The meeting took place at Avenue de Cortenbergh 30, 1040 Brussels from 10.30 to 17.00.

Over the past three and a half years, the Dynamics of Virtual Work COST Action has brought together leading scholars from a wide range of different academic disciplines in 31 European countries, plus several non-European ones, to map the state of the art on the impacts of digitisation on labour.

Working Group 4 of the Action has focussed on the policy impacts of these changes, interacting with a wide range of stakeholders from the European Commission, European Parliament, ILO, OECD, international trade union confederations, social partners, NGOs and other organisations. In particular, it has organised events and panel discussions on:

• The explosive growth of ‘crowdsourcing’
• The impact of user-generated content on creative work
• The rights of digital worker in online environments
• The measurement of digital work
• New forms of organisation and representation of digital workers
• Health, safety and wellbeing in digital work.

This event is designed to highlight the key findings, share them with a broader policy audience, and identify issues requiring further research and/or policy initiatives in the future.

The Meeting began at midday on September 14th and finished at midday on September 16th.

Over the past four years, this COST Action has organised a wide range of networking activities, including:

• Seven international conferences
• Three policy workshops
• Four PhD Training Schools
• Four expert workshops

It has also published a number of articles, working papers and special journal issues as well as launching a major book series, published by Palgrave Macmillan, with four titles already published and another dozen in the pipeline.

In the course of all these activities we have engaged with a large number of academic and policy stakeholders.

This was the final opportunity for members of the COST Action to meet together to make plans for future publications, networking events and joint research projects, and for those outside the Action to learn the results of its intensive four-year programme and discover the new research agendas that have been developed as a result.

The event took place at the offices of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) at 40 Rue Montoyer, Brussels. It was hosted by FEPS.

Designed to bring together key experts from statistics-producing and statistics-using bodies, the workshop focused on how to capture information in the official statistics on:

• new forms of work and employment enabled by digitisation
• employers’ use of digital labour including ‘crowdsourcing’
• online platforms that manage and co-ordinate work in the ‘sharing economy’

• Pamela Meil (ISF, Germany) presented the work of Working Group 4 of the COST Action.
• Elva Bova (FEPS) presented the work of the FEPS/UNI-Europa Digital Footprint Project being carried out in association with the University of Hertfordshire.

Formal presentations of relevant surveys and statistics were then made by:

• Greet Vermeylen (Eurofound)
• Janine Berg (ILO)
• Simon Joyce (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
• Peter Nielsen (Statistics Denmark)
• David Gierten (OECD)
• Steven Dhondt (TNO, Netherlands)
• Ilaria Masselli (Centre for European Policy Studies)

The meeting was chaired by Ursula Huws (University of Hertfordshire, UK).

On 21st-22nd March all four Working Groups met in a combination of parallel and plenary sessions. The plenary sessions focused on the sharing economy, followed by a workshop.

Topic: Sharing Economy

There were two sessions on the sharing economy.

The first focused on the extent of the sharing economy, its regulation and the question: ‘Sharing economy: towards shared rules?’

The second addressed the question: ‘How can alternative production and welfare be autonomously financed? and explored alternative finance models.

The Workshop, which was jointly organised by Working Groups 2 and 3, was held on 22nd-23rd March.

Topic: The passions of capitalism: Subjectivity in production and the production of subjectivity in contemporary capitalism 

The last few decades have seen an unprecedented mobilisation of life itself into the accumulation process. Identity, subjectivity, self, emotions, personality, passion, sexuality, the life-world, and the body have all become forces of production for capitalism. This trend has been facilitated very prominently by digital technology. Through various practices, technologies and organisational innovations – from surveillance to interactivity, from mobile devices to location-based applications, and from crowdfunding and peer-production – digital technologies have allowed forces of production located mostly outside of the traditional spaces of production, and entailing the very soul and body of individuals – such as interpersonal communication – to be mobilised and subsumed by capitalism.

These developments have repercussions, both for our analysis of contemporary capitalism and in particular the progressive monetisation and commodification of all aspects of personal life, and for our analysis of virtual workers. They also raise questions of how collective identities and social relations (in work – trade unions and workers’ organisations; outside paid employment – families, households, social groups, civic life) may be reshaped and re-enacted if individualised employment and social relations become increasingly dominant.  Lastly, they also raise the question of spaces where alternative subjectivities may emerge.

