Program 2015

While informal work for long has been located in economies of the periphery or semi-periphery, it is recently recognized as gaining in importance also in industrial and post-industrial countries in Europe, and even as intrinsically linked to processes of post-fordist restructuring. This new understanding of informal work as inherent to post-fordist economies, however, has so far been articulated mainly independent of research and theorizing of general transformations in the sphere of work. As of yet, consequences of transformations in the sphere of work, including the rise of atypical forms of employment, changes in industrial relations and welfare states, are still predominantly seen as a rise of new social risks and precariousness. In relation to concepts of risk, precarity, and unpaid work, this contribution discusses the emergence of new processes of informalisation of work and suggests a new conceptualization of informalisation. Informalisation is theorised as a three-dimensional process. It involves, first, transformations of the employment relationship and related social rights, second, it includes transformations of the workplace and organization of work, and, third, it encompasses changes in the representation of worker’s interests. The analysis of informalisation as a three-dimensional processes allows to study new forms of informal work which so far have gained less attention in research. This conceptualization of informalisation and the consequences for individual workers that accompany informalisation are illustrated in particular with developments in service work in Germany. The paper concludes with an outline of challenges and new directions for the study of work which arise from informalisation processes.

Ekonomia społeczna – zgodnie z definicją przedstawioną w Krajowym Programie Rozwoju Ekonomii Społecznej – to sfera aktywności obywatelskiej, która poprzez działalność ekonomiczną i działalność pożytku publicznego służy: integracji zawodowej i społecznej osób zagrożonych marginalizacją społeczną, tworzeniu miejsc pracy, świadczeniu usług społecznych użyteczności publicznej (na rzecz interesu ogólnego) oraz rozwojowi lokalnemu. Podmioty ekonomii społecznej w Polsce tworzą obecnie specyficzny segment rynku pracy. Jego istotną właściwością jest zróżnicowanie form zatrudnienia w zależności od potrzeb i możliwości świadczenia pracy przez wybrane kategorie osób wykluczonych lub zagrożonych wykluczeniem. Celem artykułu jest ustalenie w jakim stopniu zakresie ekonomia społeczna jako względnie nowa forma aktywności obywatelskiej i zawodowej proponuje nowe formy zatrudnienia oraz próba określenia potencjalnej roli ekonomii społecznej w ograniczaniu szarej strefy zatrudnienia. Przedmiotem analiz są tutaj dokumenty programowe prezentujące koncepcje rozwoju ekonomii społecznej w Polsce (program krajowy oraz wybrane programy regionalne).

Ekonomia społeczna – zgodnie z definicją przedstawioną w Krajowym Programie Rozwoju Ekonomii Społecznej – to sfera aktywności obywatelskiej, która poprzez działalność ekonomiczną i działalność pożytku publicznego służy: integracji zawodowej i społecznej osób zagrożonych marginalizacją społeczną, tworzeniu miejsc pracy, świadczeniu usług społecznych użyteczności publicznej (na rzecz interesu ogólnego) oraz rozwojowi lokalnemu. Podmioty ekonomii społecznej w Polsce tworzą obecnie specyficzny segment rynku pracy. Jego istotną właściwością jest zróżnicowanie form zatrudnienia w zależności od potrzeb i możliwości świadczenia pracy przez wybrane kategorie osób wykluczonych lub zagrożonych wykluczeniem. Celem artykułu jest ustalenie w jakim stopniu zakresie ekonomia społeczna jako względnie nowa forma aktywności obywatelskiej i zawodowej proponuje nowe formy zatrudnienia oraz próba określenia potencjalnej roli ekonomii społecznej w ograniczaniu szarej strefy zatrudnienia. Przedmiotem analiz są tutaj dokumenty programowe prezentujące koncepcje rozwoju ekonomii społecznej w Polsce (program krajowy oraz wybrane programy regionalne).

Studies on informality in Easter Europe usually focus on personalistic networks and extra-legal economic activities. The hidden benchmark is a (formal) rule-driven ‘West’. However, informal norms of behavior and practices are a part of institutions even in most developed societies and economies. Their specific interaction with formal rules is a key for understanding how western varieties of capitalism operate and change as well. By using the liberalization of the so-called “German Model” as an example, I argue that ideas of liberalization in the 2000s included a new wave of formalization (not just de-regulation) and a regrouping of informal responses. The talk concludes with some lessons for an East-West integrated research agenda.

 On 1 May 2004, when Poland became a full member of the European Union and the majority of the countries of the community opened to Polish workers, many young Poles have left the country “in pursuit of better” or “in the hope for a better tomorrow.” A popular direction of migration has become the United Kingdom, which provided at the time of our country’s accession to the EU access to all sorts of services strongly encourage extensive social assistance to seek employment there was.

The main group of migrants from our country for the first few years were young people who are often parents whose basis of existence abroad was to hire in all its forms, often working “ad infinitum”.

In many cases, poor knowledge of the English language, ignorance of the law in force in the United Kingdom, the inability to discern in the new place of residence and often exceedingly simple human longing for parents, grandparents, siblings, aunt and uncle or just a desire to homes with someone in the family or Polish, resulted in at some point numerous trips (commuting) to the UK parts or even entire families who were engaged in watch of small children.

Often these were the elderly, large problems with finding themselves on the job market in a foreign country and the language barriers and fear of the unknown what caused “it wanting or not wanting,” they became caregivers: grandchildren, nephews, friends’ children or friends

There has been some concern in recent years about the growth of zero hours contracts, particularly in industries such as retail and hotels and restaurants. Trade unions and employee representatives are concerned that workers on these types of contracts are suffering from labour market insecurity in that they are unable to plan their working hours and are unsure of their level of pay from week to week. Employers, while in favour of fair working conditions, counter that zero hours contracts bring much-needed flexibility to businesses that need to respond to fluctuating customer demand and can also benefit workers who need flexibility in their working life. After giving a definition of zero hours contracts and the employment rights of workers on these contracts, this paper will explore the debate in the UK and chart the incidence of zero hours contracts in the economy overall, and in specific sectors, by examining recent national labour market statistics that show the extent of zero hours contracts in the UK.

For example, according to the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS), 697,000 people were employed on zero-hours contracts for their main job between October and December 2014, based on figures from the UK Labour Force Survey. This represents 2.3% of the UK workforce, down from 1.9% in 2013. Further, the number of contracts that do not guarantee a minimum number of hours was 1.8 million in August 2014, up by 400,000 compared with the previous estimate, for January 2014, although this difference could reflect seasonal factors, as they cover different times of the year.

The paper will also examine the positions of the social partners and government policy. In 2015, the government changed the law, making it unlawful for employers to prevent zero hours workers from working for another employer. The UK Trades Union Congress (TUC) has argued that recent growth in zero hours contracts is of particular concern, and part of the growing trend towards casualisation of the UK workforce. It calls on the government legislate “to protect zero hours contract workers and others employed in casual, insecure employment”.

The UK’s main employer organisation, the CBI argues that the majority of UK workers are employed on fixed hours, open-ended contracts and that there has been no mass casualisation of the workforce. It states that supplementing this core are a range of more flexible arrangements, including zero hours contracts, which are as important to many of those working on them as they are to businesses, so „regulating them must target bad practice without demonising them”.

The paper will conclude by weighing the evidence on whether these types of contracts are a necessary component of a flexible labour market, or a major contributor to job insecurity in the UK and chart a possible way forward.

Starting from the theoretical insights on the nonstandard or atypical work this paper will discuss its forms and incidence in Croatia since outbreak of the economic crisis. When the crisis struck the nonstandard workers in Croatia were the first to lose their jobs. However, in the years that followed their numbers grew faster than those of standard workers. There is a number of reasons for the rise of nonstandard work in Croatia. A transition to a free market economy obliged the employers on constant adaptations to new market circumstance, which sustained the need for introducing new forms of work that complement standard employment. An additional reason was the EU accession process. It directed the country towards reforms aimed at introducing greater flexibility on the labour market, which provides emplyoers with more manuvering space and support for uninterrupted business activity. Additionaly, the reforms helped uneployed persons (particularly youth) to get temporary or part-time employment. The economic crisis caused sharp growth of unemployment and pointed towards structural weaknesses of Croatian economy. Therefore introducing further labour market flexibility became a necessity. As coming under definition of nonstandard work, all work contracts will be considered in this paper which are not full-time and open-ended with a single employer. This primarily includes fixed term contracts, part time work, temporary agency work, self-employment, as well as work outside of employment relationship. The paper will focus on selected sectors (construction, metal industry, retail and public healthcare) which endured loses of both workers and income in the post 2008 period. Within selected sectors the quality of working conditions will be discussed from the perspective of wages, working time, job security, social security etc. The paper will also analyze responses of the social partners and implications for industrial relations. The goal is to make an objective assessment of the post-2008 developments concerning the nonstandard work in four selected sectors of Croatian economy.

Temp agencies have played an important role for flexibility production regimes in a number of industries. Although rising recently, the representatives of the temp agency claim that the use of temp agency work has been relatively low in the Czech labour market as compared with other EU states. Indeed, there often are other ways of achieving flexible work arrangements (e.g. self-employed status, short-term and insecure contracts, cooperatives, etc.). The reality of temp agency work, however, covers a much wider range of contractual relations. Some companies in the Czech Republic have for example used subcontracting kind of relations between the principal contractor and the temp agency. This helps companies and temp agencies circumvent the rule governing temp agencies according to which the wage and working conditions of temp agency workers should not be worse than those of direct workers.

This paper is based on two case studies of temp agency employment in two industries in the Czech Republic – the car and electronics industries. For both of them temp agencies have been one of the ways of achieving just-in-time production with frequent adjustments of production targets and consequent varying needs of workers of different skills. In one of the cases, a smaller part of the temp agency workers has recently been unionised in the car industry. Nonetheless in both cases, the indirect workers remain vulnerable and dependent on short-term contracts. Strong linkage between employment and accommodation further increases workers´ dependency.  In each of the localities we will describe the composition of the workforce (e.g. migrant workers, indebted Czech workers), its social and political regulation (including for example cooperation with local police) as well as consequences for workers´ everyday lives and social relations in the localities.

Occupational welfare (OW) has been developing in a largely uncoordinated and disorganized manner in Poland in recent years. Considering fragmentation of Polish industrial relations, the main level of analysis is an enterprise. OW denotes such phenomena as benefits and services provided by employers to employees as a result of an employment contract (Titmuss 1958). In particular, those benefits and services may include such profits received by employees as: pensions, survivors’ benefits, child allowances, health services, meal vouchers, cars and season tickets, personal expenses for travel and numerous other non-wage benefits. In present day Poland the picture of OW drastically differs as far as sector employing the beneficiary is concerned. In the public sector and post-state owned enterprises (Wratny, Bednarski 2013) one may identify residual OW measures, accrued by employees in the past, quite often prior to 1989 (for example, coal allowances for miners, rail tickets “free of charge” for railway workers, reduced energy prices for the workers of companies producing and supplying energy). In the private sector, the level of OW depends on the volume of employment and ownership status of the company. In domestic Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) there are hardly any OW to be found. By contrast, large, especially foreign-owned, employers, offer various, sometimes generous benefits to their staff. The paper aims to explore the extent and structure of OW in Poland, as well as the role played by social partners (with special focus on trade unions) in shaping and stimulating development of OW at the enterprise level.

The concept of prestige was first introduced into sociology by Max Weber, who considered it, along with power and wealth, a factor creating the differences between members of the society. The system of status groups based on prestige was most important in the feudal society but some of its characteristics were ‘inherited’ by occupational groups, which in the modern society are the most important dimension of societal differentiation. The interdependence between place in the social division of work and the individual prestige is explained inter alia by functionalist theories. According to Davis’ and Moore’s principles of stratification, prestige is one of the rewards used by the society to guarantee that the crucial roles will be undertaken by the individuals with qualifications needed. Therefore, it reflects both the meaning of certain occupational role and the ‘supply’ of people able to perform it. Using this conceptual network, it seems logical that the prestige of care work (i.e. formal or informal work consisting of caring for others) is ambiguous – while its functional meaning is high, the competences required are common (or rather seem to be).

