Pub Date : 2025-10-29DOI: 10.1177/09500170251380740
David Farrugia
This article develops concepts of moral economy to show how workers’ notions of justice and practices of social reciprocity contribute to the structural conditions and value relations of precarious service employment. The article draws on a project which interviewed 75 young workers employed in the retail, hospitality and call-centre industry, exploring the normative ideas and social relationships that shape how young workers’ negotiate their conditions. Data shows that young workers draw on lay definitions of fairness, entitlement and obligation, to make critical and reflexive moral evaluations of their workplaces, and form moral communities enacted through everyday social reciprocity. Lay moralities are constitutive of the social relations of labour and processes of exploitation in the service economy, because they determine the social legitimacy of working schedules and wages, and because they are the basis for young people’s reflexive evaluation of their position as workers.
{"title":"Lay Moralities of Young Workers and the Moral Economy of Service Labour","authors":"David Farrugia","doi":"10.1177/09500170251380740","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251380740","url":null,"abstract":"This article develops concepts of moral economy to show how workers’ notions of justice and practices of social reciprocity contribute to the structural conditions and value relations of precarious service employment. The article draws on a project which interviewed 75 young workers employed in the retail, hospitality and call-centre industry, exploring the normative ideas and social relationships that shape how young workers’ negotiate their conditions. Data shows that young workers draw on lay definitions of fairness, entitlement and obligation, to make critical and reflexive moral evaluations of their workplaces, and form moral communities enacted through everyday social reciprocity. Lay moralities are constitutive of the social relations of labour and processes of exploitation in the service economy, because they determine the social legitimacy of working schedules and wages, and because they are the basis for young people’s reflexive evaluation of their position as workers.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145397322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-18DOI: 10.1177/09500170251375724
Richard Gater
Youth unemployment is increasing and disproportionately affects marginalised working-class young men, a subgroup commonly associated with manual employment aspirations and protest masculinity. Despite the detrimental impact of youth unemployment on this demographic and recent research exploring their masculine identity, there remains a limited understanding of their current employment aspirations. Drawing on a qualitative study conducted in the South Wales Valleys, UK, this article seeks to fill the knowledge gap by examining the employment orientation of marginalised working-class young men. The findings reveal both continuity and change in the understanding of this subgroup’s employment aspirations. Continuity includes a protest masculine-related rejection of certain service sector work and an attraction to manual employment influenced by familial socialisation. Change is observed through an interest in non-manual work, which for some participants appears to stem from what is described as a rupturing process, or significant social influences that destabilise working-class masculine modes of being.
{"title":"Continuity and Change: The Employment Orientation of Contemporary Marginalised Working-Class Young Men","authors":"Richard Gater","doi":"10.1177/09500170251375724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251375724","url":null,"abstract":"Youth unemployment is increasing and disproportionately affects marginalised working-class young men, a subgroup commonly associated with manual employment aspirations and protest masculinity. Despite the detrimental impact of youth unemployment on this demographic and recent research exploring their masculine identity, there remains a limited understanding of their current employment aspirations. Drawing on a qualitative study conducted in the South Wales Valleys, UK, this article seeks to fill the knowledge gap by examining the employment orientation of marginalised working-class young men. The findings reveal both continuity and change in the understanding of this subgroup’s employment aspirations. Continuity includes a protest masculine-related rejection of certain service sector work and an attraction to manual employment influenced by familial socialisation. Change is observed through an interest in non-manual work, which for some participants appears to stem from what is described as a rupturing process, or significant social influences that destabilise working-class masculine modes of being.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145314514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-18DOI: 10.1177/09500170251375727
Devika Bahadur
{"title":"Joint Book Review AkyelkenNihanWomen, Work and Mobilities: The Case of Urban and Regional Contexts in TurkeyAbingdon: Routledge, 2024, £39.99 pbk, (ISBN: 9781032562988), 148 pp.BertoliniSoniaGoglioValentinaHofäckerDirkJob Insecurity and Life CoursesBristol: Bristol University Press, 2024, £27.99 ebk, (ISBN: 9781529208733), 208 pp.","authors":"Devika Bahadur","doi":"10.1177/09500170251375727","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251375727","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"352 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145314516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-16DOI: 10.1177/09500170251373035
Lauren Ryan, Brendan Churchill, Leah Ruppanner
Recent technological advances and globalised distribution of work have accelerated the rise of remote-first organisations where everyone works remotely, yet the effects of this approach on working parents remain underexplored. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 25 mothers and 16 fathers from 31 remote-first organisations, this study examines the gendered impact of standardised remote-first flexibility on work–family reconciliation. Findings show that remote-first work enhances location and schedule freedom, allowing parents to sustain a dual devotion to work and family. Fathers used this flexibility to increase engagement with domestic tasks and caregiving, while mothers focused on meeting work demands (in addition to caregiving responsibilities). The use of remote-first working arrangements increased employee trust and empathy among working parents, reducing flexibility stigma concerns. While fathers resisted tendencies to overwork, the remote-first model perpetuated the gendered flexibility paradox for mothers, leading to increased labour expansion and self-exploitation in both paid and unpaid work.
