Work, Informalisation and Place (WIP) Research Centre

Description

The Work, Informalisation and Place Research Centre (WIP) provides methodologically innovative interdisciplinary studies with a specific focus upon the spatial dimensions of contemporary work and employment in sectors such as hand car washes, nail bars, and small-scale garment manufacturing. Work in these sectors tends towards casualisation and informalisation where workers operate under business models that embed patterns of labour market exploitation. Exploitation includes wage theft, under payment of the national minimum wage through to modern slavery where employer coercion centres on work for favours, labour bondage and tied labour in unsafe workplaces.

Members work with the Director of Labour Market Enforcement at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Gangmasters Labour Abuse Authority which is an agency of the Home Office and the Responsible Car Wash Scheme. WIP's research team is currently working on a large-scale project to map and risk classify hand car wash sites in England and Wales.

The members' research expertise enables them to study contemporary patterns of work in many sectors of employment, determine the extent to which informalisation is a feature and examine a sector through a place-based methodology centred on a city, a county or region, a district or a suburb. Members present their research at world-leading conferences such as European Group for Organizational Studies, and the International Labour Process Conference. They publish their research in world-leading and internationally recognised journals and provide bespoke confidential research intelligence led reports and presentations for regulators and other stakeholders.

Their work is currently themed into three strands exploring informalised labour and work, regulation and enforcement and spatial analysis of informalised work opportunities which are developed by the creation of empirical research and policy and practitioner engagement.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

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University affiliation(s)

Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham