I do not expect that the average reader in political economy or European studies will be familiar with the word I chose for the title: Workaway. A workaway is an itinerant sailor: someone who catches a ride on a ship by swapping their labour in exchange for passage. Wages and benefits are excluded from that exchange. At an earlier time, when insurance policies were less intrusive, shipping companies less oligopolistic, and the world was a lot bigger, any person could wander down to the local port, ask for the ship’s captain and negotiate a workaway position to wherever that ship might be heading.

This sounds very exotic and adventurous. But workaway is a lot of work, most of which is unpleasant. Maritime workaways chip away rust, bathe in puddles of red lead, oil/grease machinery, swab decks … you name it. They do this work in exchange for board, a bunk (that would otherwise lie vacant) and the potential wrath of the captain (to whom they have already surrendered their passport, pocketknife and a ‘working’ deposit). Working away might fuel a short-term adventure, but it is not sustainable over a lifetime.

I have chosen this title, because European workers are increasingly expected to behave like workaways. Labour markets have become like ports of call: each beckoning with the promise of better wages and employment. Instead of protecting local labour markets from the whims of economic change, we have chosen to leverage the opportunities provided by more distant markets. Consequently, when local labour markets are hit by economic storms, their workers are cast adrift to find employment in some far-away labour market – often located on another side of the continent. Like the mariner, this labour is often vulnerable, desperate and exploited.

This new labour market is not limited to Europe. In each of the world’s continental economies, workers are increasingly asked to behave as if they were mobile factors of production. This book began as a larger comparative project. Over the past two decades I have studied the different ways that large (continental-wide) economies have integrated their labour markets, while sharing a common currency. India, China, the US and the EU have shared common challenges in this regard, and each has experimented with policies that encourage/deter interstate labour mobility, regulatory harmonization and interstate transfers (among other things).