Soziologie

Lecture by Verlia Pulignano on „The Politics of Unpaid Labour" (RTG 2951 Lecture Series)

 As part of the Lecture Series of the DFG Research Training Group “Cross-Border Labor Markets: Transnational market makers, infrastructures, institutions” (RTG2951), Valeria Pulignano (University of Leuven) gives a lecture based on her new book „The Politics of Unpaid Labour – How the study of unpaid labour can help address inequality in precarious work“, that she wrote with Markieta Domecka (University of Roehampton).

The Politics of Unpaid Labour offers a new framework for understanding how inequality is produced and sustained within precarious work. It defines unpaid labour as the time and effort people devote to work-related tasks for which they are not paid or are underpaid and shows how this labour is central to contemporary forms of precarity. Situating unpaid labour within labour market reforms, shifting welfare regimes, and digitalisation, the book reveals how everyday work practices are tied to broader political and economic transformations.
Drawing on comparative research in creative industries, residential care, and online freelancing across eight European countries, the book advances three core theoretical contributions. First, it clarifies how the line between employment and self-employment shapes the meaning and distribution of unpaid labour. Second, it shows how unpaid labour is both structured by class and actively reproduces class inequalities through changing institutional arrangements. Third, it argues for reimagining labour markets to recognise and support diverse human capabilities rather than reinforcing narrow, extractive labour norms.

The book invites us to see unpaid labour not as an individual burden, but as a key political site where the future of work - and of inequality - is being shaped.

The book is Open access.

The lecture will take place on January 26, between 14:30 and 16:00, at the Horst-Schimanski-Saal, Centre for Global Cooperation Research, Schifferstraße 44, Duisburg, as well as online.