Download or read book Indipendent Work in a Postfordist Society written by Sergio Bologna and published by . This book was released on 2016-01-31 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The social condition of people working as independent professionals has been investigated first by the German sociologists in the Twenties. They know how to distinguish the knowledge workers from the intellectuals. Then, for more than 60 years this topic disappeared from the social analysis and from the public discussion, coming back to the interest of public opinion at the beginning of the Eighties, where the enterprises started outsourcing some professional activities and new lifestyles made independent work more attractive for young people. The Internet and digital technologies make easier to work alone. The author investigates the anthropological' difference between making a living as employee or as freelancer. He criticizes the wrong assumption that an independent worker is an enterprise. Freelancers belongs to the symbolic world of labour, they merit full citizenship in the right of labour. But they should come together and have more voice."

Download or read book Self Employment as Precarious Work written by Wieteke Conen and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1970s the long term decline in self-employment has slowed – and even reversed in some countries – and the prospect of ‘being your own boss’ is increasingly topical in the discourse of both the general public and within academia. Traditionally, self-employment has been associated with independent entrepreneurship, but increasingly it has become a form of precarious work. This book utilises evidence-based information to address both the current and future challenges of this trend as the nature of self-employment changes, as well as to demonstrate where, when and why self-employment has emerged as precarious work in Europe.

Download or read book The Challenges of Self Employment in Europe written by Renata Semenza and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims at explaining the variance in legal status, working conditions, social protection and collective representation of self-employed professionals across Europe. Despite considerable diversity, the authors observe three strategic models of mobilisation: the provision of services; advocacy, lobbying and the political role; and the extension of collective bargaining. They highlight the new urgent challenges that have emerged including the implementation of universal social protection schemes, active labour market policies likely to support sustainable self-employment, and the renewal of social dialogue through bottom-up organisations to extend the collective representation of project-based professionals.

Download or read book The Rise of Precarious Employment in Europe written by Ilias Livanos and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-14 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines precarious employment in Europe through the economic crisis. It draws on two main sources: theories of how the financial and debt crisis coupled with labour market reforms to exacerbate precarity in the workforce; and data from the European Labour Force Survey from 2005-12, capturing various aspects of precarious employment.

Download or read book Growing Self Employment in Western Europe written by Silvia Luber and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reemergence of self-employment in mostWestern European countries since the 1980s is seen as a reaction to changes inthe organization of work in Europe, and not necessarily an effect of economicmodernization. The development and features of self-employment are traced ineight Western European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, theNetherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the UK), and the ways in which workingpatterns are determined by different economic and structural environments areanalyzed. The analysis is based on data obtained from the European Labor ForceSurvey from 1983 to 1997, using mainly respondents' self-definition ofdependent employee or self-employed. Three reasons are found most important for the rise of self-employment: (1)changes in cultural and sociodemographic issues; (2) institutional andpolitical arrangements; and (3) structural changes in the economic,technological, and organizational environments. Differences in the industrialcomposition of the eight countries are examined to determine cross-nationaldissimilarities in self-employment patterns. Although self-employment hasincreased in almost every Western European country, various causes in thedevelopment of self-employment are identified, and differences in thedistribution of self-employment between Northern and Southern Europeancountries are revealed. (CBS).

Download or read book Self employment in Europe written by Izzy Hatfield and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This paper examines the state of self-employment in Europe today - have global forces shaped the role of self-employment within European labour markets? In the UK, for one, the jobs recovery has been underpinned by a well-documented growth in self-employment. Since 2010, 40 per cent of the rise in jobs here has been in self-employment, prompting a complex debate about the extent to which this should be celebrated. Some commentators have heralded it as a sign of entrepreneurial spirit, innovation and future economic growth, while others fear it is primarily indicative of a rise in precarious, insecure work. Findings include: i) Age, gender, occupations and industries; ii) Pay and structure."--Summary.

Download or read book Exploring Self employment in the European Union written by Greet Vermeylen and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Dependent Self Employment written by Colin C. Williams and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dependent self-employment is widely perceived as a rapidly growing form of precarious work conducted by marginalised lower-skilled workers subcontracted by large corporations. Unpacking a comprehensive survey of 35 European countries, Colin C. Williams and Ioana Alexandra Horodnic map the lived realities of the distribution and characteristics of dependent self-employment to challenge this broad and erroneous perception.

