International Labour Process Conference 2019

The 37th International Labour Process Conference 2019: Fragmentations and Solidarities

University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria 24 to 26 April 2019

General Call for papers

The 37th International Labour Process Conference (ILPC) will be held in Vienna, Austria, from 24 to 26 April 2019. Each year the ILPC brings together researchers from a variety of countries with the objective of enhancing our understanding of contemporary developments relating to work and employment. The conference organizers welcome papers on any issue concerning the analysis of labour processes, labour markets, labour organising and labour reproduction.

The 2019 conference will additionally focus on ‘Fragmentations and Solidarities’ in contemporary work and employment relations. Recent developments in the economy and society challenge the institutional frameworks of employment, accelerating the ongoing processes of deregulation and flexibilisation. This reiterates segregation along the lines of gender, ethnicity and qualifications and creates new formal and symbolic boundaries within the workforce. Furthermore, transnational forms of work organization and global value chains modify and partly intensify the divisions of labour, deepening the unequal distribution of wealth, ecological hazard, and risk to health and social security among employees in the world. Global inequality, in return, pushes workers to leave their home countries and migrate to adjacent or more distant formal or informal labour markets, raising the issue of solidarity within and between the formally and informally employed workforces. Finally, new technologies appear to increase their impacts in uncertain directions: augmenting the share of knowledge work and improving skill levels, threatening jobs, and/or increasing the pressure on workers and the scope of managerial control. There is considerable risk of new fragmentations of employment according to different skill levels, forms of contract and locations of work.

A key aim of the conference is to use labour process analysis to understand the varied mechanisms that produce fragmentations in work and employment relations, and to explore the foundations of solidarity on the level of individuals, of collective action, and on the level of national and supra-national policies. This also includes a focus on how changes in the labour process and in employment relations impact on wider societal and political developments.

We encourage papers that seek to develop inter-disciplinary linkages through their empirical, conceptual or theoretical content. We particularly welcome submissions on topics such as:

• Power, subordination and degradation in the contemporary global economy
• The politics of production, productivity and performance management
• Structural imbalances in the global economy and the consequences for labour
• Work and employment in the Global South
• Global value chains and ‘dimensions’ of labour (e. unfree/forced labour, informal work)
• Finance capital and ‘financialisation’
• Forms of employment and cleavages and solidarities between groups of workers
• New forms of trade union organizing, collective action and self-organised initiatives
• Commodification and the role of markets
• Austerity, welfare regimes and the workplace
• Migrant labour, labour markets and the organization of production
• Productive and reproductive labour in the global economy
• Technology, artificial intelligence, ‘robotisation’ and the digital economy
• Time, space, place and the labour process
• Labour process dynamics and their wider political implications

We also welcome papers related to traditional labour process territories and concerns. Examples include:

• Labour process theory and other critical perspectives of work relations
• Industrial relations, representation and trade union strategies
• New forms of workforce flexibility, insecurity and intensification
• Inequality at work: gender, ethnicity, and class
• Changing skills, knowledge and occupations
• Labour agency and changing forms of resistance
• Voice and participation
• Gender and identities at work

This year there are a number of special streams (please consult the web-site for the stream calls). The streams are as follows:

1. Solidarity in Times of Crises: Labour process dynamics and socio-political orientations
   Jörg Flecker (University of Vienna), Annika Schönauer (Working Life Research Centre, FORBA, Vienna), István Grajczjár (King Sigismund College, Budapest)
2. Representation and Resistance: Trade unions, their comfort zones and the new and hybrid forms of representation
   Ursula Holtgrewe (ZSI-Centre for Social Innovation, Vienna), Bettina Haidinger (Working Life Research Centre FORBA, Vienna), Devi Sacchetto (University of Padova), Gabriella Alberti (University of Leeds)
3. Work and Employment in the Global South: Beyond established narratives and disciplines
   Anita Hammer (De Montfort University, Leicester), Adam Fishwick (De Montfort University, Leicester), Thomas Chambers (Oxford Brookes University)
4. Socio-ecological Transformations of the Labour ProcessThomas Barth (Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich), Ulrich Brand (University of Vienna), Georg Jochum (TU Munich), Beate Littig (Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna), Markus Wissen (Berlin School of Economics and Law)
5. Artifical Intelligence, Technology and Work
   Juan Grigera (CONICET, Universidad de Quilmes, Buenos Aires), Lydia Hughes (Ruskin College, Oxford), Phoebe Moore (University of Leicester), Jamie Woodcock (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford))
6. Grey Zones of Work and Employment in Comparative Perspective:
   The hybridisation of labour market statuses, individual careers and collective forms of representationChristian Azaïs (LISE, Laboratoire interdisciplinaire pour la sociologie économique, Cnam-CNRS, Paris), Annalisa Murgia (CERIC, Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change, University of Leeds)
   

Conference Submissions and Deadlines Abstracts

All abstracts are externally reviewed. Papers must not have been previously published or presented elsewhere. The abstract should contain clear information about the topic, how it is being investigated and the intended contribution to knowledge.

Abstracts relating to new empirical research should contain information about theoretical orientation, findings, methodology and the stage of the research (if appropriate). Abstracts of papers that are concerned solely with theoretical or conceptual matters will need to provide clear information on how they address and advance relevant debates. Abstracts should be between 350-500 words.

Key words should be given that indicate the focus of research and the methods used. Abstract submission is through the ILPC website (www.ilpc.org.uk). The deadline is 26 October 2018. Decisions of acceptance will be made by early December 2018.

PhD workshop

Doctoral students and early career researchers are especially welcome at the ILPC. The 2019 conference will include a pre-Conference workshop and dinner, which will provide an opportunity to learn more about the scope and development of labour process research. It will also provide an informal environment in which to share experiences and develop relationships. Doctoral papers are not streamed separately at the conference. You will be asked to identify whether you are a doctoral student on registration and whether you wish to attend the doctoral workshop.

The 2019 Organising Team

Jörg Flecker, Myriam Gaitsch, Dominik Klaus, Irene Rieder, Saskja Schindler, University of Vienna

Johanna Hofbauer, Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna) Bettina Haidinger, Conny Prentner, Annika Schönauer, Working Life Research Centre (FORBA)

Ursula Holtgrewe, ZSI – Centre for Social innovation GmbH

Contact: ilpc.admin@ilpc.org.uk

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