In this workshop, we will discuss these developments, and in particular the intersection of production and reproduction, capitalism and subjectivity, skills and passions, work-tasks and persona.  The workshop will be focussed on the following questions:

• How is life mobilised?
• How are passionate subjects formed?
• How, if it all, does this mark a departure from previous modes of labour commodification and exploitation?
• How are class, gender, ethnic, and other subjectivities mobilised in particular empirical settings?
• How are collective and social identities affected?  What does this imply for labour organisation, trade unionism and capital-labour relations?

Register to attend book launch
More about the book series

To purchase books – special half price offer

Copies of the titles in the series will be available for sale at the event at a specially discounted rate – 50% of the cover price. However for technical reasons, credit card sales cannot be processed and all purchases must be made in cash.

The book series
Technological change has transformed where people work, when, how and with whom. Digitisation of information has altered labour processes out of all recognition whilst telecommunications have enabled jobs to be relocated globally. ICTs have also enabled the creation of entirely new types of ‘digital’ or ‘virtual’ labour, both paid and unpaid, shifting the borderline between ‘play’ and ‘work’ and creating new types of unpaid labour connected with the consumption and co-creation of goods and services.

Aspects of these changes have been studied separately by many different academic experts however up till now a cohesive overarching analytical framework has been lacking. Drawing on a major, high-profile COST Action Dynamics of Virtual Work, this series will bring together leading international experts from a wide range of disciplines including political economy, labour sociology, economic geography, communications studies, technology, gender studies, social psychology, organisation studies, industrial relations and development studies to explore the transformation of work and labour in the Internet Age. The series will allow researchers to speak across disciplinary boundaries, national borders, theoretical and political vocabularies, and different languages to understand and make sense of contemporary transformations in work and social life more broadly.

The first two volumes in the series are already published, with more in the pipeline.

Already Published

Digital Labour and Prosumer Capitalism – edited by Olivier Frayssé and Mathieu O’Neil

Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age – edited by Eran Fisher and Christian Fuchs

Coming Soon

Virtual Workers and the Global Labour Market – edited by Juliet Webster and Keith Randle

Aesthetic Labour: Beauty Politics in Neoliberalism – edited by Ana-Sofia Elias, Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff

Space, Place and Global Digital Work – edited by Jörg Flecker

The Policy Implications of Virtual Work – edited by Pamela Meil and Vassil Kirov

The Reinvention of Work – by Dominique Méda and Patricia Vendramin

Language Put to Work – by Enda Brophy

Group photo
Report
Programme

The event was organised by the Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO), based in Zagreb, Croatia.

Course description

Historically, public excitement about new technologies goes through a repetitive cycle. Innovation requires substantial financial support in the form of government and/or venture capital investments. Breakthroughs require large numbers of users and consumers which only a handful of companies manage to obtain. Ideas about novelty and social impact abound in this stage. Once established, companies secure large financial returns and start closing-down innovation in order to establish control and dominance. At that point, national and transnational policy objectives change in order to curtail monopolistic tendencies. The cycle starts over again. The global Internet is in a similar cycle at this point in time. As excitement about the Web 2.0 dwindled down, issues such as privacy, surveillance and commercialisation of online data have emerged to the surface. What was once considered a technological breakthrough, now reveals company policies of cost-reduction by creating globally distributed networks of low-paid and unpaid digital work.

Aim

The aim of this international, multi-disciplinary training school/course for PhD students and early-career researchers ws to bring together perspectives from critical theory, media studies, science and technology studies (STS), design studies, gender studies, as well as policy analysis in order to discuss how digital technologies relate to work, work-life balance and how societies change accordingly. From a critical perspective technologies are used to establish dominance, value extraction, control and perpetuation of the capitalist system through alienated work and shifting of the work-life balance. From a media studies perspective communication technologies enable social and cultural environments that alter media content production, distribution and consumption patterns. STS perspective takes that all technologies are used and interpreted differently, while sometimes also exhibiting characteristics of social agency in various socio-material configurations. From a design perspective it is a challenge to create technologies that will meet and satisfy the constantly changing needs and desires of users. Gender perspective questions how technologies can perpetuate patriarchal structures and contribute to gender digital divide, while also offering emancipatory possibilities. Furthermore, digital technologies present a challenge for policy makers since they develop at a faster rate than national, regional, and supranational (e.g. EU) legislative systems.

This training school/course looked beyond technological, and other, determinisms and instead focuses on technology, first, as a broader organizational, institutional, cultural, political and economic context in which technical systems are embedded; and second, as a concrete socio-technical system with which humans relate. We aim to examine how these contexts shape digital technologies and work, and also how digital technologies are embedded and how they alter the contexts, practices and routines of human work and work-life balance. We are interested in digital technologies and infrastructures, innovation and value creation, peer production, crowdsourcing, creative industries and different methods of studying and regulating these phenomena.