Download or read book Transformations in Social Science Research Methods during the COVID 19 Pandemic written by J. Michael Ryan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-11 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores how researchers made innovative use of online technologies to innovate, define, and transform research methodologies in light of the varying impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially those related to the ability to conduct qualitative research. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a radical shift in the way that people all over the world were/have been able to live, work, study, and conduct their daily lives. Academics and other professionals who routinely engage in research were no exception. The sudden, continued, and uneven need for health mandates calling for physical distancing added a particular layer of complexity for those who used research methods that typically required face-to-face interactions. Continued technological developments associated with the Internet had already given rise to ongoing debates on innovative methodological thinking and practices. The COVID-19 pandemic has further accentuated how indispensable the internet has become for the private and public lives of those with access to it, including for their employment, education, leisure, and social interactions. For those fortunate enough to have access to them, communication software such as Zoom and Google Meet have also become indispensable digital resources for researchers seeking to continue conducting research during lockdowns and quarantines, and beyond. More than ever, researchers are finding it useful, even necessary, to equip themselves with online research tools in order to be able to continue conducting their fieldwork. Drawing on research and case studies from around the world, this volume serves as a guidebook for those interested in attuning their own research methods to a world still struggling to grapple with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Download or read book The Social Production of Knowledge in a Neoliberal Age written by Justin Cruickshank and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-04-04 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Higher education exposes a key paradox of neoliberalism. The project of neoliberalism was said to be that of rolling back the state to liberate individuals, by replacing government bureaucracy with the free market. Rather than have the market serve individuals however, individuals were to serve the market. The marketisation ‘reforms’ in higher education, which sought to reshape knowledge production, with students investing in human capital and academics producing ‘transferable’ research, to make higher education of use to the economy, has resulted in extensive government bureaucracy and oppressive managerialist bureaucracy which is inefficient and expensive. Neoliberalism has always had authoritarian aspects and these are now coming to bear on universities. The state does not want critical and informed graduate citizens, but a hollowed out public sphere defined by consumption, willing servitude to the market and deference to state power. Attempts to reshape universities with bureaucracy are now accompanied by a culture war, attacking the production of critical knowledge. The authors in this book explore these issues and the possibilities for resistance and progressive change.

Download or read book Towards Convergence in Europe written by Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to answer a number of important questions. To what extent have European countries converged or diverged with EU-wide economic and social indicators over the past 20 years? What have been the drivers of convergence? Why do some countries lag behind, while others experience continuous upward convergence? Why are these trajectories not always linear? Particular attention is paid to the role of institutions, actors and industrial relations – focusing on the resources and strategies of governments, employers and trade unions – in nudging EU countries onto an upward convergence path.

Download or read book The Future of Work in Europe written by Ignace Glorieux and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have witnessed major changes to the workplace across Europe. The speed of these changes requires constant monitoring and reappraisal. In this book, recent trends are analyzed and their consequences discussed, within a socio-historical context which also reveals underlying patterns of continuity. The trends analyzed include: the presence of high rates of endemic unemployment and underemployment, particularly amongst the young the growth of insecure and precarious employment sweeping changes to the regulation of and organization of work the diminution in the availability of manual work and the growth of white-collar service-sector jobs the growing participation of women in paid employment the introduction of new organizational forms and new forms of management the accelerating use of IT the growth in demand for educational and vocational qualifications by employers the increasing influence of European legislation on work, retirement, health, safety, etc the growing importance of voluntary-sector work The contributors to the volume present both primary research and a wide-ranging survey and analysis of recent major contributions in the field. Detailed empirical material is included from Belgium, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the EU more generally. Thus, the book aims to provide a current overview of the nature of work from a pan-European perspective, illuminated by up-to-the-minute field research.

Download or read book Governing Affects written by Otto Penz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governing Affects explores the neoliberal transformation of state governance in Europe towards affective forms of dominance exercised by customer-oriented neo-bureaucracies and public service providers. By investigating the rise of affective labour in contemporary European service societies and the conversion of state administrations into business-like public services, the authors trace the transformative power of neoliberal political thought as it is put into practice. The book examines new affective modes of subjectivation and activation of public employees, as well as their embodiment of affective requirements, to successfully guide and advise citizens. Neoliberalism induces a double agency in neo-bureaucrats: entrepreneurialism is coupled with affective skills for the purpose of governing clients in their own best interests. These competences are unevenly distributed between the genders, as their affective dispositions differ historically. Drawing on the theoretical concepts of Foucault and Bourdieu, the book offers innovative insights into recent processes of state transformation, affective subjectivation, and changes in labour relations. By combining theory building on governance with empirical research in key areas of state power, the book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in a broad range of disciplines, including political science, political sociology, and critical governance studies.

