{"title":"The Intensification–Extensification Dynamic: Hybrid Work and Digital Connectivity","authors":"Abigail Marks, Gustav Bösehans, Oliver Mallett","doi":"10.1177/09500170261424133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170261424133","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how remote and hybrid work reshape the spatio-temporal organisation of labour through the dynamics of intensification and extensification. Drawing on three waves of survey data, each with over 1000 participants during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside longitudinal interviews with 90 participants, the analysis shows that information and communication technology (ICT)-driven intensification undermines wellbeing by generating work–life conflict. Extensification – the temporal, spatial and psychological diffusion of work – both enables and is reinforced by intensification. Gendered differences emerge, especially for women with care roles who experience greater cumulative burdens once hybrid work becomes established. Material resources, such as housing and digital infrastructure, can also stratify experiences. The article concludes that ICT-enabled hybrid work produces a new spatio-temporal regime in which intensification and extensification interact to deepen inequalities.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147684593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Role of Settlement Intentions (Un-)Certainty in the Labour Market Integration of Ukrainian Refugees in Germany","authors":"Davit Adunts, Kseniia Gatskova, Yuliya Kosyakova, Silvia Schwanhäuser","doi":"10.1177/09500170261425857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170261425857","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how (un-)certainty in settlement intentions affects the socio-economic integration of Ukrainian refugees in Germany, using longitudinal data from the IAB-BiB/FReDA-BAMF-SOEP survey. Applying an instrumental variable approach, we estimate the effects of permanent, temporary, and uncertain settlement intentions on employment, employment aspirations, and host-country language proficiency. Findings show that settlement intention uncertainty hinders integration outcomes – most notably German language acquisition – while temporary intentions are linked to lower language proficiency and reduced employment aspirations. Permanent intentions, in contrast, facilitate stronger integration across all outcomes. Refugees with uncertain plans exhibit intermediate results. Theoretically, the article contributes to migration literature by disentangling the effects of settlement intention certainty from anticipated duration of stay, and by demonstrating how subjective expectations shape forward-looking behaviour. Our results advance Goal-Setting and Rational Choice Theories, and the Immigrant Human Capital Investment model by integrating uncertainty as a key moderating factor in refugees’ integration trajectories.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147682145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Normalisation of Wage and Benefit Theft in the Bangladeshi Garment Industry","authors":"Shoaib Ahmed, Danielle Tucker","doi":"10.1177/09500170261428365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170261428365","url":null,"abstract":"Wage and benefit theft is a systemic feature of capitalist organisations, yet it remains critically under-theorised in sociology. Drawing on an in-depth case study of the Bangladeshi garment industry, this article identifies three interrelated mechanisms of wage and benefit theft—denial of the monthly attendance bonus, alternative calculations of maternity allowance and maintenance of two service books—normalised through the interplay of micro-level practices and macro-structural imperatives. This article makes two key contributions. First, it challenges discourses framing such theft as aberrant misconduct by deviant employers, exposing it instead as a routinised, industry-wide exploitation strategy. Second, it advances the theorisation of normalisation by showing how macro-structural conditions foster environments that embed exploitative micro-level practices with impunity. The systematic erosion of meso-level institutions under authoritarian regimes intensifies this normalisation. This article calls for collective resistance to empower trade unions and civil society in confronting the normalisation of wage and benefit theft.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147635905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Resilience, Reworking, Resistance: Collective Forms of Agency among Unorganised Migrant Workers","authors":"Valeria Piro","doi":"10.1177/09500170261425859","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170261425859","url":null,"abstract":"There is a broad debate concerning migrant workers’ forms of agency and organising. This debate, however, is highly polarised between studies looking at migrants’ participation in established and grassroots unions, and others examining informal, subtle and covert forms of everyday resistance. The latter are commonly framed as individual acts, often exercised by migrant workers through mobility, and are therefore sometimes seen as potentially undermining collective organising. Drawing on ethnographic case studies from the agriculture and meat processing industries in Italy, this article explores forms of agency among unorganised migrant workers that fall between union activity and workers’ individual choices. It distinguishes between collective strategies of resilience, reworking, and <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">resistance</jats:italic> , and examines when and how migrant workers engage in them. In conclusion, the article calls for a move beyond dichotomous understanding and encourages a view of resistance in general – and migrant resistance in particular – as a fluid, gradual, and ongoing process.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147635906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When She Works More Than Her Partner: Gender Norms and Women's Life Satisfaction in Australia","authors":"Filippos Maraziotis","doi":"10.1177/09500170261424128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170261424128","url":null,"abstract":"This study uses multiple waves of the HILDA survey to examine how partnered women’s relative working hours affect life satisfaction, accounting for unpaid domestic labour. Women who work more hours than their male partners report significantly lower life satisfaction, primarily due to non-conformity to prevailing gender role expectations in paid work. The decline is greatest among women who also shoulder a disproportionate share of unpaid labour, with well-being losses stemming almost equally from norm non-conformity and time pressures. These findings highlight the enduring impact of gender norms and underscore the need for policies that address both labour market inequality and unequal domestic responsibilities.