Training school/course directors

• Paško Bilić, Institute for Development and International Relations, Croatia
• Jaka Primorac, Institute for Development and International Relations, Croatia
• Eran Fisher, Open University, Israel
• Pamela Meil, ISF, Munich, Germany
• Bjarki Valtysson, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Juliet Webster, Open University of Catalonia, Spain

Format

The training school/course is organised as a combination of lectures, students’ presentations and discussions. Students will be asked to submit their papers (approx. 15 pages) beforehand and present them during the course in order to receive extensive feedback from the course faculty and other participants.

The language of instruction is English.

Applicants

This training school/course is intended for PhD students and early stage researchers (up to 8 years from finishing their PhD) who will present (parts) of their PhD or other research projects. Contributions can be either theoretical or empirical.

Applicants should have a background in social sciences and humanities or technical sciences with interest in social phenomena. The course is open to approx. 20 international trainees.

Applicants are asked to submit their CV (max. 2 pages), an abstract of their PhD project (max. 2 pages) and the filled-in application form to costis1202@herts.ac.uk
The deadline for applications is 15 January, 2016

Students from COST member countries have the possibility to receive a flat rate grant.

Local organiser

Institute for Development and International Relations

Paško Bilić and Jaka Primorac

Lj. F. Vukotinovića 2/II

1000 Zagreb, Croatia

some pictures from the event pictures from RMIT Barcelona workshop

The event will be held at the RMIT Europe Centre in Barcelona, Minerva 2 08006 Barcelona, Spain.

The aim of the symposium is to address the new types of labour emerging around mobile media and gaming areas. Phenomena such as Let’s Play (shared videos of people playing games) and mobile lifestyle apps (as part of the quantified self) represent new forms of play and labour within everyday life. This symposium will draw from experts around digital methods and theories to outline some new ways for understanding these phenomenona.

Some of the questions that will be addressed include:

• What are some of the socio-cultural and creative ways mobile phone users are shaping apps through existing work and leisure practices?
• How are mobile media apps like mindfulness quantifying a user’s life? And how can users resist these forms of normalisations?
• How are emergent game player industries like Let’s Play (shared videos of playing) shaping relationships and representations of play, labour and playbour? How does this reshape conceptualisations between players and spectatorship?

Some pictures from the event:  Pictures from the Dynamics of Virtual Work Summer

This COST Training School also constituted the 5th Marie Jahoda Summer School of Sociology to be held at the University of Vienna.The event was therefore a close co-operation between the University and the COST Action.

Two interrelated processes have transformed work and labour on a global scale: The wider reach of multinational corporations and global value chains and the digitisation of information and the advances of telecommunications and the Internet. They have contributed to new dynamics of job relocation and shifting international divisions of labour, new forms of cooperation over distance and new opportunities to integrate geographically distributed work processes. These changes have also brought forth entirely new types of ‘digital’ or ‘virtual’ labour, both paid and unpaid. The summer school will explore recent developments of digital work and labour within corporations, along global value chains and over the Internet. It will devote special attention to the ways in which people experience new forms of work and labour and to their individual and collective reactions.

Focusing on the global digital workplace, the Marie Jahoda Summer School of Sociology will provide an academic frame for a deeper and interdisciplinary approach to these complex processes. An understanding will be developed of how changes in work take place as new forms of virtual labour emerge and what their implications are for work organization, workers identities and workers’ agency. Account will be taken of the ways in which work and labour are being transformed in the context of global economic and technical dynamics and in relation to their local embeddedness. This may include the shifting boundaries between paid and unpaid work and between ‘work’ and ‘play’.

During the Summer-School the participants have to present a research paper (about 20 pages) and subsequently have the chance to discuss it with the audience. Each day of the summer school is devoted to a core topic and is led by an experienced and distinguished scientist. Additionally, two keynote speeches by renowned researchers and social events in the historic city of Vienna are planned.

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Photo courtesy of the University of Vienna.

Pictures  Presentations  Programme  Accommodation  Location  Local transport in Peniche  Venue  Setting

Sponsored by APDSI, the Portuguese Association for promoting the Information Society, APSIOT, the Portuguese Association of Sociology of Industry, Organisations and Work and APS, the Portuguese Association of Sociology.