Labour law has always been preoccupied with boundaries. One can either be an 'employee' or not, an 'employer' or not, and the answer dictates who comes within the scope of labour law, for better or worse. But such divisions have always been difficult, and in recent years their shortcomings have become ever more pronounced. The proliferation of new work arrangements and heightened global competition have exposed a world-wide crisis in the regulation of work. It is therefore timely to re-assess the idea of labour law, and the concepts, in particular the age-old distinctions - that are used to...

Labor law is widely considered to be in crisis by scholars of the field. This crisis has an obvious external dimension - labor law is attacked for impeding efficiency, flexibility, and development; vilified for reducing employment and for favoring already well placed employees over less fortunate ones; and discredited for failing to cover the most vulnerable workers and workers in the "informal sector." These are just some of the external challenges to labor law. There is also an internal challenge, as labor lawyers themselves increasingly question whether their discipline is conceptually...

Labor law is widely considered to be in crisis by scholars of the field. This crisis has an obvious external dimension - labor law is attacked for impeding efficiency, flexibility, and development; vilified for reducing employment and for favoring already well placed employees over less fortunate ones; and discredited for failing to cover the most vulnerable workers and workers in the "informal sector." These are just some of the external challenges to labor law. There is also an internal challenge, as labor lawyers themselves increasingly question whether their discipline is conceptually...