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Time and technique: the legal lives of the 26-week qualifying period

Grabham, Emily (2017) Time and technique: the legal lives of the 26-week qualifying period. Economy and Society, 45 (3-4). pp. 379-406. ISSN 0308-5147. E-ISSN 1469-5766. (doi:10.1080/03085147.2016.1257257) (KAR id:60133)

Abstract

This paper aims to bring an appreciation of legal form, technicalities, and legislative drafting to growing interdisciplinary literatures on time and governance. Scholarship across politics, geography, science studies and anthropology continues to trace the productive force and specific qualities of diverse temporal horizons. At the same time socio-legal scholars increasingly focus on the work of making and negotiating law, engaging with the dogged, everyday work of legal experts and bureaucrats. Yet little attention has been paid, to date, to the work of legislative drafters. This paper follows the ‘legal lives’ of qualifying periods on family-friendly employment rights. As examples of legal technicalities that work with time, qualifying periods form an important part of the regulatory structure that separates precarious workers from ‘regular’ employees in UK law. Drawing on documentary research and interviews with policy experts, union activists and legislative drafters, this paper focuses on the formal qualities of qualifying periods, arguing that these legal technicalities conjure time and legal form as inextricable. Whenever law becomes relevant to conversations about time and governance, we could usefully pay attention to the idiosyncrasies and controversies occupying legal form and legislative drafting.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1080/03085147.2016.1257257
Uncontrolled keywords: time, technicality, qualifying periods, legal form, employment, family-friendly rights, legislative drafting
Subjects: K Law
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > Kent Law School
Depositing User: Sarah Slowe
Date Deposited: 30 Jan 2017 12:09 UTC
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2024 18:14 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/60133 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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