Despite its geographic and industry expansion as part of the ongoing globalisation of service activity, temporary agency work (TAW) is relatively understudied. This edited collection provides a comprehensive overview of TAW, in an international context, revealing how the TAW industry is intertwined with the changing relationship between the state, corporations and labour unions at the institutional-structural level, and also the perceptions and experiences of ordinary workers in everyday practice. By combining global and local forces, macro and micro levels of analysis, and theoretical and empirical investigations, the book offers fresh insights into recurring issues of labour flexibility and inequality, making practical suggestions and facilitating fruitful cross-national collaborations.

Selling flexibility, institutionalising insecurity: the US temporary agency work industry in the 1970s. Bridges or traps? Employment precariousness, temporary agency work and the labour market status of MG Rover workers four years after plant closure. Temporary agency work in Australia, Germany and Singapore. The temporary agency work industry and its regulatory environment: evidence from Australia. Dispatched labour in South Korea: regulatory issues and causal analysis. Fragmented work in post-bubble Japan: negotiating identity, gender, age and class in triangular employment relationships. Labour flexibility in an already flexible market: temporary agency work in Brazil. Selling flexibility, institutionalising insecurity: the US temporary agency work industry in the 1970s. Bridges or traps? Employment precariousness, temporary agency work and the labour market status of MG Rover workers four years after plant closure. Temporary agency work in Australia, Germany and Singapore. The temporary agency work industry and its regulatory environment: evidence from Australia. Dispatched labour in South Korea: regulatory issues and causal analysis. Fragmented work in post-bubble Japan: negotiating identity, gender, age and class in triangular employment relationships. Labour flexibility in an already flexible market: temporary agency work in Brazil.

Huiyan Fu holds a doctorate in social anthropology from the University of Oxford. Working at the intersection of social anthropology and international business, she has previously taught as a visiting professor at Aalen University in Germany and is currently a senior lecturer at Regent's University London. She is the author of An Emerging Non-Regular Labour Force in Japan: The Dignity of Dispatched Workers (Routledge/Nissan Institute Japanese Studies, 2011).