Employmentweb_low

EmploymEnt, Work, And hEAlth InEquAlItIEs - a global perspective
Bigger gaps start to emerge when situations other than regular
wage-earning employment in core industrialised countries are
considered. first of all, far less information is available on the
health associations with working conditions in situations departing
from that of standard full-time employment, even in the core
countries. for example, it is less easy to ascertain the health and
safety risks, harmful toxic exposures, work pace, etc. of selfemployed
workers or contingent workers who are frequently
changing their place of work and/or employer. even less is known
about the working conditions characterising informal employment
or forced employment. in addition to the precarious nature of the
employment itself, workers engaged in these forms of employment
tend to be more vulnerable and have a more precarious legal
status than those active in the regular labour market
(undocumented immigrants and refugees, children, working poor,
people deprived of their civil rights, etc.). finally, occupational
health research is severely biased in terms of the needs of core
western industrialised countries (Western europe, north america,
australia, and Japan). as a result, probably the biggest challenge
for occupational health inequalities research is to apply an equally
close-knit conceptual framework of health-related working
conditions to situations prevailing in peripheral and semiperipheral
countries (chung & Muntaner, 2008).
concluding remarks: complexity in employment relations,
work, and health
The multicausality involved in social and psychosocial pathways
makes complete models difficult to test. several examples are
presented to illustrate this point. a first example refers to south
africa, showing how epidemics of silicosis, pulmonary
tuberculosis and hiV/aids in gold miners are intertwined (see
case study 62). a second example of multi-determination and
reciprocal influences between employment and health is provided
by our diagrammatic representation of the documentary Darwin’s
Nightmare (see case study 63). This film centers on the political
economy of fishing in lake Victoria, Tanzania. The conclusion that
can be reached is one of great complexity, where ecology,
economics, politics, culture and health are all interrelated,
producing a devastating effect on the local population. no single
discipline or method seems able to capture this complexity.
finally, we also present a case study involving migrant workers in
spain (case study 64). until new transdisciplinary approaches are
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