Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the Special Streams for the 41st ILPC, 12-14th April 2023, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland:

1 Financialization of capitalism, labour, agribusiness and (neo)extractivism: from globalized value chains to digitalization
2 Labour and/as value in the context of global crisis: ethnographic insights
3 Labour Mobility Regimes
4 Braverman and beyond – 50 years of labour process theory
5 Care Work in Global Context(s): Theme A: – COVID and the Boundaries Around Care Work; Theme B: -Fair and Decent Care Work in the Global Economy

The full call for special streams is available at the ILPC website: https://www.ilpc.org.uk/ILPC-2023/Streams
We invite submissions to the special streams and to the general conference by October 31st 2022. You can submit your abstract using the submission button on the website: https://www.ilpc.org.uk/

We are looking forward to either seeing you in Glasgow, or remotely through our hybrid conference setting.

Best wishes, 
The ILPC Glasgow organising team

CALL FOR PROPOSALS 

We invite graduate students and post-doctoral researchers to apply to join our mini-conference and paper development workshop on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Expertise in Racialized Organizations, at Columbia University on March 16-17, 2023. Financial support for travel and housing will be provided. See the attached CFP for more information. Please submit paper proposals in .docx or .pdf format, by November 1, 2022 at the following link:

https://tinyurl.com/deiconferencepdw

The Third Global Carework Summit

“Carework in uncertain times: convergences and divergences around the world.”

June 7-9, 2023

University of Costa Rica, Costa Rica

The Carework Network is organizing a bilingual (Spanish and English) three-day conference to bring together carework researchers, scholars and stakeholders, from across the globe. Submissions are now open.

We are living in times of uncertainty along multiple, intersecting dimensions: social, economic, political, and ecological. This has long been evident in Latin America and other regions in the global south. The COVID-19 pandemic and its reverberating shocks have both deepened uncertainty and made it more visible around the world.

How does uncertainty shape the understanding and social organization of carework? How does putting carework at the center help us imagine sustainable futures where care is a collective responsibility?

What are the convergences in how carework is understood and organized across the globe? What are the divergences, given varied capacities, cultures, histories and experiences in different countries and regions?

We invite submissions that move beyond binaries of paid and unpaid care, probe intersections of individuals, family, community, market and state, and analyze the interlocking inequalities of gender, class, race and migration. We encourage analyses of convergences and divergences in the understanding and social organization of carework across regions. We also welcome approaches that analyze a specific sectoral or geographic context.

We welcome submissions in English or Spanish, from all academic disciplines, advocacy or non-profit organizations, and public and private sector organizations. We also encourage participation by undergraduate and graduate students.

All submissions should include title, name, contact information for author(s), institutional affiliation and status (student, faculty, etc). All submissions should include objectives or research questions; methodology, geographical or sectoral context, main findings and conclusions.

How to submit:

Authors and organizers should submit a proposal for a paper, panel or public dialogue to submissions@careworknetworkresponds.com (by e-mail only) no later than October 1, 2022. If selected, you will be notified in December and expected to submit a full paper by April 1, 2023.

We welcome proposals for the following submission types:

• Individual paper proposals should include an extended abstract of 1,000 words.
• Fully constituted panel proposals should describe the topic and relationship between papers in no more than 1,000 words and provide 500 word abstracts for each paper. Panels should have 3-5 papers. We encourage panels that bring together participants from different institutions, countries and regions. We particularly encourage and will give priority to panels that include participants from the global South and North instead of from just one context.
• Public dialogue proposals will communicate research findings and arguments in a concise manner that is suitable to a nonacademic audience. These dialogues will take the form of 5 minute presentations followed by ample discussion and serve as a bridge among scholars, policy makers, stakeholders, and the broader public. Proposals should include an abstract of 500 words.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• The impact of global health crises on carework
• How economic and political uncertainties shape carework through privatization outsourcing, or informalization by the state
• How neoliberal policies individualize risk
• The longstanding need for more state responsibility for carework
• How the erosion of carework conditions has gendered, racialized and classed implications
• Migrants’ transnational carework
• Gendered divisions of care provision in families and communities
• How to defamilize care to achieve gender equality through new visions of fatherhood, community support, and state responsibility
• Labor organizing to improve conditions of care work
• How environmental crises impact the conditions of care work. And how quality carework might create a more sustainable world.

Call for Contributors 

Research Handbook on the Sociology of Work 

We are seeking contributions to a new Research Handbook on the Sociology of Work to be published with Edward Elgar. The book aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the latest research in the sociology of work and have a strong focus on current and emerging issues. It is structured under the following four sections: (1) Changing Context and Forms of Work; (2) Key Actors and Dimensions of Work; (4) Inequalities and Divisions at Work; (4) Emerging Themes and Issues in Work. Each chapter will provide an overview of the most important sociological concepts and research in a particular area as well as provide some indication of a research agenda for the future.  