Hierarchy of occupational prestige is a valuable source of information on society’s values. Consequently it has been a widely researched topic since the first study conducted by Cecil North in 1925. The classical methodology of occupational prestige hierarchy research consist of list of occupations that are rated on the prestige scale. The choice of the occupations to be included on the list is in itself an interesting source of information on what is perceived as ‘work’. To enable diachronical analysis the list of occupations is usually kept unchanged – therefore it does not include new kinds of job positions. Neither does it take into consideration informal work. The only occupation connected with care work in the nationally representative CBOS study is nurse (one of the two occupations listed in a female grammatical form, the second being cleaner). The prestige of this occupational group is high, in 2013 study sixth in the hierarchy (above doctor).

For my PhD thesis I decided to conduct a research focusing on meaning that occupational prestige has for the members high prestige group – firefighters (first place in 2013 study). The results show that their understanding of this concept is similar to the functionalistic theory, focusing on the importance that a certain position has for society and the qualifications required. In the questionnaire I asked also about prestige of other occupations, both appearing in CBOS study and others (mostly new). My respondents’ opinions correspond with nationally representative results, and as for the occupational groups that were not included in the CBOS list, what is most interesting, is the high prestige of elderly care worker. In the Polish labour market this occupation can be both formal and informal. While care is frequently provided by informal workers (mostly woman, including migrants), growing demand resulting from the demographical changes is causing professionalization of care (formal education, service provided by healthcare companies).

Legal recognition combines both dimensions of recognition and redistribution. Legal recognition of the relation means that both (or more) sides of the relation have rights and duties towards one another. Legal recognition of reproductive work do not have to mean its commodification, which can be seen as a victory of modern capitalism which tends to change social relations into market ones.

The recognition could appear as a change in the way how privileges resulting from the fact of being a family are distributed. Law gives some privileges/facilitations (in almost every branch of law) to the relatives or married couples in issues connected with one’s wife/husband or relative. For example under Polish law the intestacy law specifies who inherits after a person and the range of relatives entitled to inherit is defined by the level of kinship (including marriage).

I would like to show how Polish law perceives relations of care and reproductive work. Under Polish law family (understood as a group of people bonded by relations of kinship or marriage) experience the highest level of protection from the state. What is omitted from the legal perspective is the fact that relations of care (provided also outside family and state or commercial institutions of care) replace the role of the state in providing care for dependent people (especially babies, children, old people). This means that the state do not have to engage itself into care of these people (or does this to a lower extent).

I would like to present thesis that law should recognize to a greater extent real relations of care (today this factor is generally not taken into account by law). Relations of kinship and marriage should be still recognised by law but the issue of redistribution based on law should apply to factual relations of care. My thesis do not mean I intend to devaluate the meaning of the family understood in a traditional way but to indicate that there are relations that cannot become formal (and by that gain social recognition) although there are based on bilateral (or multilateral) care. Such relations can exist between friends, same-sex couples or people who voluntarily take care of elderly people deprived of help of relatives. The forms of care and its organisation in time may differ, however, substantially they play the same role in individuals’ and society’s life as a family defined in a traditional way (assuming that ‘traditional’ family fulfil its function of care and reproduction). In my presentation I would like to point out how Polish law explains the way in which it recognizes close relations between individuals and give some striking examples of the contradictions resulting from connecting closely the fact of being relatives with the possibility of gaining support from state. Furthermore, I would like to reflect on slits in the system of law which open the space of possibilities of redefining the attitude of law towards care and reproductive work.

In the international press, Germany currently appears as a role model for successful economic development. Employment figures have reached a record high, unemployment is declining and, despite the crisis of the Euro, wages in export-oriented industries are rising. However, as this contribution argues, this development is linked to the rise of a historically new form of post- welfare state discriminatory precarity. On the basis of our own empirical research, the contribution outlines a typology of insecure working and living conditions that draws on the work of French sociologist Robert Castel, while at the same time extending his framework to take account of the subjective practices of coping with insecurity. The contribution shows that the crisis of 2007 to 2009 has accelerated the spread of precarious conditions of work and employment. Germany is becoming a society of ‘full activity’ (as opposed to full employment) in which long-term unemployment is replaced by a specific type of circular mobility inside the precarious sector. More than 20 % of German employees and their families live in conditions located close to the threshold of social respectability – a zone in which wages are partly being pushed below the level of reproduction costs. This split of employment society also has far-reaching political consequences. Trade unions will have to develop new forms of participation and political action in order to become capable of organizing collective action in the precarious sector. This is all the more important as the German „employment miracle“ rests on the economic base of an exportism that reinforces economic and social asymmetries within the Euro zone. The conclusion is that the German labour market’s development is not suitable to serve as a model for Europe.

The issues related to labour market were one of the most hotly debated topics in the institutional social dialogue in Poland. Precarious and flexible forms of employment, as they are the key challenge facing the Polish labour market, were discussed by the social partners and representatives of the government on the forum of tripartite institutions. When in June 2013 the three representative trade unions suspended their participation in, among others, the Tripartite Commission for Socio-Economic Affairs, that debate could only be continued in other, non-institutional form.

Our analysis focuses on one of these non-institutional forms of the social dialogue. “Tripartite debate”, which is screened every other Saturday on TVP Info, is a TV debate which takes up the topics related to the current issues in social dialogue. The specificity of this show is that it preserves the tripartite formula, representatives of trade unions, employers and the government are invited, and that it takes up important and current topics related to the world of labour in its individual and collective form, as well as issues related to social protection. Thus, the “Debate” is close in its form and content to the workings of the Tripartite Commission. It is worth to note that the “Debate” was not suspended after June 2013. From that time on, the “Tripartite Debate” on TVP Info became the only form of tripartite debate, which, in addition, is publicly available.

The study is conducted within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (e.g. Teum van Dijk, Norman Fairclaugh, Anna Duszak) with a special emphasis on the TV debate context (Pierre Bourdieu) This approach presupposes uncovering the language (symbolic) violence and covert relations of power.

The role of dominating discourse is to create consensus, acceptance and legitimisation of the domination. Thus, the goal of the study was to learn about the nature of the reproduction of power and domination as practiced through a multimodal TV debate.

The analysis concentrates on the discourse on precarious and flexible forms of employment and symbolic forms used by the participants of the “Debates” when referring to these issues. Therefore, not only the content of utterance was of our interest, but also rhetoric and stylistic means and tools that employed, as well as body language of the participants and the context in which a given issue was taken up. A special attention was also paid to the moderators: to what extent are they impartial and try to guard distance, and to what extent do they impose or have the narration imposed on them.

Since we were focusing on the events related to the context of the crisis in social dialogue, of our interest were the debates screened in 2013 and 2014. We were trying to learn if the crisis in social dialogue was translated into approximation (consensus) of the positions hof the parties to the social dialogue related to precarious and flexible forms of employment, or rather, conversely, led to the polarisation of the opinions voiced by them.

The widespread use of accessible technology, such as mobile devices and Internet, impacts massively on people’s lifestyles and work. For more and more people, digital technology opens the door not only to leisure pursuits but also work opportunities, and the mix of both (Chatfield, 2012). Topics such as virtual/ digital work, crowdsourcing and online labour markets (OLM) are among the hot topics in the broader discussion about the future of work. While, some authors (Horton, 2010; Satzger, Psaier et al, 2012; Ranade, Varshney, 2012) focus on the economic aspects of the online labour markets such as price setting, elasticity of supply and demand, skills matching, for other scientists, in fields such as psychology, computer science and business studies, the focus lies on the innovative aspects of crowdsourcing, risk and rewards (for businesses) associated with crowdsourcing (Chandler, 2013), optimisation and standardisation of crowdsourcing to better serve businesses (Ipeirotis, 2011), psychological priming for improving crowdsourcing quality (Morris, Dontcheva and Gerber, 2012) and various other experimental attempts to understand the dynamics of tasks and incentives, entrepreneurship research or human behaviour ( Rand, 2011; Aguinis, Lawal, 2012; Paolacci et. all, 2010).

When social scientists join the conversation about the future of work, in the context of the emerging technologies (eg. Crowdsourcing platforms), the accounts are few but diverse. However, the study of the online worker as an individual, a human being, is rarely in focus. Using a qualitative approach to research, I shall draw on methods such as auto-ethnography and narrative analysis to understand how the subjects ( multi-locational eWorkers, who perform activities that they label as work at least one working day per week on one of the following platforms: Amazon Mechanical Turk and/ or oDesk) assess their quality of life.

The regular occurrence of economic downturns favors the development of employment and labor market flexibility. The downturn causes the need for adaptation the number of employees in enterprises to changing economic conditions and creates the foundation for the emergence of non-standard forms of employment and also an informal work. So we have to deal with the process of precariousness as a result of changes in the labor market and the financial difficulties of enterprises. That is why there are more offers of informal and non-standard work available. It is expected that in the situation of changeable conditions of employment and when the lack of financial security occurs it is harder to find staff willing to work in a flexible way than those who can work as an open-ended contract workers. In this situation specific supply of workers ready to work in non-standard forms is also expected.

The aim of the presentation is to present changes in the demand for workers in the labor market of Lubuskie voivodeship. The author referring to the analysis of job advertisements in the local media and in labor offices as well attempts to assess the scale of precariousness at Lubuskie’s labour market. The author is looking for answers to the question about the extent of change and the scope of presence of non-standard forms of advertisements and if it is possible to assign them to a sector of the economy. Defining the resources that are in favor of individuals to take up work in case of low employment stability is also the purpose of the presentation. Another analysis focus on the possibility of using informal and non-standard work as a phase transition to open-ended contracts.

The presented analysis of empirical data from job advertisements about the demand for employees were published in two local daily newspapers: Gazeta Lubuska, Gazeta Wyborcza (local suplement). The third source of information are offers from the provincial labor office of Lubuskie region. The analysis was conducted in January and February of 2015.

A phenomenon known as the “free rider problem” interested in the few representatives of economics and sociology. These are for example, on the one hand W. Vickrey, A. de Jasay, J. E. Styglitz and the other M. Olson, P. Sztompka, T. Kaźmierczak.

Ownership analysis of the economic and sociological approaches, as the author had the opportunity to demonstrate, reveals their common basis.They constitute the empirical relationship of the lumpenownership, which allow to distinguish lumpeneconomy. The main, but not the only, ingredient of the lumpeneconomy is it what connects with terms: a “gray zone”, “shadow economy”.

For the adopted cognitive perspective in the paper fundamental importance is associated with especially the two concepts from 60-70 years of the twentieth referring to Marx. The first one is lumpendevelopment theory of A. G. Frank and the other S. Kozyr-Kowalski`s socio-economic ownership theory with the concept of lumpenownerhip relations.

Using mainly of those frames, the author considers the mutual relationship between the “free rider effect” and lumpenwork treated as an essential element of the lumpeneconomy.

In the analysis the author also accepts that the “free rider effect” occurs in the informal sector, as exemplified by the so-called. “work on black”. The „free rider” aspect of the work in “shadow economy” is the result of comparison with the economy based on social division of labor.

The author focuses on the question: does “free rider effect” allow to reveal the presence of such forms of work, that are not only typical forms of the lumpenwork in contemporary capitalist society? Referring to the statistics and data from empirical research, he examines aspects of the free rider as: a) illegal activity in the informal sector (criminal as well and robbery), b) illegal activity in the “social margin” society (begging, prostitution), c) employment within the social the division of labor specially as work of so called precariat and “junk job”.

The main finding of the analysis is the suggestion that the name of “free rider work” (forced, not only of their own will) cover all activities that are sources of obtaining a livelihood as: 1) entering into lumpenownership relations, 2) occurring in the “gray zone”, “the margins of society “and the accompanying social division of labor, 3) forming the basis for lumpeneconomy, 4) cause of most general question on lumpencapitalism.

Telecommuting is considered and promoted in contemporary Poland as an effective tool for flexible forms of employment, especially those devoted for women. However, it turns out that working at home on the basis of telecommuting is one of the major challenges that can lead to serious problems and limitations both in family and work life. It is also the practice of redefining what is traditionally defined as the workspace and contemporary home.