{"title":"The Gendered Flexibility Paradox and Remote-First Work: How Working Parents Reconcile Work and Care","authors":"Lauren Ryan, Brendan Churchill, Leah Ruppanner","doi":"10.1177/09500170251373035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251373035","url":null,"abstract":"Recent technological advances and globalised distribution of work have accelerated the rise of remote-first organisations where everyone works remotely, yet the effects of this approach on working parents remain underexplored. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 25 mothers and 16 fathers from 31 remote-first organisations, this study examines the gendered impact of standardised remote-first flexibility on work–family reconciliation. Findings show that remote-first work enhances location and schedule freedom, allowing parents to sustain a dual devotion to work and family. Fathers used this flexibility to increase engagement with domestic tasks and caregiving, while mothers focused on meeting work demands (in addition to caregiving responsibilities). The use of remote-first working arrangements increased employee trust and empathy among working parents, reducing flexibility stigma concerns. While fathers resisted tendencies to overwork, the remote-first model perpetuated the gendered flexibility paradox for mothers, leading to increased labour expansion and self-exploitation in both paid and unpaid work.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145295615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-07DOI: 10.1177/09500170251360175
Hannah Johnston, Nelly Slye
This article situates teletherapy platforms within the context of digital labour platforms. It explores commonalities including workers’ employment status, worker autonomy and platform control, user recruitment practices and working time flexibility to show how teletherapy platforms have adopted the platform business model to mental health care. Presenting a first-person account from Nelly, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and social worker based in a large city in the Northeastern United States, the article reveals how teletherapy platforms erode work quality and increase precarity. While Nelly’s experience ends in a successful unionisation campaign, it also warns of the innate tensions between startup culture and the conditions that foster quality mental health care.
{"title":"‘Get on Board or Get Off’: Nosediving Job Quality for Mental Health Providers in the Age of Platform Work","authors":"Hannah Johnston, Nelly Slye","doi":"10.1177/09500170251360175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251360175","url":null,"abstract":"This article situates teletherapy platforms within the context of digital labour platforms. It explores commonalities including workers’ employment status, worker autonomy and platform control, user recruitment practices and working time flexibility to show how teletherapy platforms have adopted the platform business model to mental health care. Presenting a first-person account from Nelly, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and social worker based in a large city in the Northeastern United States, the article reveals how teletherapy platforms erode work quality and increase precarity. While Nelly’s experience ends in a successful unionisation campaign, it also warns of the innate tensions between startup culture and the conditions that foster quality mental health care.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145241989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-04DOI: 10.1177/09500170251376252
Martí López-Andreu
{"title":"Book Review: Jan Drahokoupil and Kurt Vandaele (eds), A Modern Guide to Labour and the Platform Economy DrahokoupilJanVandaeleKurt (eds) A Modern Guide to Labour and the Platform EconomyCheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021, £146 hbk, (ISBN: 9781788975094), 384 pp.","authors":"Martí López-Andreu","doi":"10.1177/09500170251376252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251376252","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145246399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-04DOI: 10.1177/09500170251380736
Andrew Jenkins
{"title":"Book Review: Sonia Bertolini, Valentina Goglio and Dirk Hofäcker, Job Insecurity and Life Courses BertoliniSoniaGoglioValentinaHofäckerDirkJob Insecurity and Life CoursesBristol: Bristol University Press, 2024, £80$120 hbk, (ISBN: 9781529208726), 216 pp.","authors":"Andrew Jenkins","doi":"10.1177/09500170251380736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251380736","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145246394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-15DOI: 10.1177/09500170251366186
Ron Roberts, Niall Cullinane
This article considers how lean production changes the shopfloor learning experience of apprentices. Insights from labour process and communities of practice literature are used to interrogate the study. Evidence derives from apprentices’ experiences in a British car assembly plant across several decades. The study compares pre-lean apprentices’ experiences with those who learn under lean, considering how lean might reshape apprentices’ shopfloor interactions with the plant community of practice. It finds that lean appears unfavourable to apprentices’ integration into the community of practice by debilitating learning opportunities with mentors. The article concludes by theorising how inefficiency and waste may aid on-the-job learning for workplace apprentices.