If you would like to suggest a contribution, or simply want to know a bit more, please contact any one of the four editors: Chris Rees – chris.rees@rhul.ac.uk; Ödül Bozkurt – o.bozkurt@sussex.ac.uk; Stephanie Limoncelli – stephanie.limoncelli@lmu.edu; Jonathan Preminger – premingerj@cardiff.ac.uk 

For further information, please see this link: Research Handbook on the Sociology of Work 

Dear colleagues, 

We invite you to submit your abstracts for the session “The Toolkit of Emerging Autocrats” (the abstract is below) to present at the International Sociological Association’s XX World Congress of Sociology. The conference will take place in Melbourne, Australia, from June 25 to July 1, 2023. 

Abstract 

How are the emerging autocrats grabbing and maintaining power across the world? Many aspiring autocrats share strategies and tools to undermine democratic processes. These strategies include changing political institutions, rewriting constitutions, silencing opposition, spreading misinformation, and crafting divisions by instigating racism, nativism, and nationalism. Through a global and comparative lens, the session panelists will examine the tools, conditions, and mechanisms that allow strongmen to successfully undermine democratic traditions and constrain civil rights (https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2023/assoc/sessions/index.cgi?username=18543&password=347280). 

Please submit your 300-word abstracts by September 15, 2022, at 

https://www.isa-sociology.org/en

This will be the American Sociological Association session at the International Sociological Association (ISA) conference. The session is organized by Cecilia Menjívar (ASA president) and Deisy Del Real (ASA delegate to ISA). Please direct your questions to (deisydel@usc.edu). 

Organizational Sociology for the hybrid ISA World Congress of Sociology
2023, Melbourne, Australia, June 25-July 1, 2023.

Deadline for submission of abstracts (max. 300 words) is September 30, 2022.

We are delighted to invite you to submit your abstracts for the ISA World Congress of Sociology 2023. The ISA World Congress of Sociology of the International Sociological Association offers a unique forum to discuss current developments with a global scholarship.

The Research Committee on Sociology of Organizations (RC17) calls for submissions related to the following 13 topics. All sessions accept submissions in English, many also in French and Spanish. The conference will take place in a hybrid format, meaning that you can choose to either participate in person on site or digitally.

• Accountability and Sustainable Transitions: Toward an Integrated Analysis of Sociopolitical and Ecological Risks
  organized by Steven WOLF, Nadine ARNOLD, Rolf LIDSKOG, & Jens ZINN
• Crisis and State Capacities
  organized by Alan SCOTT, & Stephanie ALENDA,
• Going Beyond Organisational Professionalism. Exploring the Role of Work Settings for Professionals in the Digitalised Era
  organized by Lara MAESTRIPIERI, & Thiago PIMENTEL
• Historical Sociology of Organizations
  organized by Robert VAN KRIEKEN, & Stewart CLEGG
• How Organizations Make People: Identities, Subjectivities, and Agencies
  organized by Leopold RINGEL, & Kathia SERRANO VELARDE
• Meta-Organizations, Meta-Organizing and Grand Challenges
  organized by Heloise BERKOWITZ, Martine GADILLE, & José Augusto LACERDA
• (Meta)Theorizing in Organizational Sociology
  organized by Thiago PIMENTEL, & Robert JUNGMANN
• More Than a Buzzword: Wellbeing in Uniformed Organizations
  organized by Jamie FERRILL
• Organising Precarity and Inequality in the Gig Economy
  organized by Norbert EBERT, & Selvaraj VELAYUTHAM
• Organizational Networks: Innovation and Learning in Response of Organizational Challenges
  organized by Adriana FASSIO, & Maria Gabriela RUTTY
• Organizations and Digital Innovation
  organized by Cornelia FEDTKE, Marco JÖSTINGMEIER, & Anna SKRIPCHENKO
• Organizing through Standards and Value Hierarchies
  organized by Allison LOCONTO, & Nadine ARNOLD
• Whistleblowing and Social Justice
  organized by Tina UYS

More information under:
https://organizational-sociology.com/call-for-abstracts-isa-world-congress-of-sociology-2023

EMPLOYABILITY

Call for Papers to be Published in Research in the Sociology of Work
Rick Delbridge, Markus Helfen, Andi Pekarek, and Gretchen Purser, editors

Employability has become an increasingly widespread concept both in management and policy,
reflecting significant transformations in the world of work. Employability refers to a broad and
amorphous collection of personal characteristics that purportedly make someone more able to
gain and maintain employment. It points beyond hard skills to things like attitude, flexibility,
emotional intelligence, resilience, initiative, and character. Framed as an attribute of a person,
individuals are thus lauded as “employable” or dismissed as “unemployable.” This rhetoric of
employability is intensely individualizing, shifting attention away from labor market structures
and dynamics and towards one’s self and personal capabilities and shortcomings. Rarely asking
the question of what “employability” may mean for employing organizations, employability
works hand in hand with the neoliberal doctrine on individual responsibility and
commodification, legitimating unemployment and labor market marginalization. Thus
responsibility – for skills development and employment opportunities – falls to individuals not
employers and the state.
Yet, for the individual worker, employability itself appears as a moving target and a never secure
status. Employability is therefore deemed to be something one must constantly pursue,
particularly given the precarious character of work and the erosion of long-term employment
relationships. For those in employment, the aggressive promotion and unending pursuit of
employability have exacerbated all those unremunerated but time-consuming activities that do
not count as work but are required to sell oneself to an employer and/or keep a toehold in the
labor market: networking, training, resume writing, character building, skill acquiring.
For those out of employment, employability animates a labor market policy in which all kinds of
state and nonprofit programs and street-level bureaucrats focus on helping individuals navigate