The aim of the presentation is to sum up the 30-month qualitative ethnographic study realized by our team in 32 households in tree metropolitan areas (Trojmiasto, Warszawa, Krakow) of the impact of telecommuting for housing practices and the development of work-life balance at the everyday life in contemporary Polish household.

The aim of the paper is twofold: at first it offers recent data that highlight the expansion and/ or re-production of atypical employment and labour market segmentation across Southern EU regions. It does so by discussing the rates and dimensions of several forms, such as part-time, temporary and self-employment and other types of labour flexibility, soon before and after the 2008 crisis. Second, it studies indicative cases of workers’ agency related to ‘anti-recession’ measures and informal and flexible employment patterns from a Southern European, spatially-informed perspective. Labour Geography’s studies, we claim, should be expanded to countries of the advanced South, such as Greece, Italy and Spain which have a rich background of labour agency, of trade-unions collective action combined with non-formal yet equally important forms of action. Labour Geography should also take an explicit and analytical view on the agency of precarious workers, moving beyond unionized workers which have been the main analytical focus so far, to other important and often neglected parts of the global working-class such as precarious and informal (migrant) workers.

The paper incorporates the notions of regional competition and devaluation as important mechanisms for a true understanding of recent changes in the field of atypical employment forms; while discusses the potential role of in-local and trans-spatial agency, based on a different conceptualization of scale of as a network of both horizontal and vertical relations between different locales, instead of its traditional understanding as a hierarchical tie among the local and the global.

In Poland, the majority of persons with disabilities (with legal confirmation of disability) declare to remain outside the labor market. According to surveys of the Central Statistical Office (BAEL – Labor Force Survey), only every fourth working age person with disabilities is engaged in paid work (within the legal employment). More than 2/3 of these people are categorized as economically inactive persons i.e. persons not engaged in any paid work and not engaged in job seeking. These data differ from the employment data of disabled people in most EU countries.

The reasons for the low activity of people with disabilities in Poland are complex and are located on the side of employers and disabled people themselves. There are also a consequence of the adopted and implemented solutions within the framework of social policy.

Article proposes a thesis about economic, institutional and cultural conditions that affect the attitudes of employers and disabled persons toward the employment and work.

Employers avoid hiring disabled workers. This segment of the labor market is out of employers’ sight. Most of them prefer to pay obligatory contributions to specially dedicated fund (PFRON) due to not employ legally required number of disabled workers (in Poland is 6%).

People with disabilities often work in atypical forms of employment, such as civil contracts or avoid legal employment and take undeclared work in the informal sector. Some of them are engaged in various types of housework activities aimed at the family support. Their work is not recognized in employment statistics. The disabled people are the hidden segment of the labor market. The paper refers to the results of empirical research conducted by the author and statistical data.

The structure of the argument developed here is fivefold. First, it is argued that suggestions that contemporary capitalism is fundamentally new and unprecedented are undermined if precarity is set in the historical and spatial context of capitalism. Second, it is posited that if capitalism is understood as dynamic and contradictory, there are limits to precarity and the working class and its composition and characteristics are in constant change. Third, there is a focus on migrant workers which argues they are intrinsic to capitalism and not on its periphery and that recent history demonstrates that they are a group capable are organising against their own exploitation. Four, it is suggested that the notion of a privileged salariat demonstrates a very limited understanding of the lives of working lives of ordinary people, particularly those in public sector work. Finally, it is argued that to suggest that the precariat is a separate ‘class in the making’ is analytically flawed and divisive in practise. Lastly, it is argued that there is no theoretical premise for regarding a chaotically defined precariat as a class-in-the-making and it is politically divisive to embed such divisions.

Prevailing debates on the regulation of work and employment typically maintain a focus on the motivations of those in power and the outcomes and experiences of intended subjects of control. This focus on ‘command and control’ regulation is archetypally linked to a range of outcomes for firms, employees and related stakeholders. In accordance with this trend, scholars have often bypassed broader theories of regulation, instead maintaining interest on the motivations of those in power and the outcomes for those on the receiving end of the decisions (i.e. the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of regulation). This oversight has a tendency to ignore the wider thinking and ideas behind regulatory approaches, including the possibility of more nuanced forms of regulatory ‘craftsmanship’ intended to nudge and modify behaviours in more complex ways than the winner/loser binary. The following paper addresses this gap through empirical research into contrasting labour administration systems. Specifically, the paper explores distinct approaches to the regulation of work and employment with accent on policies intended to ‘regulate’ the informal economy. Using case study research into the USA, the UK and Ireland, different approaches to the regulation of the informal economy are delineated. In doing so we utilise the concept of meta-regulation as applied by policy makers in different contexts, with a view to encouraging processes of self-regulation and the co-production of desired norms in both firms and workers.

The transformations taking place in the sphere of family life relate primarily to changes in the way this most important substructure of social life is formed. They also apply to changes in the family structure, which is caused by changes in the demographic patterns, such as divorces, marriages, birth of children outside marriage, etc. The changes also involve changes in positions, roles and responsibilities of women and men in the family. The massive entry of women into the labour market in the 1960s led to the appearance of a competitive force against men, which weakened the man’s position as the main or only breadwinner. On the other hand, the mass mobilization of women dramatically increased the burden they have to bear, which is defined as multiple employment (professional work, work in the household, procreation and education of children, the role of wife). Over the years, roles, responsibilities and preferences of men and women have radically changed. They are tailored to individual needs, desires, skills, and also to the inclinations of representatives of both sexes. These radical changes give people the freedom to make individual decisions and have a choice. People are no longer shackled and subjected to public opinion, which would legitimise each of their decisions and the way they behave, as it once was. The postmodern world, in which the society is becoming more and more liberal, allows and accepts many different sorts of social behaviour, the possibility to make a choice and the lack of rigidly defined roles and responsibilities, which is undoubtedly a positive stimulus that binds the relationship between two individuals who can complement each other in everyday life. The analysis of studies carried out in Poland, Slovakia and South Korea shows that the majority of surveyed students (about 80%) irrespective of gender, country of residence, place of residence or frequency of participation in religious practices believe that the best situation for the family is the so-called partnership model, in which partners equally commit themselves to the work and household duties.

The transformations taking place in the sphere of family life relate primarily to changes in the way this most important substructure of social life is formed. They also apply to changes in the family structure, which is caused by changes in the demographic patterns, such as divorces, marriages, birth of children outside marriage, etc. The changes also involve changes in positions, roles and responsibilities of women and men in the family. The massive entry of women into the labour market in the 1960s led to the appearance of a competitive force against men, which weakened the man’s position as the main or only breadwinner. On the other hand, the mass mobilization of women dramatically increased the burden they have to bear, which is defined as multiple employment (professional work, work in the household, procreation and education of children, the role of wife). Over the years, roles, responsibilities and preferences of men and women have radically changed. They are tailored to individual needs, desires, skills, and also to the inclinations of representatives of both sexes. These radical changes give people the freedom to make individual decisions and have a choice. People are no longer shackled and subjected to public opinion, which would legitimise each of their decisions and the way they behave, as it once was. The postmodern world, in which the society is becoming more and more liberal, allows and accepts many different sorts of social behaviour, the possibility to make a choice and the lack of rigidly defined roles and responsibilities, which is undoubtedly a positive stimulus that binds the relationship between two individuals who can complement each other in everyday life. The analysis of studies carried out in Poland, Slovakia and South Korea shows that the majority of surveyed students (about 80%) irrespective of gender, country of residence, place of residence or frequency of participation in religious practices believe that the best situation for the family is the so-called partnership model, in which partners equally commit themselves to the work and household duties.

I’m going to present the results of studies initiated among students and graduates of the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Warsaw. The aim of the research is to trace the career paths and the amount and the role of their work on internships (including free ones) plays in further career development and placement on the labor market. On the one hand, I will present different motivations to work in these forms and the evaluation of the benefits (and losses ) from the standpoint of respondents, on the other hand – employers’ strategies and methods to encourage candidates, used in communication with them. The analysis will cover differences in these areas connected with organizational cultures and between different specialisation in psychology (i.e. psychotherapy and HR)

In Bourdieu’s view the specific nature of the artist’s work and what distinguishes it from other types of work results not only from the material aspect but, perhaps even more, from its symbollic issues. This kind of work is connected with certain myths, artist’s individual approach and statement and as such is difficult to classify as formal or informal. Thus an analysis of artists’ work can be the subject of interest for subdisciplines such as the sociology of  work or sociology  of art. There are also other differences connected with art-related professional activity of women because they entered the area offering different conditions for men and women. The specificity of determinants establishing  female artists’ functioning in society and their professional activity is illustrated by analyses conducted from the feminist perspective. In Poland the analyses of female artists work, conducted from this perspective, emphasise the conflict of their private and public roles as well as traditional oppositions between their professional and family life.

The subject of these considerations is an analysis of life histories of female artists working for one art gallery in Silesia province and thus it contributes to the description of the issues related to informal work and difficulties in establishing accurately borderline between professional and private life. Other related issues include artists’ income and the extend to which it can sufficiently fulfil their needs and enable them to support themselves or their families.

W wystąpieniu podjęto problem nieodpłatnej pracy kobiet, wielodzietnych matek z ubogich rodzin, wspieranych przez instytucjonalną pomoc społeczną i ich stosunku do pracy zarobkowej. Słabo wykształcone, zazwyczaj nieobecne na rynku pracy kobiety, w większości same (przy braku wsparcia ze strony partnera) sprawują opiekę nad kilkorgiem dzieci i mniej lub bardziej efektywnie zarządzają domowym niedostatkiem. W ich rolę wpisane jest szeroko pojmowane „dbanie o dom”, czyli równoważenie domowego budżetu, radzenie sobie z bieżącymi problemami, „amortyzowanie wstrząsów” (Lister 2007) i zabieganie o pomoc. Codzienne problemy i jednostajne czynności, przesądzające o monotonii życia badanych, powodują, że w większości definiują one wykonywane przez siebie zajęcia (zwłaszcza w sytuacji ubóstwa i innych problemów rodzinnych, tj. niepełnosprawność dzieci, alkoholizm itp.) jako poważnie obciążające lub nawet wykraczające ponad ich siły.

Niezadowalająca pomoc ze strony partnera (lub jego brak) czy rodziny i niesatysfakcjonujące wsparcie instytucjonalne tłumaczą wypowiedzi o „domowym kieracie”, z którego znaczna część badanych pragnie się wyrwać, choćby poprzez… podjęcie pracy zarobkowej. Ich obecne życie, zdominowane przez role rodzinne, zwłaszcza macierzyństwo, toczy się bowiem w cieniu marzeń o pracy poza domem. Co charakterystyczne, dla badanych matek nie tylko ekonomiczne aspekty zatrudnienia są istotne. Ważne są też względy społeczno-psychologiczne. Kobiety podejmują kwestie społecznej inkluzji, poczucia własnej wartości, bardzo często percypują pracę jako wartościową płaszczyznę kontaktów społecznych, rodzaj aktywności, która pozwala nabrać dystansu wobec spraw domowych i stanowi swoistą „ucieczkę” czy „odskocznię od domowego kieratu” (często bez znaczenia są tu kwestie formalno-prawne, wartością samą w sobie jest „wyrwanie się z domu”). W dłuższej perspektywie zatrudnienie poza domem postrzegane jest jako gwarancja, że po wygaśnięciu podstawowych funkcji opiekuńczych względem dzieci, w sposób naturalny role rodzicielskie będą mogły ustąpić miejsca rolom zawodowym.

Empiryczną podstawę wystąpienia stanowi 59 wywiadów pogłębionych z matkami przynajmniej trojga dzieci w wieku szkolnym (lub młodszych), korzystającymi z instytucjonalnej pomocy społecznej z województwa lubuskiego, dolnośląskiego i wielkopolskiego.

