Project Leader and SNSF Professor
Damian Raess joined as SNSF Assistant Professor the WTI, University of Bern, in January 2017. Trained as a political scientist (BA, University of Lausanne; MA and PhD, University of Amsterdam), he specialises in the international political economy of labor. His new project, entitled BRICS Globalization and Labor Protections in Advanced and Emerging Economies, deals with the incorporation of the BRICS economies in the world economy and its consequences for labor politics and employment relations in Europe and in the BRICS. Most recently (2014-2016), he led a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project on the causes and consequences of labor provisions in preferential trade agreements funded by the Swiss Network for International Studies. One of the outputs of the project is a new, comprehensive dataset on labor provisions in preferential trade agreements (LABPTA). Damian has been a visiting scholar in the Department of Political Science at MIT (2007-2008) and in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard University (2008-2009). He has been visiting lecturer at K.U. Leuven, the University of Amsterdam, and the Graduate Institute in Geneva. He held a position as Lecturer at the University of Geneva (2010-2015) and at the University of Reading (2016-2019). He has published articles in the Annual Political Science Review, British Journal of Industrial Relations, International Studies Quarterly, Politics & Society, Review of International Political Economy, Socio-Economic Review, amongst others.
BRICS Globalization and Labor Protections in Europe
Damian's research explores the labor market impact and the domestic politics of BRICS FDI as well as BRICS trade competition in Europe. It investigates under what conditions BRICS FDI and trade strengthen (or undermine) working conditions and pro-worker institutions such as collective bargaining and workplace employee representation structures in European countries. It also investigates the demand-side politics of BRICS, especially Chinese, FDI inflows in selected European countries. Specifically, it focuses on the perceptions of trade union officials toward incoming FDI from the BRICS countries in France, Germany, and Switzerland, as well as the attitudes of Swiss senior managers and trade union members toward Chinese FDI inflows and deep trade integration with China. By doing so, the project tests arguments about the uniqueness of China. To answer these questions, the project uses cross-national and national firm surveys in Europe, individual-level survey data in Switzerland as well as content analysis of trade union publications destined to their members in France, Germany and Switzerland.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Patrick Wagner is a Postdoc Researcher at the World Trade Institute (WTI), University of Bern, Switzerland. He has a PhD in Political Science from the WTI/University of Bern, a Masters in International Public Policy from University College London, and a Bachelors degree in International Relations and Political Science from the University of California, Davis. His doctoral thesis studied the impact of South to North foreign direct investment on the incidence of decent work outcomes in developing countries, focusing primarily on the case of Brazil. His research in general is in the fields of international and comparative political economy. In particular, he has worked on how democratic institutional variation affects trade policy outcomes, the impact of the rise of China on labor and foreign relations, and the globalization-labor nexus more broadly. He has recently completed generation of a subnational database of de facto collective labor rights for use in political economic and industrial relations research and is working on applying the data in analyses of how institutional changes and economic shocks impact de facto collective labor outcomes.
Researcher
Wanlin Ren joined the World Trade Institute (WTI) in January 2017 as a political science doctoral student within the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) project “BRICS globalization and labour protections in advanced and emerging economies”. He finished his PhD in 2021 and has since started working at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Outflow Chinese foreign investment and labour protections
Wanlin's PhD project focused on the impact of China’s globalization, mainly the Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI), on China’s domestic labor protections. China’s growing economic engagements and interactions with the rest of the world, particularly the recent increasing OFDI flowing into the advanced economies, could provide a potential channel of diffusion on labor related norms, standards, practices, and institutions between China and the world. The external exposure brought by OFDI could possibly affect the existing domestic labor conditions in China. This project aims to systematically exam this potential linkage since the 21st Century. It includes a macro level empirical analysis that focusing on national tendencies, with the supplement of a micro level qualitative case study based on interviews and observations from Chinese firms and other relevant entities.
Issues including trade union governance, industrial relations, working conditions, health and safety protections will be addressed to illustrate influences that China’s outward economic activities may bring domestically. The project uses a wide range of data, including the official statistical data released by the Chinese government and authorities on economic and labor topics, and the Thomas Reuters' Securities Data Company (SDC) Platinum database. In addition, the project also includes data and information collected through interviews, discussions, and other related sources from fieldwork in both China and Europe.
Issues including trade union governance, industrial relations, working conditions, health and safety protections will be addressed to illustrate influences that China’s outward economic activities may bring domestically. The project uses a wide range of data, including the official statistical data released by the Chinese government and authorities on economic and labor topics, and the Thomas Reuters' Securities Data Company (SDC) Platinum database. In addition, the project also includes data and information collected through interviews, discussions, and other related sources from fieldwork in both China and Europe.