and maximize their chances in the labor market including “reprogramming” those deemed “hard-
to-employ”. The individualizing discourse of employability extends to coping with job loss and

the encouragement to be resilient and resourceful. Employability has similarly come to shape
schooling, vocational training, and higher education policy, with universities and schools
increasingly offering “career readiness” certification and subordinating academic aspirations to
hypothetical employer demands for ever-more “employable” job candidates.

This special issue of Research in the Sociology of Work invites papers that explore all aspects of
employability. We welcome both empirical and conceptual papers. Articles may address any of a
wide range of topics and themes, including but not limited to the following:
! Employability programs
! Employability and labor market policy
! The politics of employability
! Employability and educational practices and policies
! The cultural rhetoric of employability
! The “unemployable”
! Employability and disability
! Employability, inclusivity and inequality
! Gender, race, and employability
! Employability and identity
! Institutions of employability
! Unions and employability
! Employability in operation: HRM policy and practice
! Employment management work
! Employers and employability: Regulation and responsibilities
! Working time and employability investments

Submissions may be made at any time up until November 30, 2022. Please submit your
manuscript to RSWEditors@gmail.com and include “Employability” in the subject line.

Essentiality of Work

Call for Papers to be Published in Research in the Sociology of Work

Rick Delbridge, Markus Helfen, Andi Pekarek and Gretchen Purser, editors

The Covid pandemic has had a variety of significant consequences for work, workers and
workplaces, the lasting effects of which are still to be determined. One of the more interesting
and complex of these has been the invocation of notions of essentiality. For example,
policymakers and the media have made wide reference to ‘essential work’ and ‘essential
workers’, shaping the ways in which governments have sought to respond to the crisis. Whether
work is essential or not has been (re-)discovered as an important question in public and
academic debate during periods of societal disruption, in this case caused by Covid, but also
important during earlier periods of crisis.

Such questions reveal the social character of work – and the socially constructed discourses that
shape and inform the nature of work, the experiences of workers and the wider perceptions of
these – in consequential ways. This rediscovery of essentiality alludes to the diverging societal
relevance attached to various types of work, but also reminds us of the questions of valuation
and valorization of different activities as work. What has been exposed is the jarring disconnect
between those whose roles have central significance to the functioning of society and everyday
life and the ‘value’ that society places upon their work. While essential work is often invisible
and forgotten in normal times, deemed to be subject to replacement and automation in polarized
labour markets and taking place in locations and sites distant from sanitized office spaces,
during periods of crisis those activities come to the fore. Unfortunately, the pay, status and
working conditions of many of those delivering essential work – including care work – are
inferior compared to other jobs and occupations. Indeed, much of this essential work is
undertaken by those suffering the greatest societal and economic disadvantages, including
women and immigrants.

There are deeper considerations that are also brought to the surface when contemplating the
meaning of essential work and workers, and the dimensions of the essentiality of work. These
discussions raise considerations about the centrality of the work experience in modern life for
those working and raise new questions about the essence of work and its place in contemporary
society.

This issue of Research in the Sociology of Work seeks to shed new light on both the enduring
and newly emerging questions concerning the essentiality (or non-essentiality) of work by
publishing papers engaging with theoretical and empirical aspects of these questions. For
example, we are interested in understanding the perceptions and experiences of those labelled
‘essential workers’ during and after the Covid-19 crisis, and in comparative explorations in
the experiences of essential workers during other periods (e.g. the global financial crisis of
2007-2008) and across different geographies. We also encourage submissions that examine whether and how workers and their allies (e.g. unions) can mobilize positive public sentiment
towards essential work in campaigns for better pay and working conditions. Further, we are
interested in reflections on how government policies respond to the need for essential work to
be maintained and any legacies there may be in the future. We also welcome papers that
explore the methodological issues in how to research the essentiality of work and deeper
philosophical considerations of the meanings and consequences of ‘essential work’. In
exploring the concept of essentiality in its varieties, we invite contributions that seek to
expand the analytical potential of studying work from the bottom-up.

Articles can address any of a wide range of topics and themes, including but not limited to the
following:
• Essential work in various sectors and industries such as care work, hospitals, transport,
and retail
• “Non-essential” work and workers
• Precarity, inequality, and essentiality
• Reproductive and care work
• Institutions and the boundaries of (non)essential work
• Valuation and valorization of essentiality of work and workers
• Discourses of essential work and essential workers
• Media portrayals of essential work
• Futures of essential work, pay, automation and skills
• Essential work in the context of the climate crisis
• Spaces and places of essentiality, including remote work
Submissions may be made at any time up until the extended deadline of August 31, 2022. Please
submit your manuscript to RSWEditors@gmail.com and include Essentiality in the subject line.