The aim of this paper is to present outcomes of five qualitative research conducted among the most unprivileged workers in two post-industrial cities in Poland and employees working on the peripheral labour market (Harvey 1991) in Warsaw. These workers are: long term unemployed who take part in low-paid trainings, internships (arranged by local Public Employment Services and Social Assistance Organizations) and who are forced to take up odd jobs and jobs on the black market; next, seasonal workers and women that are full time mothers and housewives (23 individual in-depth interviews and 2 focus group interviews carried out in 2013-2014). Finally, employees who work in low-paid branches in public sector and private sector (10 individual in-depth interviews conducted in 2014 with cleaners, checkers, bodyguards and 20 individual in-depth interviews carried out with people working in call-center in 2014-2015). Aforementioned workers seem to be characteristic for present capitalism (mass unemployment and expansion of service sector). These workers seem to belong to different classes (post-industrial working class, middle class working in service sector), they are in different age and live in different conditions, but most of them experience uncertainty and lack of sense of security regarding their position and situation on the labour market. Therefore, they can be named precariat (Standing 2011). However the term precariat is built on opposition to the concept of proletariat. Guy Standing regards precariat as a new class, which emerged as an effect of neoliberal policies. Author of this paper regards aforementioned workers as contemporary working class who has undergone transformation (i.e. they usually work in service sector). Therefore I call them part of the new working class (nowa klasa pracownicza) as contemporary equivalent of marxist working class (cf: multitude – Hardt, Negri 2005), who is defined by lack of ownership of the means of production

The main aim of the paper is to present working conditions and analyse modes of controlling, managing and disciplining new working class by public institutions (Public Employment Services and social assistance –

these institutions operate within the framework of austere social and labour market policies, i.e. “emergency regime” and paradigm of workfare) and employers (flexible contracts, low salaries etc.). On the other hand, I am going to present how new working class perceive its situation on the present labour market and analyse their modes of resistance (Foucault 1982) – individual and collective.

From a musician standpoint, the popular music industry is a highly competitive market based on work outside of formal employment with unclear success criteria. Does the market’s rules of the game differ, when it is entered by an actor representing a minority position: a woman acting in a male-dominated field?

By conducting and analyzing biographical narrative interviews I examine the careers of polish female musicians within the national popular music market. My research concentrates on the matters of socialization towards music, the interviewees educational and work experiences, the meaning of femininity in regard to their careers as well as matters of coping various social roles and the strategies of approaching the market from a minority position.

The following results are based on 10 interviews with women of various ages, conducted between 2013 and 2015.

The lack of specific cultural patterns regarding female popular musicians forces the interviewees to rely on or inherit the institutional musical models exhibited by their parents. Young woman’s involvement and specification in music making strongly depends on her peer and parents acceptance and encouragement. Active involvement in music, unpopular among young girls, excludes the interviewees from their peer gender group and forces to struggle with gaining access and acceptance within young males. In a formal educational setting, their teachers rely on gender musical stereotypes regarding the female’s musical specification; young female musicians are also subject to symbolic violence coming from their peers and trainers. The biographical plan exhibited by the female is to be affected by the experience of gender ghettoisation within the field of music production. Interviewees often create romantic partnership with males working in the field. This involvement gives them the opportunity to gain or brush up on specific cultural and social capital accessible/represented by her partner and boost/legitimate her social-musical status. Coping social roles (a woman and a musician) is an issue regarding their domestic activity; it inspires the interviewees to redefine those roles. Furthermore, interviewees observe direct contradiction between accepted and desired normative elements (and practices) of both roles. Female musicians participating in the study are aware of and experience musical gender stereotypes. Not only are their musical choices questioned, their gained social-musical status is subject to being diminished by fellow market participants. The beauty standards expected from a woman work against female musicians i.e. their physical attractiveness is seen as sign of being unprofessional.  Due to the underrepresentation of women in the music market, female artist are easily noticeable and distinguished from other actors. Minority position strategies represented by the interviewees regard acting in a stereotypical macho-male fashion, denial of existing discrimination, peripheral activity within field of music production or turning femininity into an attention brining novelty. Due to financial jeopardy concerning professional involvement in music some women cope two (musical and non-musical) careers, pursue education in a field outside music or support themselves by becoming music teachers, promoters etc.

Nowadays there has been proved an increased need for self-realization, both on a professional as well as personal life. What is being for parents, particularly the one with young children,  increasingly difficult to make it real.

This text is about innovative solution to make those more probable and the way it could be done especially in the urban area. On the basis of empirical studies and sociological analysis it is meant to be a voice in the debate about the degree of matching institutional and legislative proposals, such as: flexible working time, part-time work, job task, telecommute or tele-work, to social expectations.

I shell use the concept of work-life balance (WLB), decent work (term introduced by the ILO) and co-working idea to present my idea and show example of best practices in the area.

It seems that the implementation of the idea in the professional work of parents with children up to 6 years, can be an effective way to increase their professional activity. Growing popularity of such spaces and the idea of co-working may become the solution, also in Poland.

Employment is the result of a series of activities that are related to the work-for-labour. Such activities include job search (if someone performs temporary work) and could be connected with actions aimed at additional training for maintenance employment. The amount of these actions is often so large that there is not enough time for other life activities (Standing 2011). Therefore my paper is an attempt to analyze category work-for-labour as an dialectic process of subjectification and desubjectification. I am going to refer to two concepts: Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. Desubjectification serves as a mirror for subjectification and vice versa. Michel Foucault implicitly postulated a constant oscillation between subjectification and desubjectification in his conceptualization of subjectivity. This statement is developed by Giorgio Agamben and is interesting in the context of work-for-labour. The main question is if and how work-for-labour could cause desubjectification? My paper goal is connected with tracing conditions of human subjectification and desubjectification, which are connected with precarious condition of Polish humanists. I am going to analyze discourse about protests of humanists and activities focused in a Crisis Committee of the Polish Humanities. Humanists took up informal work, which is struggling with Foucaultian devices. I am interested in question how humanists trying to transform by work the world around them? How they are trying to elaborate subjectivity in workplace?

Through the introduction of desubjectification and the relationship between subjectification and desubjectification we can get a better understanding of how workplace subjectivity is formed. When people appropriate a new subject position this is not only driven by a processes of subjectification and the ‘adding’ of new settings of power/knowledge etc. but also through getting rid of a number of values, behaviours, imaginations, etc. (Ek, Fougère, Skålén2007).

How can we approach the gendered division of labour in terms of contemporary debates on labour market?

The gendered division of labour is one of the eldest, and at the same time, one of the most naturalised mechanisms of social division of labour. It is rooted in production and reproduction relations, family relations, discourses and mental structures. According to Bradley, the traditionally understood ‘women’s work’ is performed inside, clean, monotonous, related to care and domestic work, unchallenging and involves good looks, whereas ‘men’s work’ is performed outside, is based on physical strength, involves skills and knowledge, and on the higher levels – innovation, power, influence and creativity. According to Joan Acker and Raewyn Connell, gender serves as a basic for capitalistic production that uses rooted ideologies of hegemonic masculinity and the gendering practices by separating production from reproduction and not taking any responsibility for the latter. The organizational settings often reproduce the gendered division of labour, even though as Pollert and Connell point out, the gender practices and relations are active and change in time.

The nature of work has changed – as the extent of unpaid work on labour market rises and at the same time, there is an increasing awareness of the value of domestic and care work. Therefore the concept of ‘total social organization of labour’ of Miriam Glucksmann will serve as a basis for the theoretical inquiry on the contemporary gendered division of labour. The aim of the paper is to present the theoretical debates and questions on the forms of gendering occupations and gendered division of labour in times of shifting boundaries between private and public sphere and public and private sectors.

According to Dan Tapscott and Anthony Williams, wikinomics is a social-business hybrid that opens a new model of production and consumption. This new form of mass collaboration consists of two distinct elements: one relates to a new method of labor, the second to a new method of participation/consumption. However, the author will focus on showing consequences of new, wikinomic way of labor, based on

– informal relationships bringing together hobbyists and volunteers

– competitive task solving system

which brings the employee to the role of an external resource, which no longer needs to involve the classical employer-employee relation. The new strategy turns it into a business entity-external resources relation, according to the Kevin Kimberlin principle, the president of the Spencer Trask: „instead counting on three experts, who will work a thousand hours, they involve a thousand people who work for three hours”.

This type of movement leads to a question how wikinomics method of cooperation fits into a classical concepts of political economy. Particularly in the Marx’s theory of alienation of labor, which as Leszek Kolakowski noted, emphasizes the social function of work. The one, which is not taken up only to satisfy „animal” needs and bears the hallmarks of self-affirmation, that means it results from autotelic values. Labor of this type, in the Kolakowski interpretation, is relevant differentiator of humanity, hence crowdsourcing in the form of wikinomics should have the best self-affirmation work qualities.

On the other hand, movement of the way of treating employee from the employer-employee relationship to the business entity-external resources suggests that crowdsourcing very clearly meets the conditions of alienated labor. After all, it is difficult for the relationship, which more separates the employee from the effects of his work.

In the background of the analysis of whether crowdsourcing is a form of alienation of labor, the discussion will appear about the effects of labor itself in a new model. The classic Marxist approach assumes that alienated work leads to multiplication of possession – according to Fauerbach: the more laborer produces wealth, the more impoverished he becomes; the more value of the world of things is increasing, the more person who produces them depreciates. Can we talk about the similar phenomenon, when it comes to wikinomics, and especially macrowikinomics, which logic is based on access and not about possession?

The unfavourable tendencies on labour market seems be inevitable result of the economic tensions. Young people, especially graduates commencing activity on labour market are victims of that situation. Systematic researches on labour market on the one hand, as “common sense” observations on the other hand prove, that successful, entering professional career of graduates is possible only to a part of the young people. The growth of employment seems to be a priority state program in many EU countries as a response to ¼ (even a half in some countries) young people’s unemployment. Diminishing level of earnings and lowering stability of employment are causing further, serious social consequences.

The paper aim is to show some types of work beyond formal employment, according to Zielona Góra University graduates. It presents both legal employment (placements, civil law contracts, short-term contracts) as non-legal employment, realized in “grey-economy” sphere as well. Important role plays division of field of studies, which the graduates had completed. Moreover, important issue is answering the questions: does graduates’ non-legal employment can be favourable in any aspects? Would it be a starting point in searching other, more efficient legal works? Empirical data showed in paper refers to unpublished in that interpretation results of author’s research, realized by internet interviews.

A social phenomenon of informal labor is usual described from two basic perspectives, the general prespective, focused on macroeconomic results and influence of the phenomenon has on social structure and bottom-up perspective, studying strategies and narrations of individuals dominated on labor market. Although the power elites, and especially economic elites, play an important role in shaping the institutions of informal labor market, their role in sociological analysis of labor market remains insignificant. Perhaps there is a need of third, “top-down”, perspective of describing changes in labor market from the viewpoint of business elites.

The aim of the paper is to present narrations and strategies of business elite towards informal labor phenomenon, basing on research of polish business elite, carried out in 2011-2015 for master and doctoral thesis. Hipotesis are going to be tested on the basis of structural analysis (Propp) (Levi-Strauss) of biographical interviews with members of polish business elite and graph analysis of capital dynamics of business elite (quantitative research, graph analysis and minimum spanning trees analysis).

Business elite in Poland, by which I mean group of individuals occupying the leading posts in main polish companies and accumulating economic, social and cultural capital, is a influential group, although it emerged in quite recent, post 1989 tranformation process. An experience of tremendous individual social advancement has a deep reflection in elites biography structures. The process of advancement was fuelled by conversion of cultural and social capital into economic capital. Work of conversion, crucial has an informal and distinctive meaning for respondents (Bourdieu). To legitimate their dominant position, business elites recall different worlds of justification (Boltanski,Ciapello) mainly world of inspiration and world of economy, opposing it to world of politics and world of fame.

Networking and relational work, creating individual social capital, essential for the process of capital accumulation and central in business narration might play a strategical role in reproduction of business elite. The economical and political result of this processes is the formation o hybrid, public-private forms of ovnership (Stark) and quasi-feudal nature of business elite itself. The business elite might limit their economic activity in favor to creating networks of relations (Kula). The justifications of elite members own informal work in biography might become a basis for legitimization of social order based on informal work and junk contracts.

