「世界システム論と労働」についてのノート

世界システム論

抄録

The aim of this paper is to locate work in the world-system perspective. Work must be differentiated from the worker as an analytical concept, since it is related to both of renters and factory workers, non-manual and manual workers, or the white- and blue-collar.
A few propositions are put forward in this regard as follows.
First, workers have been presumed to be a driving force for peace in the Marxist theory. This presumption has failed to be true in the real politics among Socialist countries. A new analytical device is badly needed to have the working people oriented toward peace, international and domestic.
Second, according to Immanuel Wallerstein, the location of each nation in the world-system, that is the core, semiperiphery or periphery, determines the essential nature of work there. This is, however, too inclusive to apply in determining the nature of individual work. There exist part-time jobs even in the core, and subsistence economy, not-coerced, thriving in the periphery, too. A series of work, connecting two or more nations, would be a useful device to tackle the problem of work in the world-system perspective.
Third, data of labour migration have been presented to show the ‘upward’ current of people from the periphery or semiperiphery to the core in Western Europe and from the periphery to the semiperiphery in the Middle East. Wallerstein's thesis on labour migration has proved valid in the former, whereas failing in the latter.
Fourth, no foreign labour is permitted to enter Japan for a job now, but there has existed the problem of job discrimination against 680, 000 of the Korean residents, who came or were forced to come there before 1945 when Japan's colonialism collapsed, or who are their descendants. Korean migration and their discrimination can be explained in the perspective of the world-system.