Coordinamento:
Andrea Bellini
Sapienza Università di Roma
andrea.bellini@uniroma1.it
Lara Maestripieri
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
lara.maestripieri@uab.cat
Call for papers
In the past five decades, the economic structure of society has undergone a profound transformation, transitioning into a post-industrial era where knowledge plays a crucial role as a production factor. Workers with expertise, commonly known as “experts”, have become key agents of economic development. However, labour market deregulation and outsourcing processes have pushed these workers into precarious forms of employment and self-employment. Moreover, globalisation has facilitated the transnational mobility of workers, creating conditions for a new international division of labour. Concurrently, digitalisation has improved work processes in terms of enhanced efficiency and reduced costs while revolutionising the ways knowledge is produced and disseminated. Together, these processes have expanded the number of expert occupations and professional groups but have made them increasingly differentiated, giving rise to new forms of inequality and instances of marginalisation.
This session aims to solicit theoretical and empirical contributions that examine expert occupations and professional groups experiencing precarious work situations and intense competition. Invited research may employ single or multiple case studies or comparative analyses. We particularly encourage contributions that align with the following topics:
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Professionalisation processes versus counter-professionalisation approaches in expert labour.
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Emerging forms of professionalism that lead to systems of inequality driven by market forces, relying on relational and reputational mechanisms.
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Professionalism as a discursive practice used to (re)define professional boundaries.
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Deregulation as a regulatory model intended to increase accessibility and competition in professional labour markets, despite resulting in rising inequalities.
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Differentiation patterns based on employment and working conditions, intersecting with other sources of inequality such as age, gender, ethnicity, and class.