The presentation of graphs of relations between top polish businessmen will be an ex ample of dynamics of informal work of business elite. Graphs, created with statistical methods and data from 1990-2015 polish top 100 businessman rank, show the network of wealth and position in changing business surrounding. The analysis of graphs demonstrates, how the position of individuals and political and economical situation of country influence the work of networking and creating relations in top business segments in modern capitalistic society.

Nowadays we are witnessing change the proportion of different age generations in the family, which rely on the increasing number of adults (including the elderly, or grandparents) and decreasing number of children, which means that in developed societies we can observe the problem of providing care for the elderly. Until now women played a crucial role in the care of elderly in the family. However, as demographers forecast shown, the possibility of family care will be weakened with increasing number of older people in the society. Potential support ratio, which expresses the proportion of the number of women aged 45 – 64 years to the number of persons aged 80 years and older will be reduced. Combining work and family responsibilities is an area in which women are most exposed to unequal treatment in terms of employment. It is because of the still existing stereotypical perceptions of the men’s and women’s roles. This is confirmed by the results of the Gender Index Project. Combining professional and family obligations is seen as a problem of women, not men (Dybała 2012, p. 41-42). Women perform most of the household duties. Weekly they spend 16,2 hours on them, while men only 9,1 hours. The most absorbing is especially care of young children, as well as care of other dependent persons such as elderly. Women work (at home and work) about 7,5 hours per week more than men. In the 25-34 age group, this difference is greater – 31,8 ho As a result of women overload, men will have more than ever got involved in helping older generations. The author will focus on the analysis of women’s unpaid care work (care for the elderly) data and statistics. The subject of discussion will also be the possibility of combining work and elderly care giving by women on the example of such solutions as co-working (Kotowska, Sztanderska, Wóycicka 2007, p. 10-11).

Market is one of the major concepts in economics. It defines the purchase and sale transaction as a whole, and the conditions under which it is run. It is also a specific type of institution that enables the transaction between the demand side and the supply side.

One type of market was determined on the basis of one of the factors, which is labor. The subject of exchange in this market is work understood as a very peculiar and specific commodity. The sociological literature is not treated as a homogeneous whole, which is led by a designated market mechanism, but as a socially diverse result of the activities of the society.

The concept of work and the labor market enjoy a rich literature on the subject. One can find both the classic ways of explaining phenomena and market m echanisms, as well as modern concepts explaining the behavior of social actors on the labor market (such as theories of segmentation, dual labor market theories).

Since 2009, Poland retains its infamous status of a country with the highest share of employees with a contract of limited duration in the European Union (28,4 per cent in 2014). It is also estimated that 1.4 million workers in Poland performed their jobs in 2013 based on various service, civil-law contracts as a sole form of their work, i.e. without an additional employment contract (GUS 2015). Relatively high level of temporary and flexible employment in Poland raises the issues of job and social security, like the access to Labour Code regulations of workers’ rights (resulting form employment relationship, i.e. the minimum wage, 8 hour working day, the right to leave and rest), as well as the access to health care system and other social provisions and the possibility to unionise. The deficit (or the lack) of those protections points to one of the most vital problems on the labour market – the precarisation of working and living conditions. This situation began to raise serious concerns of trade unions in a form of mass media campaigns, street protests, as well as national and international pressure on legislative changes. Recently, the issues of temporary and flexible employment has also gained the attention of the Polish government, a part of employer organisations and European Commission.

The paper discusses the preliminary outcomes of the research conducted in Poland as a part of the international project PRECARIR – „The rise of the dual labour market: fighting precarious employment in the new member states through industrial relations”. The project engages in country-specific comparative studies of the strategies and actions that the social partners have undertaken to: 1) address the rise of the dual labour market, and especially the growth of precarious work; 2) protect, represent and improve through collective bargaining and social dialogue the social rights of vulnerable employee groups in precarious employment; 3) adjust industrial relations structures and bargaining procedures to better reflect the character of the post-crisis dual labour market.

In particular, we would like to present the results of sector-specific case studies (based on expert interviews with trade unions, employers and state administration representatives) carried out in the Polish health care system, construction, retail, metal sector (steelworks), and temporary work agencies. The recent changes in those 5 sectors are characterized by different and divers processes of precarisation like hybrid employment leading to excessive working time and bogus self-employment (health care and construction); excessive use of part-time and temporary agency workers (retail and steel works); expanding civil law employment (temporary work agencies and private subcontractors). In the paper, selected strategies of social partners will be discussed in a more detail. While trade unions and employer organisations, for various reasons, attempt to counter-act the excessive precarisation of employment, it is argued that they strategies so far had limited effect on counter-acting the dualisation of labour market.

The aim of the paper is to present empirical results of a study on the “OFF Piotrkowska” in Lodz in terms of new forms of employment. “OFF Piotrkowska” is an old postindustrial space adapted and designed, by the decision of municipal authorities, the creators of the creative industries (workshops, shops) and services (restaurants, cafes, clubs). This was because of the adoption by the city authorities “Strategy for the Promotion and marketing communications Brand Lodz for 2010-2016”. Its main task is to promote Lodz as a creative city. It was considered important to promote cultural projects, cultural facilities and its products, as well as the promotion of entrepreneurial business initiatives based on combining business and creative industries and culture. The space in which an attempt of such synthesis is made is “OFF Piotrkowska”. It has become a place to create a particular style of life and leisure activities for young citizens of Lodz, and also one of the trendiest places in Lodz. On the one hand, it is a place where culture is interacted with the economy, work and private life, collective life with the individual life, which fits in perfectly with the assumptions of the creative class by Richard Florida. It is a peculiar ecosystem that uses human creativity and turns it into economic value. On the other hand, this place, designed mainly for young entrepreneurship, is also space of employment for a young service class, which increasingly become the precariat. Combination of the precariat and the creative class is not accidental. I assume that both of these categories are products of neoliberal turn. Both categories co-exist largely as a result of socio-economic changes. Their size and shape depend on the structural conditions of cities, regions, or countries.

In my speech, I want to present opinions, evaluations, consequences of this situation for the careers of young citizens of Lodz. How flexible forms of employment will contribute to the success or failure of the professional career? When they are functional, and when dysfunctional? Are flexible forms of employment contribute to the development of the creative class, whether the precariat? What does it really mean for young entrepreneurship etc?

Partnerstwa lokalne, jako jedno z narzędzi współczesnej polityki społecznej, zakładane są przez partnerów z różnych sektorów (publicznego, pozarządowego i prywatnego) i służą rozwiązywaniu różnych problemów społecznych w tym także związanych z rynkiem pracy. Partnerzy o zróżnicowanym charakterze wnoszą zróżnicowane doświadczenia oraz wzory działania. Do pozytywnych skutków zaangażowania różnych podmiotów należy min. racjonalność działań prywatnych przedsiębiorców (rachunek kosztów i przychodów jako podstawa podejmowania decyzji), zaangażowanie członków i skuteczność działań organizacji pozarządowych, systematyczność i długofalowość przedsięwzięć podejmowanych przez instytucje publiczne. Do wad należy min. nastawienie na zysk jako podstawowy cel aktywności przedsiębiorców, krótkoterminowość celów działania reprezentantów sfery pozarządowej, biurokratyzacja i kosztochłonność instytucji publicznych zarówno na szczeblu krajowym jak i ponadnarodowym (Unii Europejskiej). Celem proponowanego wystąpienia będzie prezentacja miejsca, jakie zajmują działania związane z pracą nieformalną wśród celów partnerstw lokalnych na rzecz rynku pracy, min. jakie formy pracy nieformalnej znajdują się w centrum zainteresowania twórców partnerstw, jakie sposoby zapobiegania ich negatywnym skutkom są planowane i jakie działania są im dedykowane. Kluczowe dla wystąpienia pytanie o cele i działania planowane oraz realizowane przez partnerstwa na rzecz rynku pracy w zakresie pracy nieformalnej zawiera próbę oceny ich funkcjonowania. Przykłądem będzie województwo lubuskie.

Podstawą źródłową prezentacji będzie analiza kluczowych dla partnerstw dokumentów (umowy partnerskie, sprawozdania z działalności) i stron internetowych oraz wywiadów z liderami lokalnych partnerstw na rzecz rynku pracy w województwie lubuskim.

This paper reports the results of a pilot survey conducted among the shipyard workers from Gdansk and Gdynia. The objective of the study was to diagnose the social mobility of those workers. We focused on the mechanisms behind the position change for both the workers and their adult children. Intragenerational mobility was captured by an examination of two moments of shipbuilders professional biographies. The first involved the late 70’s and early 80’s, the second refered to the current class position. At the same time, the contemporary class position of the adult children of the shipyard workers was studied, which allowed us to examine intergenerational mobility as well. Three research questions were answered using the empirical evidence:

• Has the class position of shipyard workers changed? In other words; whether they have gone from working class to another great social class (eg. petty bourgeoisie, capitalist class, service class, etc.).
• Has the specific intraclass position of workers changed?
• Does the class position of children differ from the position of the parents?

The terminology used above clearly indicates our interest in class positions. Class can be called a collection of people involved identical positions in the social division of labor and ownership or how Jacek Tittenbrun puts it: “groups of people which differ from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of economic activity (i.e. production, exchange, transport, finance and services)” (Tittenbrun 2011, 188 – 189).

As noted above, in the first part of the study we describe shipbuilders’ class position in the early 80s and also their current position. Class position of the workers was finally compared to the current class position of their offspring. The preliminary results will be presented. During speech particular attention will be devoted to the changes in the stability of employment. We will discuss how the working condition of the shipyard workers changed as well as we compare the stability of employment of parents and children.

The neo-liberal capitalism takes the form of constant expansion of market relations to non-economic domain of social system (eg culture, education). According to the classics (Marx, Weber) economy is the sphere in which social diversification becomes a form of class diversity. Thus academics employ by private universities lose their privileged position members of status group and begin to function as an ordinary “white collar worker”.

At the beginning of the XX century the condition of intellectuals became a concern for sociologist – in Germany for Robert Michels and in USA for Thorsten Veblen.

According to Michels (1932) the lowest-paid group of intellectuals could be described as an intellectual proletariat – a phenomenon results of overproduction of people offering their knowledge on the market. However overproduction of people with higher education does not end with the holders of master’s degree. The phenomenon of overproduction diplomas includes persons with a degree of doctor as well. So occurs the stratification of the scientific community accompanied by negative phenomena such as declassing or pauperization of the intellectuals.
The knowledge market is accompanied by organizational changes associated with the universities management. In 1918 Thorsten Veblen described the phenomenon of taking over administrative control over US universities by the so-called captains of erudition. He wrote a memorial on the condition of businesslike managed science. Earlier – in 1911 Robert Michels has made critique of bureaucracy in the German science. He described the phenomenon of goal-displacement which occurs in mass organizations (organization becomes itself fetish). Both Michels and Veblen had no doubt: the modern civilization deteriorates the condition of science. In other words the conclusion of Max Weber that the connection between bureaucracy and capitalist enterprise creates the perfectly mold rational organization was wrong. The contemporary higher education in Polish seems to be an example that bureaucratization and commercialization of knowledge and science make systematic devastation the social fabric of academic’s life.

According to prominent Polish economic historian Witold Kula, Polish capitalism has always had dual nature of development. Beside to the highly developed industrial centers, many economically underdeveloped regions remained for years. Thus, even though the capitalist economy is the dominant mode of economic activities, on the outskirts of formal market appears a room for specific niches where market rules remain suspended. These niches could be identify as using the concept of E.P. Thompson –various forms of moral economies. The capitalist economy is tightly regulated by national law, and its main regulator is the demand-supply pricing mechanism. In moral economies the norms of reciprocity are more important. However various forms of economic order are not completely separate. Although such systems based on different rules, its coexisted, complement. Sometimes people were able to use one order against the other. Similar conclusions were drawn by K.Polanyi describing the premodern ports of trade, which guaranteed to the empires trade relations with communities without the Western meaning of value. The author described ports of trade’s residents as multinational and multilingual community of people who was able to cooperate with different groups.

