Finance, labour, and the future of work

In times that witnessed a staggering rise in income and wealth inequality, finance and labour have been separate crucial sites of empirical and theoretical investigation in a number of disciplines. Particularly since the GFC they have become sites of intensified political investment, thus challenging the often rigid conceptual separation between the economic and the political. As we emerge from a crisis of belief that capitalism can deliver socially desirable development paths, we face new ways the finance-labour nexus makes itself explicit. A few instances, from social finance to the agenda of alternative finance offer insights about the way the finance and labour nexus reconfigures itself. These examples make evident the struggle to produce a space for social and political projects that involve financing labour. This paper will contribute to a discourse about the limits to financialization and how labour can re-appropriate a debate over the future of work where socially relevant goals are not subordinated to the power of finance.