the Netherlands, regarding content and examples, which were tailored to their context; the intervention was offered remotely and collaboration with employers was avoided. These findings highlight the structural vulnerabilities of IMWs and demonstrate how qualitative insights can guide the cultural adaptation of a psychological intervention.

Unlike existing studies on labour and income in the digital era, this paper argues not only that the impact of the digital economy’s intervention in the labour process is fragmented rather than comprehensive, but also that the transformation of job demand and labour supply behaviours is simultaneous and related to the attributes of the industries in which they operate. Drawing on the conventional biased technological progress hypothesis and labour process theory, we argue that the digital economy has generally increased the labour income inequality for migrant workers in China. Using geospatially matched China Labour Dynamics Survey 2018 microdata and provincial digitalisation indices, we uncover a digital ‘upgrading trap’: the development of the digital economy hides the process of inequality formation in the hedging relationship between objective labour demand ‘upgrading’ and subjective labour supply ‘expanding’. The former can be summarised as the risk of ‘no job’ and the latter as the risk of ‘no way back’. Counterintuitively, consumer Internet development demonstrates a greater role in both reducing workers’ inequality in secondary labour markets and promoting a fair primary distribution. These findings reconceptualise digital inequality as coevolutionary outcomes, and offer a tripartite governance way for inclusive growth through portable skill certification, algorithmic accountability mechanisms, and interoperable social security systems.

The pandemic of Covid-19 exposed critical gaps in social policy and underscored the foundational role of families and households in both societal and economic stability. This introductory chapter to a Special Issue explores the interdependence between formal economic participation and unpaid domestic labour – collectively referred to as ‘social reproduction’. Drawing on feminist political economy, the chapter addresses how gendered and undervalued reproductive labour is essential to economic growth and the realisation of international commitments such as the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly gender equality and inclusive growth. This Special Issue uses South Korea as a comparative case study due to its unique economic trajectory, rapid demographic ageing, stark gender inequalities, and limited social protection systems. The country’s long working hours, low fertility rate, and pronounced wage and care burdens on women illustrate how inadequate social reproduction support can threaten broader social and economic sustainability. The pandemic further intensified these issues, disrupting institutional supports and deepening inequalities. This Special Issue collectively examines how policies across different contexts either alleviate or exacerbate the tensions between productive and reproductive labour, using South Korea as a focal point for comparison. This comparative analysis highlights the need for structural reforms and cultural change to support effective social reproduction policies, emphasising that gender-equal leave, accessible childcare, and shared caregiving responsibilities are crucial for work-family balance and social well-being. South Korea’s experience illustrates both progress and ongoing challenges, offering valuable lessons on the limitations of market-driven approaches and the importance of resilient, state-supported family policies.

The article examines the drivers of migrant atypical employment in the manufacturing sector of Emilia-Romagna, an Italian region that is well known for its high-quality manufacturing productions and industrial relations. By drawing on administrative data based on mandatory communications, we document that, even in such an institutional context, migrants have a disproportionately higher likelihood of being hired through either fixed-term or agency contracts than native workers. We interpret this evidence through a set of different theories, including human capital theory, dual labour market processes, the use of precarious contracts as screening devices, and institutional segmentation theories. The empirical analysis reveals that while migrant employment through fixed-term contracts is consistent with dual processes and screening practices, the hiring of migrants with agency contracts is driven by processes of institutional segmentation, through which employers shift the costs of flexibility to the most vulnerable and less organized segments within the labour force, such as migrants. Managerial and policy implications are discussed.

This article considers how the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a remarkable social experiment in the market for migrant ‘au pair’ labour in Australia. As has been illustrated in broader accounts of the pandemic’s ‘care crisis’, the global health emergency cracked open underlying fault lines, as capacities for social reproduction were stretched to breaking point. At the same time, the pandemic deepened the precarity of temporary migrants as they lost jobs and incomes, experienced housing insecurity, and were excluded from state emergency relief measures. Building on interdisciplinary feminist literatures on gender, work, migration, and social reproduction, this article adds to emerging scholarship on the growing phenomenon of au pairing in Australia to examine drivers of demand, migrant mobilities in and out of au pair labour, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon the market. While au pairing emerged during the pandemic as a form of survival work where migrants had little negotiating power, the market ultimately shifted when emergency childcare measures were withdrawn, migrant labour became scarce, and visa restrictions on working hours were relaxed. In addition to providing new empirical insights into au pairing in Australia, the findings underscore the constitutive role of law and policy settings in shaping the distributions and divisions of reproductive labour, which can both consolidate and also challenge broader gendered care norms and distributions and the social reproduction bargain.

More than a million foreigners reportedly reside in South Korea now, with unskilled migrant workers accounting for a majority. Although the country's reliance on imported foreign labor is likely to continue unabated, the country prides itself as an ethnically homogenous society and insists on almost zero-immigration policy. However, this paper shows that Korean society is rapidly becoming a multicultural society and this process is inevitable and irreversible. In support of this argument, the paper examines various social factors that are contributing to the making of a multiethnic Korea, including the continuing influx of migrant workers, rapid aging of the population, low fertility rate, and shortage of brides. The paper also assesses the applicability of various theories and trends of migration to the Korean context. The Korean case suggests a need for a paradigm shift in understanding multiculturalism. This is because the dominant perspectives and theories on multiculturalism have been western-centric, based on western experience and focusing on racial differences and tensions. Multiculturalism in Korea as well as in its neighboring countries like China, Japan, and Taiwan is fundamentally different, as it involves people of similar physical appearances and historical cultural bonds, and it entails ethnic rather than racial differences.

This article addresses a gap in the scholarly literature on the legal regulation of temporary labour migration by tracing the legislative history and regulation of work visas for short stay specialists and occupational trainees. By reason of their acute temporariness, both short stay workers and occupational trainees could be regarded as having a migration status that makes them vulnerable in their work relations. In addition, this vulnerability means they may accept terms and conditions that undercut domestic labour standards. Although the detailed legislative tracing of both visas reveals various attempts to re-regulate both visas in favour of greater scrutiny of employer requests for overseas labour, tightening access requirements and increasing enforcement and monitoring capacity, these have been largely incapable of preventing instances of egregious exploitation. These case studies on two little-known visas mirror the growing concerns around the integrity of Australia’s temporary labour migration program more generally and point to the myriad tensions, challenges and complexities inherent in the regulation of temporary labour migration programs around the globe.

The language of human rights is a prominent tool of choice to push for moral principles such as justice, equity, and fairness in the social, economic, and political spheres. Simultaneously, the concept and practice of human rights have attracted critiques. Relativism is one such enduring critique. Relativists advocate due and reasonable consideration towards cultural diversity and specificity of diverse human communities, within the limits allowed by universality of human rights. The relativist critique featured prominently in the debates surrounding Qatar’s hosting of the FIFA World Cup 2022. Commentators have spoken about Qatar’s scrutiny often moving beyond legitimate human rights criticism, uninformed activism being counterproductive; and the appropriateness of, largely, Western and maximalist ideals of human rights being applied without accounting for local needs and peculiarities. In this Article, I bring together the literature on the relativist critique and the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 as a case study, to examine the usefulness and limitation of human rights as a language of critique to achieve meaningful transformative change in sporting contexts. I focus on the debates surrounding the rights of migrant workers and the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community; and argue that while human rights advocacy had a notable impact in relation to FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, it is a tale full of cautions and lessons.