In my research I focused on people who operating on the edge of both economic orders: sales representatives supplying informal dining outlets, owners of stocks to undergrowth and owners of scrapyards. Representatives of these groups often cooperate with people who work in the informal economy – it means that their economic activity is not regulated by the state. During the speech will present findings on the rules of farming on the outskirts of the capitalist market. I am going to emphasis of manners of organizing cooperation between the formal and the informal market.

Poland has a very lax regulations with regard to the types of contracts that can be used – contract for mandate can serve in many situations as an equivalent for the labor contract, but the costs for both the employer and employee are significantly lower (this is about to change due to introduction of the contract for mandate within the scope of the social security contributions). In the paper I will try to explain why Poland notes an increase in the incidence of the the illegal use of the civil law contracts, i.e. concluding the contracts for mandate or contracts for the specific task in a situation in which labor contract should be concluded. The incidence of such violations has increased from 8.8% in 2008 to 19.7% in 2013, with a strong and constant upward trend of 2.5-3 pp yearly. I will argue that the increase in the labor market segmentation is caused by the increases in the minimum wage and a further declining bargaining power of the employees.

According to the VoC approach, Poland is a dependent-market economy which comparative advantages are low labor costs and institutional framework that enables the employers to swiftly adapt the levels of employment to the changing demand. Illegal use of the non-standard employment is a way of balancing the increased costs of labor in order to preserve the comparative advantages crucial for the international competitiveness of Poland. The well established scientific discourse says that the nonstandard contracts are mainly used in the internal consumption-oriented enterprises. However, the incidence of the civil law contracts concluded with the violation of the labor law is highest in the foreign-demand oriented sectors such as manufacturing, industrial processing or transportation services. It suggests that even though export-oriented sectors hires relatively high percentage of the employees on the open-ended contracts, this is supplemeneted by a large group of employees that have very flexible working patterns on the civil law contracts, concluded most often with the violation of the labor law.

The paper presents the issue of autonomous group work – the concept originated through the research of British Tavistock Institute of Human Relations – in connection with trust as a quality potentially essential for correct functioning of this strategy of work organisation. It also covers the concept, reason behind and functioning of quality circles – small informal groups of workers of a certain company who voluntarily meet during regular working hours, after hours or both, to identify and discuss possible solutions to work-related problems. Creation of quality circles is perceived as an optional practice (not forced from above) undertook by employees in order to improve the quality of work they perform. Both subjects are closely related, because it is often indicated that the existence of quality circles is an integral element of autonomous group work.

The author begins with presenting characteristics of autonomous group work system and informal work groups, supported by empirical examples of their implementation along with outcomes. Therefore, he describes the after-effects of increased decision-making authority as well as broader range of responsibilities of lower-level employees, along with strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that implementation of such solution may carry. His deliberations are based on multiple examples from several branches of industry. The author in the same time places this system among common paradigms of work organisation on the grounds of i.a. rigidity of internal hierarchy, as well as character of mutual relations between workers and between lower-level employees and their supervisors.

Afterwards, he determines the significance of trust in the context of interpersonal relations in general (analysing the conditions which are affecting it), as well as among workers of a certain organisation (defining in the same time the specificity of such social group’s structure and impact of trust on employees’ performance). The influence of trust on the manner of performing work, employees’ satisfaction and level of their motivation is therefore thoroughly depicted.

The aim of aforementioned paper is an attempt to indicate the role of trust amidst self-managing work groups and voluntary quality circles, as well as establishing of basic preconditions for their productive functioning. The author is trying to reach it through the analysis of multiple case studies demonstrating the implementation of aforementioned solutions in practice. In order to accomplish it, he derives from several sources in the area of social psychology, management sciences and sociology of institutions and organisations.

The main aim of the presentation is to provide a clear methodological background of the notion of informal employment. Through an analysis of latest research on informal employment (mostly in developed countries), we show the most popular and relevant approach in defining and measuring this phenomenon. Firstly, we focus on definitions used by International Labour Organization, OECD and European Commission to indicate the differences and discuss their utility. Secondly, we present an overview of methods used to estimate informal employment, broken down into direct and indirect methods. We also try to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the available measuring methods. Thirdly, we collect available recommendations for improving measurement methods, which are proposed by international institutions. Finally, we present the approach in defining and measuring informal employment used in Poland.

Criticism of industrialsociety hasdeeprootsinlefttraditions. Onthe one hand, human beings are defined as animals who consciously and reflexively labor to transform their worlds; on the other, their actual labor in the real world is conducted under terms of alienation,leading to the classic Marxist paradox that humans alienate themselves precisely when they undertake the most human of activities. It was only after the widespread availability of Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts in the 1950 sth atalienation became a central topic to theleft. This contributed to the development of two distinct tendencies: a theory of a “new working class,” and the promotion of a world free from work, at least in the alienated industrial sense which was dominant in both the Westand the East of the Cold War. Both western Marxists grouped around the Frankfurt School and critical east European “humanist Marxists”grouped around the “Praxis”school promoted such aview. Butno one combined both approaches so fully as the French-German political theorist Andre Gorz. A prominent theorist of the idea of a “new workingclass” (in hisseminal 1980 book, Farewell to the Working Class),Gorzsaw the abolition of alienated work itself as a goal, and in the course of developing the seide as, culminating in his 1991 book Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology, promoted the idea of part-time, irregular , innovative forms of employment as an emancipatory idea. In some ways, then, Gorz and the left promoted, as an emancipatory evolution,the emergence of what we now call the “precariat.” This essay will outline this left lineage, focusing on the contribution of Gorz, and will explore ways in which today’s precariat both mocks ,and yet also partially realizes, the aspirations of critical leftthinkers of the recent past.

This study examines how the miners of Alpagut-Dodurga coal basin and nearby communities in the city of Corum located in the central Black Sea Region in Turkey experienced both the capitalist industrial development and its neoliberal transformation processes. It traces their stories from the early 1940s in which the pit was opened until the post-privatisation period started in the 2002. The advantage of this relatively long prospect is that it provides an opportunity for the investigation of the contradictory dynamics of capital, state and labour not only in the making of an industrial community, but in the unmaking of it as well.

For this aim, the fieldwork conducted during six weeks by using purposive sampling. Sampling comprised of 20 respondents from different generations of miners, including 3 women who are the relatives of miners. Moreover, 4 focus groups held with miners in the nearby villages, Ciftlik, Tutus, Alpagut and Dodurga. The process of data collection consisted of data-generating methods based on semi-structured deep-interviews and oral histories. These techniques aimed to explore the process of capitalist industrialisation, which brought the working-class into being as a distinctive social formation through their subjective experiences and narratives, and to investigate altering ways of working conditions and the impact of these transitions on everyday life in long-established cultural formation and tradition. Oral history interviews were particularly important to see how the miners use their industrial histories to understand the present.

The research on the impact of job finding methods on the work conditions, remuneration and satisfaction of employees has a long tradition in economic sociology. Since the seminal work of Mark Granovetter (1973), the researchers focused on the relations between the embeddedness in social networks and the getting a job opportunities. Following this author, we depict the use of personal contacts as informal job acquisition. This type of job finding is distinct from the ones per formal methods (response to a job advertisement, recruitment by an employment agency or a job center) or per direct application. According to comparative data (see ISSP 2001), in most countries, approximately half of the working population obtained a job thanks to personal contacts. Poland is not an exception in this regard.

The aim of this paper is to make a comparative analyses of the conditions and effects of informal job acquisition, on the one hand, and of formal job acquisition, on the other. We analyze quantitative survey data on Polish employees who got a new job, in the July 2013-March 2015 period. As distinct from the majority of getting a job studies, wherein samples are limited to a local labor market or a single industry, our sample is nationwide. It comprises 428 observations. This is a quite unique dataset which allows us to analyze the influence of the local economic situation on the getting job phenomenon.

We investigate the types of social contacts used in job acquisition (the base of their forming, their strength) as an independent variable and their effects on the payment and job satisfaction. It allows us to measure in actual monetary values the individual social capital of employees. We also investigate the types of social contacts as a dependent variable in order to see how they are modeled by the local economic conditions (rate of unemployment, local GDP, etc.). This allows us to test the hypothesis that the worse the economic conditions get, the more often the employees turn to the strong social ties.

Reviewing reports that assess the situation on the Polish labor market and construct the forecast of its development, we face questions about the role of competence in creating careers and their importance in the work process. These studies clearly highlight the deficit area: possession of competence. It is an area of social competence (soft competence): personal and interpersonal, e.g. effective communication, team-work and effective time management. Deficits in the range of specialist competence (hard) are mentioned incidentally. How employers (and candidates) cope with the certification of competence?

It is helpful to have further EU legislative authorities and the European Commission regulation. One of these regulations is the EC proposal, for a Council Recommendation on the recognition of informal learning and non-formal. It was signed in Brussels on 26-27 November 2012 by the ministers of education and youth EU countries 3201 meeting of the Council Education, youth, culture and sport. The document emphasizes the role of skills and competencies that an entity acquires outside the formal education system and initiates recognition of qualifications and competences acquired outside a vocational school, secondary or higher. The purpose of these changes is to:

• increase employment opportunities (eg. for the young unemployed, low-skilled and older workers),
• increase access to higher education (also for mature students!),
• create new jobs, raise the level of mobility and participation,

and as a consequence – to stimulate economic growth in EU countries, inhibited by the crisis. Polish National Qualifications Framework, in reference to the European Qualifications Framework, assume the ability to assess the competence and recognition of qualifications acquired through non-formal education. But the Polish experience in this area are far remote. My speech draws attention to the problems of recognition of competences acquired through non-formal education (voluntary work) and implementation of this idea. It also presents solutions running in other European countries, including in the Netherlands. It brings the tools used in other EU countries.

A dominant discourse of Polish transformation to capitalism, refers to neoliberal narrations about resounding success and social progress. However, most of these narrations are incompatible with available socioeconomic data, which show growing austerity, inequality, and the rise of precarious work, which creates precarious society. The phenomenon of precarity is only a part of neoliberal politics. It always goes hand in hand with withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision as well as development of wide variety of disciplinary techniques to manage a new class of the excluded: evicted tenants, poor-paid workers or illegal immigrants.

My presentation will be an attempt to analyse the most current trends in neoliberal capitalism, in the context of the „state of exception” concept by Giorgio Agamen. In theory, Polish state and European Union guarantee set of basic rights for every human being, but in reality, growing parts of society are becoming hominis sacri – they are deprived of most rights and expunged from community. What is supposed to be democracy, becomes the rule capital, where the law is situational and managing social issues comes down to many single interventions. In past few months, this kind of politics has been visible well in a way liberal democracies have dealt with issues like migration crisis in Europe, mass antiracist protests in USA or financial crisis in Greece. It is also visible every day in Poland, when state representatives and institutions (police, courts, social workers) and handling evictions, labour disputes or social assistance for the poorest.

In my presentation I am going to demonstrate, that all of these phenomenons are connected and stem from the same global processes. As Loïc Wacquant points out, growing social stratification and precarious work are not side effects of the present system, but its functional elements, parts of “crafting the Neoliberal State”.

Young people are among victims of the economic crisis. One in five Europeans between 15 and 24 years of age is without work. More than 5 million young people are not even able to enter the labor market and unemployment between youth remains at record levels, despite ongoing the economic recovery.

If youth finally find a job, very often it is “flexible work”. That is how they start their career in the “worse” segment of the labor market. Unfortunately it is very difficult for them to enter into “good” segment (according to the theory of dual labor markets). Particularly, noteworthy are the very high rates (especially in Poland and Slovenia) of temporary contracts – in this form of work more than 60 percent employees under 25 years of age. There are very similar rates in France, Germany, Sweden, Spain and Portugal, where this percentage exceeds 50 percent. Temporary work is understandable in the beginning of the career, but this form of employment is becoming the rule/norm for young people, regardless of seniority. The internships and practices are becoming longer and longer, and this very frequently leads to lowering the wages of young people. The result of low wages is the increasing proportion of so-called working poor, who despite being employed are not able to support themselves.

