Termine & Aktivitäten

Di. 03.06.2025

In her lecture „The Politics of Unpaid Labor: How the Study of Unpaid Labor Can Help Address Inequality in Precarious Work“, Valeria Pulignano introduces a theory of the politics of unpaid labor, advancing our understanding of inequality within the context of precarious work.

She establishes a crucial link between unpaid labor’s political dimensions and its role in fueling emerging forms of precarious work that are characterized by persistent inequalities in a context of labor market reforms, societal shifts, and technological changes.

She shows how these seemingly disparate elements intertwine, connecting the intricate dynamics of the social system’s micro-level components to larger macro-level structural patterns. Advancing the current discussion on how unpaid labor contributes to inequality in precarious work, she will establish the characteristics differentiating employment from self-employment, and how these lead to a revised definition of unpaid labor.

She further illustrates that unpaid labor is both shaped by class and serves to reproduce class interests, revealing ongoing changes in welfare, employment, and state institutional policies.

Finally, she considers the necessity to establish conditions within the labor market that are conducive to genuinely cultivating and honoring the diversity of human capabilities and actions within labor structures and promoting their manifestation.

Further Information under this link.