{"title":"Shopfloor Apprentices under a Lean Labour Process: Insights from a British Car Plant","authors":"Ron Roberts, Niall Cullinane","doi":"10.1177/09500170251366186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251366186","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers how lean production changes the shopfloor learning experience of apprentices. Insights from labour process and communities of practice literature are used to interrogate the study. Evidence derives from apprentices’ experiences in a British car assembly plant across several decades. The study compares pre-lean apprentices’ experiences with those who learn under lean, considering how lean might reshape apprentices’ shopfloor interactions with the plant community of practice. It finds that lean appears unfavourable to apprentices’ integration into the community of practice by debilitating learning opportunities with mentors. The article concludes by theorising how inefficiency and waste may aid on-the-job learning for workplace apprentices.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145072657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-15DOI: 10.1177/09500170251366075
Sarah Jenkins
Adult social care in the UK is represented as a sector in ‘crisis’. Against this backdrop, the study examines how care workers construct work meanings. By examining a care cooperative, the article adapts, extends and amends Laaser and Karlsson’s work meanings framework. The study finds that meanings are a source of ongoing struggle because of the way care, as a gendered job, continues to be devalued by society. The article makes three contributions to the study of work meanings. First, it identifies how the organizational context plays a significant role in constraining and/or enabling meaning-making. Second, the broader socio-economic context outside of the workplace contributes to how workers seek to achieve dignity and respect by resisting the social attribution of care work as undervalued and low skilled. Finally, the study reveals how the ‘dark side’ of meaningful work is realized through the emotional intensity of relational care work.
{"title":"The Struggle for Meaning in Contemporary Care Work","authors":"Sarah Jenkins","doi":"10.1177/09500170251366075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251366075","url":null,"abstract":"Adult social care in the UK is represented as a sector in ‘crisis’. Against this backdrop, the study examines how care workers construct work meanings. By examining a care cooperative, the article adapts, extends and amends Laaser and Karlsson’s work meanings framework. The study finds that meanings are a source of ongoing struggle because of the way care, as a gendered job, continues to be devalued by society. The article makes three contributions to the study of work meanings. First, it identifies how the organizational context plays a significant role in constraining and/or enabling meaning-making. Second, the broader socio-economic context outside of the workplace contributes to how workers seek to achieve dignity and respect by resisting the social attribution of care work as undervalued and low skilled. Finally, the study reveals how the ‘dark side’ of meaningful work is realized through the emotional intensity of relational care work.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"63 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145072658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-09DOI: 10.1177/09500170251361814
Jonna M Blanck, Christian Brzinsky-Fay, Justin JW Powell
Institutional arrangements and social background characteristics significantly influence school-to-work transitions (STWT). This study examines cross-national differences in the risk of being not in education, employment, or training among young people with and without disabilities and investigates how institutional contexts influence the duration of ‘not in employment, education or training’ (NEET) status among individuals with disabilities across 31 European countries. Using longitudinal data from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), multilevel random slope regressions were employed with interactions between self-assessed ‘limitations in activities because of health problems’ and institutional indicators. The findings reveal that higher rates of vocational enrolment, tracking in special schools and increased incapacity spending effectively reduce NEET-length among individuals with disabilities. These results underscore the importance of institutional contexts in shaping STWT and highlight the need for more in-depth comparative research on the transitions of young people with disabilities.
{"title":"Special NEETs: Institutional Influences on School-to-Work Transitions of Young People with Disabilities in Europe","authors":"Jonna M Blanck, Christian Brzinsky-Fay, Justin JW Powell","doi":"10.1177/09500170251361814","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251361814","url":null,"abstract":"Institutional arrangements and social background characteristics significantly influence school-to-work transitions (STWT). This study examines cross-national differences in the risk of being not in education, employment, or training among young people with and without disabilities and investigates how institutional contexts influence the duration of ‘not in employment, education or training’ (NEET) status among individuals with disabilities across 31 European countries. Using longitudinal data from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), multilevel random slope regressions were employed with interactions between self-assessed ‘limitations in activities because of health problems’ and institutional indicators. The findings reveal that higher rates of vocational enrolment, tracking in special schools and increased incapacity spending effectively reduce NEET-length among individuals with disabilities. These results underscore the importance of institutional contexts in shaping STWT and highlight the need for more in-depth comparative research on the transitions of young people with disabilities.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"164 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145056705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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