Precarity applies to people who, in order to survive, need to work in a low-quality job, which is uncertain, temporary, low-paid, with no prospect of promotion, no security, no contract. This diverse group of people is connected with insecurity, which does not allow to plan anything, and wages so low that they can not afford a decent life. Prekarious man is suspended between prosperity and poverty, deprived of material security and constantly threatened the social collapse. In the EU countries, this problem is strictly related to people under 25 years of age.

In this article I analyse the situation of young people in the labor market from the point of view of the benefits and costs of “flexible work”. The main thesis of the article is that flexible forms of employment drive young people into the trap of precarity (term used by Guy Standing), thereby reduce their chances for “traditional”, “normal” employment/work in the future.

In this paper I try to criticize a way of defining precarity by Standing, due to the criteria which he used: vague and immeasurable, based largely on subjective sense of being part of precarity. In this paper I make an attempt to create a my own catalogue of indicators that will allow on one hand to build my own definition of precarity, and on the other hand, allow me at least to estimate the level of precarity among youth in Poland. In my analysis (among others) I would use articles from the journal Work, Employment & Society.

The presentation will refer to the social knowledge of unregistered employment, as it is currently present in Polish society. The research shows that social knowledge of black economy differs from reality. The studies of informal employment and the way it is perceived show discrepancy between reality and social picture. The myths and distortions involve different social categories and different aspects of the phenomenon, including the employment of the unemployed in black economy.

Opiekunowie rodzinni osób starszych w roli (nieformalnych) pracodawców migrantówTitle of the presentation Family carers of older people in the role of (informal) employers of migrantsAbstract (250 – 500 words)The aging of the population coinciding with a drop in capabilities and efficiency of family based care (due to changes in family structures and family relationships) accompanied by inadequate supply of public services (e.g. in Poland) forces people at the level of community (reforms) and at individual level (individual strategies) to take measures that will compensate deficiencies of care. For example by informally employing female migrant carers. In Poland Ukrainians and Belorussians dominate informal care sector. Often they are employed within a live-in system (they live with their wards). In the paper I examine the complex and multilateral labour and care relations between family carers responsible for elderly care and female migrants working in the grey area. The analysis deals with the set of roles of informal employers of migrants (family carers) and the ways labour relations are shaped by them and the migrants (this is based on the research results obtained by ISP and dealing with unregistered work of female migrants in the care sector, 2014-2015). Employing female migrants as carers is in Poland an “elite” solutions, available to relatively wealthy seniors and their families. It is also associated with specific requirements set for the employees. The expectations of employers (as shown by empirical data) concern not only the instrumental side of care, but also its social quality. This often leads to the transformation of labor relations into quasi-family relations and exposes all parties (not only migrants, but also employers and seniors) to abuse due to the strong personal commitment and basing the relationships on trust. A specific culture of care develops in “the place of work”, the spatial and temporal boundaries of which are often fluid and determined on ad hoc basis. Care is provided as a paid service by a migrant worker, but can also be obtained by her as a gift from the senior and his family. At the same time there is an expectation to reciprocate the gift in the form of higher quality of care work provided. Balancing between the commodification of care and the quasi-family character of the employment relationship causes numerous tensions in the ration between the actors.

While not technically informal temporary work is based on concepts and practices completely at odds with the standard understandingof employment relationship and can be considered an institutional device for avoiding labor regulations. In a discussion with George Gonos’ thesis on the importance of proper regulatory framework for a development of temporary work industry I’d like to present a complex game played by temporary work agencies in Poland against any attempts to regulate this form of employment. For this purpose I will consider the prehistory (i.e. it history prior to introduction of Temporary Employment Act of 2004) of temporary employment in Poland, use of civil law contracts, the problem of so called “permatemping” and different creative legal “solutions” that I’ve encountered during my research on temporary employment in Poland. While Poland may be a special case because of its rather inefficient legal system and widespread disregard for formal regulations I’d like to propose a thesis that circumventing existing regulations is inherent to temporary work industry more generally. Even when it acts in accordance with the spirit of the laws it nevertheless introduces in practice a separation between formal and real social relations that can easily be the basis for the wider discrepancy between the legal and the actual. My goal is not so much to do denounce temporary employment as an extralegal practice but rather to point out the practical problems of external regulation of this form of work and to emphasize the need for distinguishing between the social and legal forms of contract in analyzing employment relations.

Economic activity – based on man’s work – belongs to primary forms of human activities. Alongside the family (blood relationships) and religion it makes the primary element of collective life of the civilized societies. I the paper the author deals with social forms of the human work and on the mayor components of the complex work process. He singles out and discusses three basic – according to him – forms of labour: (1) slave-labour, (2) hired labour, (3) free (free-lance) labour, and he characterises the specificity of these forms. Then he distinguished the following major components of the work process: (1) designation of the work aim (intention), (2)   choice or creation of   performance procedure(s) (methods),   (3) behavioural execution, (4) developing   of the results (output of the work process). Full subjective (personal) integration of all these components is possible just in the case of free labour. Nowadays such a kind of labour is accessible for rare groups of jobholders only: learned professionals, free-lance artists, decreasing part of academy, some – rather rare – groups of people involved in unofficial economy. The bulk of contemporary working people are hired one. In that dominant collectivity of employees, affinities and working relationships are regulated by the famous Marxian antinomy of the labour and the capital.

Particular consideration to unofficial (second, black, etc.) economy and its social determinants is given in second part of the lecture.

The author   proposes his own classification of different types of   jobs practised in unofficial ways occurred in current economy. He also tries to picture the role of informal economy in demise of state (“real”) economy in Poland.

Despite enthusiasm amongst some who see the so-called BRICs as reclaiming the territory of enlightenment and modernity amidst the wreckage of the post-Lehmann world, empirical evidence highlights a much more complicated world. While the early noughties growth of the Brazilian economy convinced many neo-liberal of the virtues of globalisation, the intriguing social and economic patina of, in the instance recounted here, Brazil tells a somewhat more complex tale. Modernity for sure, but also the reconstitution of familiar patterns of social subordination has not only remerged but has been refounded in territories unfamiliar with late capitalist forms of reproduction. The empirical research reported in this presentation tells a tale not just of social resubordination, land (mis)use and economic exclusion but also an optimistic one of social and political opposition in the form of labour and other social movements in central Brazil.

Building on the   qualitative   research   conducted in 5 districts (powiats) in Poland, the paper investigates how the activation policy in a country characterised by residual welfare provision contributes to the reproduction of inequalities. The research takes into account not only the role of national legal framework, but, more   importantly,   it   discusses   what   is   actually   done   at   the frontline of service delivery. Therefore, the attention is paid to how street-level bureaucrats translate official objectives and formal rules into practices and to factors that structure their actions (such as very limited financial and human resources or performance measures).   The   focus   is   put   on   daily   practices   of   public employment   services   frontline   staff   reflecting   both   so-called ‘enabling’ and ‘demanding side of activation’ (Eichhorst et al., 2008). The paper finds out that activation policy itself contributes to   reproduction   of   inequalities   between   the   registered unemployed     by     creating     distinctions     and     differentiating administrative requirements and type of intervention according to presumed ‘deservingness’ and ‘labour market performance’ of job-seekers. Drawing on insights from two literatures: the literature on street-level   bureaucracies   (e.g.   Lipsky,   1980;   Prottas,   1979; Brodkin,   2007;   Brodkin,   2011)   and   the   literature   on   social reproduction   (Bourdieu   and   Passeron,   1970;   Bourdieu,   1993; Wacquant, 2009), the study also unveils how access to ‘enabling’ activation   is   made   difficult   for   people   lacking   certain   skills, financial resources or other capitals. The results are based on 111 in-depth   interviews,   short   observations,   the   analysis   of administrative documents and daily working tools used during encounters with clients (such as individual action plans, electronic data basis, activation textbook).

Woman’s work in which has the serious importance of precarious employment is the   one   of   the   discussed   subjects   in   current labour   markets   that   has   also significant share in informal employment. Existing data shows that the majority

of   economically   active   women   in   developing   countries   are   engaged   in   the informal   sector   and   they   stay   unsheltered   under   flexible   and   exploitive conditions of informal economy. According to official data in Turkey, half of women   workers   are   employed  as   informal   and   83%   of   domestic   workers comprises of women. In addition, 94.2 % of these woman who are engaged in cleaning, maintenance and food jobs are being worked in the informal way. Leaving this field as informal and taking no precautions result with gender inequality.

Domestic work is a field that enables woman to work as informal and it is difficult to control. Domestic workers in Turkey is out of the scope of Labor Law but they are in the scope of Code of Obligations. This situation is a case that encourages informal employment in a tacit way. Even if workers are in the scope of Code of Obligations, insurances of domestic workers and unionized have no obstruction, being recorded and unionized are considered for workers within the scope of Labour Code. Researches found reveals that informality in Turkey is common in domestic works and comprising of the large of women is working in this sector; informal employment disambiguating more workers during their works physcological, physcial and sexual disturbance; long working hours and uninsurance among difficulties met domestic workers in Turkey (Erdoğdu and Toksöz, 2013). In this study, emphasized the role of woman work’s in the emplyment sectors which focuses on informal woman’s work, domestic work definition and scope of ILO Survey on Domestic Workers- Preliminary Guidelines, within the scope of ILO 189 numbered Domestic Workers Agreement and especially woman work’s data which concentrating on domestic informal works have been evaluated. Also, issues about legal status of workers doing domestically in Turkey, protection against working conditions, working accident and occupational disease have been discoursed. To be able to observe informal domestic work working conditions, results obtained from face to face interviews deeply met with 2 officers from EVİD-SEN (Domestic Workers Solidarity Union) which conducts domestic-driven woman organization and 38 women who work as   informal   at   a   quarter   in   İstanbul   that   have   been evaluated.   Women concentrate on which jobs, working conditions, difficulties of informal working have been discoursed. Workers who accept to make interview in this study have mentioned about several important points that reveals the working conditions and issues forcing them to stay in silence. They have preferred to work as informal who they have health insurance thanks to their husbands – they have no chance to find another job. As single, uninsurance and no record into social security organization women couldn’t go to hospital, they have had long illness period. They have exposed to verbal harressment and as this situation results from their low qualification, they have to stay in silence. They have expressed that they work in afraid mode because they sometimes   expose to   working accidents   but   they   couldn’t   say   it   to   official   bodies.   Besides,   interviewers complaining of enlarging work description day by day that was decided before they started to work draw attention also secondary status of woman in the working life. They have said that thay have been obliged as informal for their children’s education, haven’t informed to legal authorities even though they have right to do this, if they do this, they will be unemployed. Union authorities have also drawn attention that working of domestic workers informally must be prevented by official bodies and essential audits must be performed; their legal right   must be given to them after accepting as worker within the scope of labour law and 189 numbered of ILO Domestic Workers Agreement must be approved by Turkey and modifications compliance with domestic law must be performed.

The report is based on the results of my research of individual employment strategies of young Ukrainian migrants in Poland and their adaptation or lack of adaptation to Polish labour market demands (bothformal and informal) as a (non)adaptation and self-(non)adjustment to Polish cultural and economic life, culture of work in particular. The research methods include in-depth interviews with Ukrainian students and young labour migrants – newcomers to Rzeszow, Warsaw and Wroclaw, and results of participant observation in these groups. Pushand pull factors are analysed as they are seen by the migrants themselves with concentration on those factors which might specifically influence the increase of migration of young people who encounter difficulties in getting a stable employment in Ukraine. I describe their migration strategies of the interviewees in terms of an employee’s self-positioning at labour markets in Ukraine and in Poland (decision-making, preparations, financial strategies, cultural and language adaptation, employment strategies, etc.) Research materials focused on Ukrainian migrants in Poland carried out by Ukrainian and Polish scholars are used in the report as a comparative point of migration strategies assessment and the way of constructing an image of ‘a migrant’ and ‘the problem with migrants’ in scholarly discourse. An outline of employment strategies of young Ukrainian migrants in Poland and the ways of constructing scholarly representation of labour migration strategies is offered as a conclusion.