Download or read book Digital Platforms and Algorithmic Subjectivities written by Emiliana Armano and published by University of Westminster Press. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Algorithms are a form of productive power – so how may we conceptualise the newly merged terrains of social life, economy and self in a world of digital platforms? How do multiple self-quantifying practices interact with questions of class, race and gender? This edited collection considers algorithms at work – for what purposes encoded data about behaviour, attitudes, dispositions, relationships and preferences are deployed – and black box control, platform society theory and the formation of subjectivities. It details technological structures and lived experience of algorithms and the operation of platforms in areas such as crypto-finance, production, surveillance, welfare, activism in pandemic times. Finally, it asks if platform cooperativism, collaborative design and neomutualism offer new visions. Even as problems with labour and in society mount, subjectivities and counter subjectivities here produced appear as conscious participants of change and not so much the servants of algorithmic control and dominant platforms.

Download or read book Poverty and Material Deprivation Among the Self Employed in Europe written by Jeroen Horemans and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In work-poverty has become a pressing social issue in Europe. The self-employed remain relatively uncharted terrain in this context. With about 15 percent of European workers in self-employment this group can no longer be ignored, especially since self-employment is on the rise in many countries, particularly own-account self-employment. Drawing on EU-SILC data this paper provides a systematic mapping exercise of poverty and living standards among the self-employed in the European Union. We find that the self-employed in Europe generally face significantly higher income poverty risks than contracted workers. Looking in more detail at the drivers of income poverty among the self-employed we find that in addition to lower reported earnings, lower overall work-intensity at the household level appears to be an important driver. However, while income poverty levels are quite significant among the self-employed, material deprivation rates are generally much lower. The discrepancy between income poverty measures and material deprivation measures is much larger for the self-employed than it is for employees. One possible explanation is that the self-employed can more often draw on assets accumulated over the life cycle or on business assets they control. The self-employed constitute a very mixed segment of the workforce and within-group inequality is quite significant. One group emerges as being particularly at-risk of poverty are own-account workers, substantiating worries about the rise of this form of self-employment. While the paper offers extensive descriptive analysis and some tentative explanations, an important and sizable research agenda remains.

Download or read book Dependent Self Employment written by U. Muehlberger and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-10-17 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates work relationships on the border between employment and self-employment. Bringing together economic, sociological and legal research approaches, it analyses why firms deploy dependent self-employed workers, why individuals supply this form of work and by which informal and formal mechanism dependency is created.

Download or read book The Hipster Economy written by Alessandro Gerosa and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2024-01-23 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, being authentic has become an aspiration and an imperative. The notion of authenticity shapes the consumption habits of individuals in the most diverse contexts such as food and drinks, clothing, music, tourism and the digital sphere, even leading to the resurgence of apparently obsolescent modes of production such as craft. It also significantly transforms urban areas, their local economies and development. The Hipster Economy analyses this complex set of related phenomena to argue that the quest for authenticity has been a driver of Western societies from the emersion of capitalism and industrial society to today. From this premise, the book advances multiple original contributions. First, it explains why and how authenticity has become a fundamental value orienting consumers' taste in late modern capitalism; second, it proposes a novel conceptualisation of the aesthetic regime of consumption; third, the book constitutes the first detailed analysis of the resurgence of the neo-craft industries, their entrepreneurs, and the economic imaginary of consumption underpinning them, and fourth, it analyses how the hipster economy is impacting the urban space, favouring new logic of urban development with contrasting outcomes. Praise for The Hipster Economy ‘The term “hipster” usually evokes frivolity, while the concept of “authenticity” has been studied so extensively it’s getting hard to find a novel use for it. In this lovely new book, Gerosa has given hipsterism the serious analysis it deserves. Through clear, unforced writing, he convincingly reveals the importance of a distinct form of hipster aesthetics, one based on authentic experience, for today’s consumption-based economy. Gerosa has successfully enlivened the conversations around authenticity and started new ones around late capitalism’s regimes of accumulation. This book is a fine achievement.’ Richard E. Ocejo, CUNY Graduate Center and John Jay College ‘The Hipster Economy is a very welcome addition to sociological discussions of authenticity and consumer culture. Ethnographic vignettes of “crafty capitalism” and passionate “taste dealers” enliven a theoretically rich argument that hipsterism should be treated not as a subculture, but as an aesthetic regime typifying contemporary life. Using the “hipster” as a lens, Gerosa provides a masterful tour of post-Fordist changes to modes of capitalism, patterns of urban development, and the material practices and subjective experiences of work, while charting the long-term development and contemporary expression of authenticity as a master narrative in consumer culture.’ Jennifer Smith Maguire, Sheffield Hallam University