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Simon Clarke played an unrivalled role in the intellectual trajectory of his former students and significantly shaped the research and the field of sociology in post-Soviet Russia. While his work appears comprised of two distinct lines of inquiry, the essential unity of Simon's intellectual project may be appreciated by zooming in on the factors that motivated the entirety of his work, such as ethical orientation and a desire to understand the mediations of social relations and tensions between capitalism and freedom, autonomy, self-determination and dignity. Whether studying the political economy of 'post-Fordist' global capitalism, the class composition of post-colonial South Africa, the development of workers' movements in post-socialist states, or the relationship between capital as a social relation and the state as a form of contradictory expression of its class character constituted through struggle, there is a unity of purpose in Simon's work. In this article, I reflect on the above through a personal reflection of a former doctoral student.

This article contributes a post-socialist working-class lives perspective to the literature on class (dis)identification. Based on an ethnographic study of middle-age workers in the western Ukrainian city of Ľviv, the article problematises the apparent absence of workers' class identification despite significant commodification and marketisation of society. Evidence presented here points to the potency of gendered, national, regional and post-colonial constitutions of the subjectivity of labour. Rather than being fragmented identities competing with notions of 'class', these constitutions represent a 'site of conjunction' of the changing global processes and local social forms mediating class. The article illustrates empirically and analytically the specific social forms that shape labour subjectivity in Ukraine, while theoretically locating subjectivities as arising from the intersection of various determinations, where social forms and material relations are internally related with and through each other, representing a complex unity of the diverse.

This article examines how transnational labour mobility in uneven and combined Europe has emerged as a critical response to the problems of capitalist production and social reproduction. Analysing the interconnected mobilities of labour between Ukraine, Poland and the UK in the food production, care provision and housing construction sectors, the article examines how states benefit from lower unemployment and reduced labour shortages, employers profit from qualified and reliable workers, and households gain access to jobs and incomes. It argues that transnational labour mobility is constitutive of the inherently interdependent production–reproduction processes. In this constellation, transnational labour mobility becomes a form of mitigation of depletion through social reproduction. However, it further argues that such a mitigation strategy is unbalanced and unsustainable as its costs and benefits are unequally distributed, forestalling resource inflows that could attenuate outflows. Therefore, harms – in particular, the harm to citizenship entitlements – emerge despite labour mobility mitigating depletion.

This article examines how transnational labour mobility in combined and uneven Europe has emerged as a critical response to the problems of capitalist production and social reproduction. Analysing the interconnected mobilities of workers between Ukraine, Poland and the UK in the food production, care provision and housing construction sectors, the article examines how states benefit from lower unemployment and reduced labour shortages, employers profit from qualified and reliable workers, and households gain access to jobs and incomes. It argues that transnational labour mobility is constitutive the inherently interdependent production-reproduction processes. In this constellation, transnational labour mobility becomes a form of mitigation against depletion through social reproduction. It further argues that such a mitigation strategy is, however, unbalanced and unsustainable, as its costs and benefits are unequally distributed, forestalling resource inflows that could attenuate outflows. Therefore, harms, in particular the harm to citizenship entitlements, emerge despite labour mobility mitigating against depletion.

An important contribution to our understanding of management transformation in post-socialist societies has been made by new institutionalism. The strength of this approach derives from its critique of normative models based on neo-classical economics, which has tended towards institutional and management voluntarism. It has been able to grasp complexity in societies undergoing structural change, stressing that path dependence in property, political and social structures helps to define business organization. The limitation of new institutionalism lies in its tendency to overstate institutional stasis, failing to treat (national) institutions as contradictory and transient (localized) expressions of global processes. Based on extensive qualitative data, our article extends the understanding of path-dependence. Rather than dispensing with key insights of new institutionalism, we bridge the notion of path dependence with the contradictory processes of institutional reshaping and adaptation. Using an adapted version of the `system, society and dominance' (SSD) model, we demonstrate that the nature of Russia's insertion into the global market has had a substantial impact on firm ownership and strategies, while simultaneously limiting reforms to management structures and work organization.

Why talk about the global economic crisis today? The topic no longer seems as relevant or fresh as it did two years ago when we issued the call for papers. At that time, the events following the implosion of Lehman Brothers in 2008 seemed to be at the centre of everyday and media discourse: we heard it on the radio, saw it on television, read it in the printed media and thought about it in public and private places. Our imaginaries and experiences seemed to be saturated by the global economic crisis. The global economic crisis informed or structured discussions about political interventions, bailouts, quantitative easing, the nationalisation of financial institutions, and austerity programmes. The emergence of the Indignados in Spain, the public sector workers' protests in Greece, the London Riots, the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring and the mass demonstrations in Russia and Turkey were often read through the prism of, or shared a common destiny with, the unfolding crisis. Does the decentring of the global economic crisis from public and media attention imply that the crisis is over or should we understand both the existence and the effects of subsequent events and developments as ongoing expressions of the crisis? These events and developments have included a shift in the dominant discourse from 'crisis' to 'recovery and growth', heightened concerns around migration, the fiscal and legitimation problems of political institutions, the rise of right wing parties and movements and the return of geopolitics and violent conflicts. Is it now appropriate to reassign these events and developments to the discrete domains of economics, demography, politics and geography or do we need to rethink the concept and understanding of crisis in deeper sociological terms?