Örjan Sjöberg

Forced labor and precarious working conditions are increasingly visible in high-income economies of the Global North. Mostly perpetrated by the private business sector, immigrant workers are disproportionately affected. However, most management literature has focused on labor exploitation and human rights abuses connected to global supply chains in the Global South. Yet, in industries or activities not easily offshored, low-cost business models contribute to labor market exploitation in high-income economies. The ability to implement such models depends on the institutional context as well as corporate capabilities. This insight does not, however, resolve the issue why also democratic welfare societies with strong legal systems see such practices. Using Sweden as a case, we ask what a sociological lens can contribute to our understanding. It suggests that forced labor is an emergent outcome of interlocking market, state, and institutional logics, reinforced by increasingly restrictive migration regimes. Conversely, an appreciation of the business side could inform sociological studies of migration and labor exploitation. Bridging management, sociology, and migration perspectives, this review contributes to the growing recognition that combating modern slavery requires not only better corporate compliance but also a rethinking of the institutional and social foundations upon which contemporary business models depend. © 2026 The Author(s). Sociology Compass published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

In our pursuit of Agenda 2030's Sustainable Development Goals, and the Paris Agreement, this chapter examines if markets can promote sustainable development. It discusses the challenges posited by climate change and sustainable development. Furthermore, considering their limitations, should markets as a main vehicle for sustainable development be discarded, or can their shortcomings be overcome? Can markets become sustainable in the sense of fostering sustainability outcomes?

It has been argued that digital platform firms leverage their position at spatial bottlenecks in such a fashion so as to allow operations in local labour markets while at the same time insulating themselves from the regulatory provisions that govern those local markets. This is not necessarily a stable condition, but as long as platform firms exert power, they may shift the social relationships that platforms embody in their favour: domination trumps mutuality and autonomy. However, this does not have to be so. Depending on the context, opportunities for breaking out of this mould exist. Specifically, we focus on the institutional context provided by coordinated market economies to argue that, depending on pre-existing forms of cooperation, platforms can be designed and applied in a manner that enables the building and maintenance of trust through an emphasis on mutuality and autonomy rather than inevitably drifting towards the pole of domination. Using the example of the hospitality industry and focusing on training and certification in geographically fragmented labour markets, we set out to explore the possible role of the institutional setting in shaping platform use as recruitment needs are to be resolved.

The attitude of trade unions towards migration and migrants, be it of asylum seekers or those in search of jobs and better incomes, differs substantially across European countries. No matter the original stance, a common current pattern is that of the willingness to accept migrants being eroded over time. To see whether this is the case also in a country that both proved welcoming to labour migrants and refugees during the opening decades of the new millennium, we set out to explore the attitudes of blue-collar trade unions in Sweden. Based on a diverse set of material issuing from the unions themselves, we use sentiment analysis to assess whether there are any changes to be discerned in the opinions of the representatives of 12 blue-collar trade unions and their national confederation. At its most general, the trend appears to turn more negative over time, yet the influence of defining events and legal changes is not so easily observed at the aggregate level. The union representing workers in the industry with the largest proportion of immigrant labour, the Hotel and Restaurant Workers' Union, is therefore selected for closer analysis. To the extent that changes can, or cannot, be observed, we relate those to major events and policy changes that have taken place over the 2010s.

International migration and the integration of new residents continue to be not just a key challenge but also an opportunity for nations around the world. Demographically aging nations are dependent on foreign workers to sustain their economies. Richer countries constitute beacons for upward mobility for those from more impoverished backgrounds. On the other hand, these same countries contribute to the “brain drain” that hampers the developing world. Meanwhile, migrant access, reception, and integration at destination are at the heart of policy debates and research alike.

As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, this book explores current migration and integration challenges. Against the background of long-term migration trends, it asks whether the pandemic has changed the patterns observed, transformed the circumstances international migrants face at destination or whether the opportunities and challenges for integration have been altered. Twenty-four researchers have contributed to this volume with research attention on how COVID-19 has affected transnationalism and identity, labour market employment, and impacted the discrimination of migrants in a variety of ways. Loyalties and tensions created by the need to include also hesitant migrant groups in vaccination programmes are explored. The role of cosmopolitanism and welfare chauvinism in narratives on inward migrations flows, the stance of trade unions on migration, the complexities of implementing return policies, and the challenges faced by unaccompanied refugee youth from Afghanistan are also discussed.

This chapter forms the conclusion to Migration and Integration in a Post-pandemic World: Socioeconomic Opportunities and Challenges and attempts to integrate our broad knowledge of migration and integration before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. As the impacts and consequences of the virus will likely play out over a long time to come, it is at time of publication too early to definitively write post-pandemic. Our conclusion links the individual chapter contributions in this volume into the broader migration and integration literature before and during the pandemic and highlights each chapter’s unique insights into the migration and integration literature afforded by the globally critical event.

Climate, environment and social sustainability are most often theorised and empirically depicted as separate challenges. We explore the interdependence and trade-offs between the goals and suggest that decoupling must have a more prominent focus. Unlike the rapidly expanding body of quantitative goal and target correlation studies, we focus on the underlying conceptual issues. The SDGs focusing on social goals are correlated with economic growth and SDG 8 in a positive way. At the same time, increased climate emissions and ecological footprint are negatively correlated with economic growth and SDG 8. If the social goals are to be met, economic growth must continue but without it increasing the planetary footprint of humankind in the natural world. For now, at least, evidence of such needed decoupling continues to be patchy at best. We conclude with a discussion of redistribution as a possible solution.

“Sustainable cities” as a singular concept may very well be a utopian vision impossible to realise in a broader sense. In this chapter, we review the literature on urban sustainability highlighting the complexities and trade-offs between and within the 3 Es—ecology, economy and equality. In particular, we focus here on the intra-urban dimensions of density, mobility, the built environment and housing, lifestyle trends and gentrification along with social sustainability issues of crime, homelessness and community. While gains from increased size and density can be had, there are also many outcomes that depend on urban morphology and the consequences of spatial sorting. Positive outcomes generated by density and efficiency may be offset by, for instance, less sustainable construction materials or increased income inequality. In particular, rebound effects are often overlooked. Hence, it often becomes an empirical issue whether the potential for sustainability gains materialise. Furthermore, as assessed from a more holistic 3 Es’ view, where social sustainability is as important as environmental sustainability, the potential of a “sustainable city” may be a victim of trade-offs that are difficult to resolve.

Urban areas are often, and not without reason, portrayed as an opportunity to reduce environmental impacts: more effective use of land, better opportunities for the provision of public transport and less need on a per capita basis for investment in physical infrastructure. This is also the message of the literature on urban scaling. The very nature of the agglomeration economies that allow for economising on natural resources may, however, result in higher levels of per capita consumption. A major reason is that high density often translates into higher costs of space, in turn encouraging the concentration of high(er) productivity activities in major cities. As a result, spatial sorting occurs (e.g. with respect to educational attainment and incomes) and with it potentially also a differentiation of consumption patterns. In consequence, not just size and density, but also position in the urban hierarchy may need to be taken into account in assessing sustainability outcomes. To grasp the issue of urban sustainability, however, intra-urban differentiation too, will have to be considered in tandem with the inter-urban issues of boundary drawing for measurement—what we call “ontological cityism”. This is especially so if the focus shifts from the environmental to the social dimensions of sustainability, and if the trade-offs across the three pillars of sustainability are to be understood.