This book review is also available in French, in Revue internationale du Travail 165 (3), and Spanish, in Revista Internacional del Trabajo 145 (3).

Constructing Worlds of Labour is an open-access scholarly book that seeks to make an ambitious and rigorous contribution to social policy analysis and socio-legal scholarship. Drawing on a blend of legal theory, historical analysis and innovative empirical methods, it offers a broad global examination of how labour law functions not only as an instrument of legal protection, but also as a mechanism shaping labour market segmentation. The chapters offer a diverse range of qualitative and quantitative analyses, addressing comparative labour law, social policies and the State, and the measurement of social and labour regulation.

The book’s central theme is that labour law has a dual nature: it not only protects workers and ensures equal treatment, but can also contribute to the active segmentation of the labour market. The book applies a two-dimensional approach: coverage and generosity. Coverage refers to the extent to which labour law protections apply across different categories of workers, while generosity refers to the substantive strength of those protections. These have been influenced by factors such as employment status, gender, race and historical factors (for example, colonialism in developing countries). The book proposes that labour law should not be regarded as a static set of protections attached to standard employment relationships, as its scope and effectiveness are affected by political struggles, institutional complementarities and broader welfare-state architectures. The analytical distinction allows the book to move beyond binary classifications of “strong” versus “weak” labour law regimes and to highlight distinctions within legal systems.

The book adopts a comparative analysis of labour law regimes across advanced and emerging economies. The comparative chapters systematically examine how different States have constructed distinct labour law systems by expanding or restricting legal coverage and by calibrating the generosity of protections related to wages, dismissals, working time and collective representation. The book’s focus on non-standard employment forms – temporary, part-time and platform employment, as well as dependent self-employment – is particularly compelling and not only reveals the limitations of traditional labour law models but also highlights the political nature of exclusion.

Regarding methodology, the book draws on hermeneutical and qualitative critical historical methods, as well as leximetrics. Leximetrics refers to the use of quantitative methods to measure and compare the content and application of laws across countries and over time. It involves converting complex legal texts into numerical data (indices) by coding legal provisions, assigning numerical values and using these metrics to analyse patterns. Given the large volume of labour legislation that must be examined to conduct an international comparative analysis, leximetric studies of labour law focus on key areas of legislation, such as employment relationships, dismissals and working time. The authors and editors acknowledge that the seminal leximetric work undertaken by the University of Cambridge Centre for Business Research Labour Regulation Index provides a foundation for their efforts to develop and extend the World of Labour dataset for leximetric analysis. They present and critically examine the use of leximetric analysis, exploring the limitations and biases of this method of quantified legal analysis. In doing so, the book goes beyond strict legal analysis and invites debates on methodology and comparative legal analysis over time.

Constructing Worlds of Labour is divided into three main segments. The first develops the theoretical and methodological foundations of the project. The concept of legal segmentation, which captures how the structure of different legal norms can contribute to unequal employment relations, plays a central role. Chapter 1 by Dingeldey, Fechner and Mückenberger introduces the concept of legal segmentation as part of regulatory social policy, as well as the methodology for measuring it, and critically discusses both the concept and its measurement. The historical emergence, development and theoretical framing of legal segmentation as a social policy for steering labour markets in developed and developing countries is then presented in Chapter 2 by Fechner, Mückenberger and Dingeldey. Chapter 3 by Carlino, Fechner and Shäfer details how the leximetric methodology and measurement concept was adapted to the concept of legal segmentation, as well as the methods and coding practice used to create the World of Labour dataset. In Chapter 4, Deakin critiques the leximetric methodology for measuring labour law and discusses the development of protective labour law regulation.¹ To the credit of the editors, Chapter 5 by Teklè provides a detailed critique of the leximetric approach to analysing legal segmentation, highlighting the importance of other comparative labour law methods that may capture certain nuances when examining and comparing legislation.

The second segment of the book presents empirical analyses of the development and dissemination mechanisms of social protection and segmentation in different countries. It contains historical and comparative analyses, which explore the evolution of labour law regimes in different political and economic contexts. In Chapter 7, Mückenberger and Schäfer examine the different types of employment relationships in France, the United Kingdom and Germany and explore the extent to which they have influenced labour laws and policies in Africa during the colonial past. In Chapter 8, Gerlitz and Dingeldey adopt a times-series approach to identify changes in the regulation of standard and non-standard forms of employment to obtain an indication of the legal exclusion of certain categories of workers. They suggest that factors such as legal origin, a country’s economic status and membership in transnational regional organizations may explain patterns of change in the labour market. In Chapter 9, Gerlitz and Mückenberger question how the coverage and effectiveness of employment legislation have developed worldwide, investigating whether privileging in labour law spread as a by-product of economic development, by being applied in conjunction with integration into global value chains, and its association with the impact of gender agency.

The third segment of the book considers the future of labour regulation in the context of economic restructuring, globalization and changing forms of work taking place in the twenty-first century. The authors of these chapters assess the continued relevance of labour law, even as employment relationships change, and consider pathways for legal frameworks to be more egalitarian and inclusive. Thus, in Chapter 10, Pries recommends taking different institutional and methodological perspectives into account to overcome the existing gaps in labour law. In Chapter 11, Rittich proposes addressing labour market segmentation and expanding the coverage and generosity of employment legislation by moving beyond labour standards in the regulation of work, beyond market-based work and beyond labour and social institutions in the context of the global economy. Chapter 12 synthesizes the earlier analyses and proposes policies and outcomes for inclusion or exclusion based on global dependencies, while also outlining universally applicable work-related social policy alternatives.

Constructing Worlds of Labour represents a significant contribution to debates on the role of labour law and social policy. Its interdisciplinary ambition, global scope and methodological innovation are unique, and the integration of legal scholarship with quantitative social science methods is particularly noteworthy. By treating labour law not just as a protective mechanism, but also as a mechanism of stratification, the book challenges singular accounts of social regulation. Furthermore, the reconceptualization of labour law as a constitutive element of regulatory social policy offers challenging analytical perspectives on labour market inequality and institutional functions.

In terms of audience, this book will be most appreciated by those with extensive knowledge of legal and social policy analysis. The density and technical complexity of subjects may limit its accessibility to readers without prior knowledge of or expertise in labour law, social and legal theories, leximetrics or comparative policy analysis. Additionally, the breadth of the book’s coverage inevitably results in uneven coverage across regions and themes. Nevertheless, the book provides valuable insights and will be of particular interest to specialists in labour law and social policy, including academics, graduate students and policymakers. By reconceptualizing labour law as a constitutive element of regulatory social policy, it opens new analytical perspectives on labour market inequality and institutional design. Its global scope, leximetric data and rich contextual information make it a valuable reference and basis for future research.

Naj Ghosheh

Senior Researcher

ILO Research and Statistics Department

International Labour Organization

Notes

1. The conceptual and empirical work on leximetrics by Deakin and the Centre for Business Research is the basis of the World of Labour dataset developed by the book’s editors. ⮭