Work across Europe

Together with Centre for Modern European Studies our research group hosted a workshop in Edinburg called "Work across Europe". In the workshop we discussed changes in working life and for different kinds of workers in Europe. 

The labor market plays a significant role organizing the everyday life of European people as well as national political agendas. With challenges coming from an increasingly internationally distributed production, major pressure is put on European countries to reshape their internal labor markets as well as their role in the wider EU system. 

While these transformations are ongoing and closely knit together with the current economic crisis, they also pose questions for the current and future working population on how to organize meaningful working lives, family relations, future careers, retirement plans.

Even though this pressure is part of a wider economic globalization, it is taking place in national settings with diverse and historically constructed labor markets, labor unions and occupational patterns. In these different settings, actions and struggles are taking place over central rights and positions, and a range of professions are undergoing transformations as their conditions change.