Conducts research and collects data on the global history of labour, workers, and labour relations

The History of Labour Intermediation

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.

  • Sigrid Wadauer is currently Fellow at the International Research Center Work and Lifecycle in Global History at the Humboldt University Berlin. She is principal investigator of the START- and ERC Starting Grant-Project “The Production of Work” at the University in Vienna.
  • Thomas Buchner is a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna, ERC-project “The Production of Work.” His recent publications include Shadow economies and irregular work in urban Europe: 16th to 20th centuries (Münster, Vienna and Berlin 2011) (ed. with Philip. R. Hoffmann-Rehnitz).
  • 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.