Transformation of Work
Description
- WG1 Leader: Prof Joanna Wawrzyniak
- WG1 Co-Leader: Prof Stefan Berger
Banner: Rob Bogaerts / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Economic restructuring is intertwined with new (de)regulatory regimes and a neoliberal politics that entail a distinct framing of temporality and the meaning of the past. These developments have sometimes shut down traditions of working-class solidarity while facilitating populist mobilisation with new (and old) kinds of memory politics. The reverberations of these trends are felt locally and nationally and can be fruitfully compared across a wide variety of cases.
WG1: Transformation of Work considers a comparative and transnational
understanding of the local manifestations of socio-economic transformation as an
indispensable underpinning to the Action. It aims to develop slow memory concepts in relation to socio-economic analysis by exploring how remembrance practices can make visible economic transitions that are experienced unevenly and gradually. Methodological approaches to economic modelling and trends are brought into dialogue with oral history techniques to develop new modes of narrating and visualising socio-economic change.
The key stakeholders here are trade unions and community organisations, and this theme also seeks to build a platform with post-industrial communities to articulate, maintain and understand their past as a critical continuity. This will enable memory politics, so often the source of problems and tension, to become a force for constructive engagement and policy action. The transnational perspective will be maximised to share best practices, track labour markets and encourage the de-insularisation of perspectives.