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147598569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reimagining the Egalitarian Society: A Community-wide Approach to Transcending the Gender Division of Paid and Unpaid Labour","authors":"Reece Garcia, Carol Atkinson","doi":"10.1177/09500170261424138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170261424138","url":null,"abstract":"Participant observation and interviews in a large community unique for enacting gender egalitarianism provide evidence that subversive, collective action at the interactional level can redo gender at the wider institutional level. A series of interdependent practices collectively designed and undertaken through member interaction effectively created sustained structural and cultural changes at the institutional level – which simultaneously created conducive conditions for gender-atypical behaviour at the interactional level. These practices include uniform working hours and ‘earnings’ for all members; communal provision of often privatised forms of domestic labour such as childcare; and a 50:50 gender quota for all representative positions underpinned by a comprehensive role rotation system. Two processes of ‘redoing’ gender proved to be mutually reinforcing: as participants become accountable to revised normative conceptions of gender-appropriate behaviour at the institutional level, gender becomes a less salient feature of how work is divided between women and men at the interactional level.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147535920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Biopolitics of Unmanageable Risk in the Gig Economy","authors":"Elsie Foeken","doi":"10.1177/09500170261422951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170261422951","url":null,"abstract":"A hallmark of the gig economy is the near-complete offloading of risk onto workers. Recent research has begun examining how gig workers conceptualise and self-manage these risks. This article contributes to this literature by questioning whether it is <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">ever</jats:italic> possible for workers to agentically manage risk in the gig economy. Drawing on interviews with Australian ‘home task’ gig workers, the article explores the creative and agentic capabilities that workers developed to self-manage risk. However, it also demonstrates how these capabilities were routinely sabotaged by the platform and social conditions of gig work. Drawing on a Foucauldian theoretical framework, the article argues that this sabotage is an effect of <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">biopolitical disinvestment</jats:italic> into the gig economy, wherein gig workers are slowly ‘let to die’ by the neoliberal context of their work.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147524052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mobilization Theory in Practice: The Great Strike of Zonguldak","authors":"Sadık Kılıç, Bülent Özel","doi":"10.1177/09500170261424131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170261424131","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a novel reinterpretation of John Kelly’s mobilization theory through the lens of the Great Strike of Zonguldak (1990–91), a landmark event involving over 100,000 workers and their families in a 120-km march for justice and dignity. By drawing on 46 formal interviews, autobiographical accounts, documentary testimonies and an extensive review of national newspapers, the study explores how grassroots activism and union bureaucracy dynamically interacted to produce one of the most significant labour mobilizations in Turkish history. While Kelly’s model emphasizes the role of informal leadership in framing injustice and facilitating collective action, this study advances the theory by revealing the emergent and context-sensitive interplay between informal and formal leadership during contentious mobilizations. Integrating insights from Rick Fantasia and empirical critiques of Kelly’s framework, the article provides a refined perspective on grassroots dynamics and union structures, offering broader insights into labour mobilization processes across diverse socio-political contexts.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147524051","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Political Dynamics of Inclusion: Noncitizen Workers in Ethnocratic States","authors":"Assaf S Bondy, Jonathan Preminger","doi":"10.1177/09500170261424126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170261424126","url":null,"abstract":"Research into migrant workers suggests noncitizens are subject to tensions between their inclusion for labour and their exclusion as the ethnic ‘other’. These tensions are held in balance by a stable configuration of state and social actors. However, a security crisis provides an opportunity for actors to shift the balance towards their interests and is likely to strengthen the exclusionary logic. We analyse the labour market in Israel/Palestine following the extreme crisis of October 2023, to show how actors shift the inclusionary/exclusionary balance and how this impacts the entry and employment terms of noncitizen workers. We find that while crisis enables actors to challenge the status quo, key logics underpinning that status quo are resilient, and neoliberal inclusionary pressures persist even during extreme security crises. We thus reveal the structural constraints that market economies place on ethnonational projects, including ethnocracies with a powerful ethnonational ethos expressed in populist racist politics.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"270 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147524690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Constructing a Skilled Yet Flexible Migrant Workforce: State-driven Skilled Migration of IT Workers from South Korea to Japan","authors":"Ilju Kim, Sung-Chul Noh","doi":"10.1177/09500170261422941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170261422941","url":null,"abstract":"Examining the skilled migration of IT workers from South Korea to Japan, this study illuminates the critical role of the sending country government in steering migration intermediaries and migrants towards less-than-ideal employment outcomes in the destination country. By analysing the three phases of pre- and post-migration mediation – attraction, allocation and integration – and examining the interactions among multiple actors in each phase, the study uncovers how the continuous flow of IT skilled migration from South Korea to Japan since around 2000 has produced skilled yet flexible migrant labour in Japan’s expanding IT industry. This study advances theoretical discussions on the nexus between migrant labour and the flexible labour market structures of the host country by shedding light on the role of sending states in constructing ‘supply-driven’ skilled yet flexible labour mobility.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147507863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}