The "Precarious Labour" Working Group will participate in the Fifth ELHN Conference with thematic sessions. We invite members of the Working Group, and all other interested colleagues, to come up with paper and session proposals under the following open call:

Open Call for Proposals – Deadline: September 1, 2023

We hope to receive session and paper proposals on the history of precarious labour from all over the world. We encourage the participation of researchers at all stages of their work life as well as researchers without institutional affiliation, and we welcome researchers anchored in various disciplines and investigating different historical periods.

The Working Group Precarious Labour explores a broad range of themes and concepts on precarity. Guiding research questions might address but are not limited to some of the following problems:

• First, the working group is interested in conceptual debates on precarity. How can the concept of precarious labour prove useful as a historical category? What has been perceived as precarious labour in different regions around the world and how have perceptions of precarity changed over time? What has been, in the Global South and the Global North, the normative employment standard against which precarious labour falls back? Can we benefit from understanding precarity as processes and social relations rather than a categorization?
• Second, the working group is interested in examining social groups that work under precarious conditions. In which economic sectors has precarious labour been most prevalent? How do different social factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, migration, age, education, and language, relate to precarity?
• Third, the working group is interested in studying the workers’ manifold responses within and outside workplaces to precarious labour and precarious conditions. What kind of collective responses from workers, both within and beyond traditional trade union frameworks, have emerged in order to fight precarious labour? What is the relationship between precarity and organized or non-organized labour? How do formal and informal collective actions interact?

Information on the Working Group Precarious Labour can be found here.

Meeting of the Working Group Precarious Labour

All scholars with an interest in precarious labour history around the world are invited to join a discussion that will be held during the ELHC 2024 about ideas and themes for future research and collaboration within and beyond the Working Group.

How to submit proposals

Please send an abstract (max 300 words) and a short bio (max 100 words, including contact details and an indication of whether you plan to participate onsite or online) to the WG coordinators, by September 1, 2023.

If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact the coordinators:

• Nina Trige Andersen, nina.trige.andersen[at]gmail.com
• María Fernanda Arellanes, maria.fernanda.arellanes[at]gmail.com
• Rosa Kösters, rosa.kosters[at]iisg.nl
• Sibylle Marti, sibylle.marti[at]unibe.ch

We will try to respond to these proposals before the end of October 2023. If accepted, the deadline for the conference paper is May 17, 2024.

Time and Location

The Fifth Conference of the European Labour History Network (ELHN) will take place from 11 to 13 June 2024 at Uppsala University and in a hybrid setting. Local organizer: Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek | Swedish Labour Movement’s Archives and Library

More info on the upcoming conference can be found here