Stojąc w obliczu problemów starzejącego się populacji we współczesnym społeczeństwie polskim niezwykle istotną kwestią pozostaje nieodpłatna praca kobiet: problematyka ta z jednej strony powiązana jest ze zderzeniem się tradycyjnej i nowoczesnej roli współczesnej babci (a co za tym idzie z nowym kontraktem płci i nowym kontraktem pokoleń), z drugiej zaś z problematyką opieki zdrowotnej. To przede wszystkim dojrzałe Polki, niejednokrotnie rezygnując z pracy zawodowej zajmują się schorowanymi członkami rodzin – co wynika zarówno zograniczeń systemowej opieki geriatrycznej jak i silnego wzorca roli kobiety – opiekunki. Referat dotyczyć będzie różnych scenariuszy realizacji wskazanych ról, z odwołaniem zarówno do ogólnopolskich badań empirycznych jak i do jakościowych autorskich badań na stylami życia Polek 50+.

Nowadays, the transition from being a full-time student to becoming an economically independent adult is recognized as very complex issue, which may have a tremendous impact on the subsequent career path. Since the 1990s, we observe the increased attention to the processes of transition from education to employment. The transition is a long period of up to ten years during which young people might be on the search for a satisfying and well-paid job. The transition process demonstrates how students’ competencies, labour market conditions, employers’ expectations interact in determining the relationships between graduation and initial employment (Teichler 2009). It is a problem of high importance especially in the context of difficult situation of youth on the labour market. The high rates of unemployment, problems with finding a suitable job, disengagement from the labour market are only a few problems concerning a young labour force. Youth experience problems with starting their career path on the labour market. What is more, the rising unemployment has decreased options for the individuals to get job of their own choice. For a long period, a strong conviction was present in the polish society that completion of higher studies determines the possibility of procuring attractive work or, at least, constitutes a guarantee for any type of employment (Domański, 2004). However, the higher education diploma is no longer a guarantee of getting a job. Various studies address factors, which might explain transition from education to employment and further career, such as educational achievement, sociobiographic background (e.g. cultural capital), and competencies. According to Allen (2007), the borderline between education and work has become less clear, with mixed statuses (e.g. combining education and work). People are crossing this line more than once in their working life, thus the transition paths are more complex and unpredictable. Often university graduates are failing to make a successful transition to adulthood.

The main objective of the proposed paper is to explore how the transition process among university graduates in the field of social sciences in Poland proceeds. The aim is to explain what kind of transition paths are taken by graduates and to find out what contributes to the successful transition to the world of work. What social economic, individual factors lead to the success in this process?

Współczesny senior jako „produkt” minionej epoki (socjalizmu), przywiązany do opiekuńczej roli państwa, wpisuje się w stereotyp wyuczonej bezradności i roszczeniowości. Oczekuje co „inni zrobią dla niego” a nie co on może jeszcze ofiarować innym. Wolontariat w Polsce nadal postrzegany jest jako posługa w medycynie paliatywno –hospicyjnej. Rzadko myśli się o wolontariacie w kategoriach korzyści własnych wolontariusza: pozyskiwania wiedzy, umiejętności i kompetencji, organizacji czasu wolnego i nawiązywania relacji społecznych (np. podczas organizowania dużych imprez kulturalnych czy sportowych). Celem pracy jest poznanie opinii osób starszych nt. pełnienia przez nich roli wolontariusza

Question is: do precarious workers organize themselves and and struggle effectvely for higher wages and better working conditions? Precarization has led to weaker “structural bargaining power” of workers and strikes the trade unions. But it strikes only those that also based its position on “structural bargaining power”, eg. spatial concentration of workers and the importance of unionized branches (industries) in the national and international division of labour or low unemployment etc. The “associational bargaining power” requires different tools that trade unions often do not have today.

The economic crisis began in 2008 has produced different effects on labour   force   according   to   gender,   age,   ethnicity   and   migratory status. This article examines with a comparative and longitudinal approach   the   economic   crisis   implications   on   labour   and   life trajectories   of   migrant   men   and   women   with   Moroccan   and Romanian   origins.  The   paper   is   based   on   a   qualitative   and quantitative data collected among Moroccan and Romanian citizens living   in northern   Italy (the   Veneto   region)   who in   2010   were registered   as   unemployed.   In   2011   we   collected   170 in-depth interviews and 431 short telephone interviews and in 2015 we success both to re-interview 40 migrants and to gather 200 short telephone interviews with the same people. The   essay   focuses   on   two   issues:   the   first   one   concerns   the transformations of migrants’ position in the occupational structure; the second one regards the individual consequences of informal work. The economic crisis has different implications on migrants’ labour career. On the one hand, the unemployment of men provokes the entrance in the labour market of a significant quota of inactive women,   mainly   with   Moroccan   origins;   women   decides to   join labour market but are available only for some jobs, refusing others they retain degrading. On the other hand, both Romanians and Moroccans fired by manufacturing factories, turn to informal works. Women dismissed by industry return to the reproductive labour, paid and not-paid. Indeed, the domestic and care sector has been less touched by the crisis and it returns to be the most important employment sector for migrant women. Men sacked move back to informal and irregular work that usually they did when they arrived in Italy (i.e. street vendors, agriculture) or find more insecure jobs through temporary agencies. The   worsening   of migrants’   position in the   Italian occupational structure produces significant individual implications. First of all, the informalization   and   casualization of   labour,   fostered by   the economic   crisis,   is   challenging   migrants’   and   their   households’ (including   second   generations)   way   of   life,   migratory  projects, professional careers and social mobility. Secondly, they lose their citizenship rights because both for EU and NON-EU migrants many rights are connected to their labour status. Thirdly, migrant people, in   particular   women,   lose   their   economic   independence   that   is essential for self-determination. This means that they become more dependent   from their   relatives,   with   significant implications   for gender relations. To sum up, the paper’s argument is that the economic crisis has fostered   and   accelerated   the   process   of   informalization   and casualization   of   the   labour   market,   pushing   migrant   workers outside formal employment.

Moment zakończenia edukacji, w którym znajduje się mnóstwo młodych ludzi, jest bardzo często tożsamy z ich wejściem na rynek pracy.   Jest   to   dla   nich   sytuacja   nowa, w związku z czym nieprzewidywalna     i     trudna, biorąc pod uwagę statystyki, że to właśnie oni –młodzi ludzie –pozostają największą grupą bez zatrudnienia w naszym kraju (GUS 2014). Kwalifikacje osób poszukujących pracy są dziś wyższe niż kiedykolwiek wcześniej, jednak niedopasowane do potrzeb pracodawców. Skarżą się oni na       brak       kompetencji zawodowych,       samo organizacyjnych i interpersonalnych osób poszukujących zatrudnienia, co utrudnia znalezienie odpowiednich kandydatów. W zarzutach pojawia się m.in. nieumiejętność pracy w grupie, brak samodzielności czy nieodporność na stres (Kocór i inni 2012). Może to sugerować, że doskonalenie umiejętności młodych ludzi powinno odbywać się właśnie na rynku pracy. Mają tego świadomość studenci –udział w praktykach zawodowych, to jedna z najpopularniejszych aktywności, których podejmują się aby zwiększyć swoje szanse na rynku pracy. Z badań Eurobarometru (2011) wynika, że blisko 2/3 Europejczyków ma za sobą praktykę studencką czy staż. Spośród nich ponad 60% deklaruje, że aktywność ta pomogła w znalezieniu pracy –stałej (44%)   lub   tymczasowej   (17%).Jednocześnie 1/4 praktykantów w Europie przyznaje, że udział w stażu nie był pomocny na rynku pracy, a 9% osób pomógł on jedynie w dostępie do innego stażu . W samej Polsce, w 2013 roku, udział w stażu w trakcie studiów zadeklarowało aż 65% młodych ludzi (Jelonek i inni 2014). Należy mieć świadomość, że stosowanie tego typu „indywidualnych strategii   samopomocowych” często jedynie przybliża   młodych do kategorii jaką jest prekariat. Pomimo   to,   praktyka   zawodowa   bywa   traktowana   jako   jeden z kluczowych elementów ścieżki zawodowej. To między innymi dlatego tak ważne jest, aby spełniała swoje podstawowe założenia i funkcje, a także organizowana była zgodnie z określonymi standardami. W rzeczywistości nie zawsze tak jest. Co, według studentów, świadczy o wysokiej jakości oferowanej praktyki studenckiej? Na ile standardy określone w Polskich Ramach Staży i Praktyk realizowane są przez firmy i instytucje przyjmujące studentów socjologii na praktykę? Z jakimi nieprawidłowościami mamy do czynienia? Czy sami studenci widzą potrzebę poprawy w obszarze organizacji praktyk studenckich?

Jakie są największe wyzwania przed którymi stoi uczelnia w obliczu poprawy jakości proponowanych studentom praktyk? Jakie działania w tym kontekście byłyby najbardziej przydatne? Czy możemy traktować praktykę studencką jako jedną z nowych form   pracy   nieformalnej?   Na   te   i   wiele   innych   pytań odpowie prelegentka podczas prezentacji dotyczącej praktyk studenckich.

The aim of this paper is to present outcomes of four qualitative research conducted among the most unprivileged workers in two post-industrial cities in Poland (2013-2014) and employees working on the peripheral labour market (Harvey 1991) in Warsaw (2014-2015). These workers are: long term unemployed who take part in low-paid   trainings,   internships   (arranged   by   local Public Employment Services and social assistance) and who are forced to take up odd jobs and jobs on the black market. Next, seasonal workers and women that are full time mothers and housewives. Finally, employees who work in low-paid branches in public and private sector (cleaners, checkers, bodyguards and people working in call-center). These workers seem to belong to different classes (post-industrial working class, middle class), they are in different age and live in different conditions, but most of them experience uncertainty and lack of sense of security regarding their position and situation on the labour market. Therefore, they can be named precariat (Standing 2011).       I call them new working class (nowa klasa pracownicza) as contemporary equivalent of marxist working class (cf: multitude – Hardt, Negri 2005). The main aim of the paper is to present working conditions and analyse   modes   of   controlling,   managing   and   disciplining   new working class by public institutions (Public Employment Services and   social   assistance   –   these   institutions   operate within   the framework   of   austere   social   and   labour   market   policies,   i.e. “emergency regime” and paradigm of workfare) and employers (flexible contracts, low salaries etc.). On the other hand, I am going to present how new working class perceive its situation on the present   labour   market   and   analyse   their   modes   of   resistance (Foucault 1982) – individual and collective.

Gainful employment during their studies is slowly becoming the norm in Polish reality. In the life and activity of student more often inscribed economic activity. There are different motivations taking up gainful employment. The most common is the desire to improve their economic situation. Increasingly, however, the work undertaken by young people to obtain work experience that can be demonstrated in applying for a better job after graduation and put on your resume. The primary objective of is to make a comparative analysis based on data from the Polish-Ukrainian research conducted in 2015. Basic questions: (1) whether and to what extent to take paid work by students of two different in many respects academic centers (at University and the University of them. Karazina in Kiev, Ukraine) is an economic necessity, and to what extent the exploration of professional experience, (2) whether and to what extent gainful employment is an obstacle in achieving good results in science? Presentation of the results will be a pretext for more general considerations concerning changes in the economic behavior of students in the countries of the former socialist bloc and changes in the model study.

Celem   wystąpienia   jest   przybliżenie   wyników   badań   nad warunkami   pracy   urzędników,   które   wskazują   na   postępujące upodabnianie   się     warunków  pracy   biurowej   w   sektorze państwowym do standardów określających funkcjonowanie całego rynku pracy w Polsce. Stopniowa ekspansja niestandardowych form zatrudnienia, takich jak umowy na czas określony, korzystanie z agencji     pracy     tymczasowej,     różnorodnych     form     staży umożliwiających     minimalizację     kosztów     zatrudnienia oraz outsourcing   części   pracowników   upodabniają   funkcjonowanie urzędu do zwykłej firmy kapitalistycznej typowej dla współczesnego rynku pracy. Rdzeń załogi stanowią osoby zatrudnione na umowy bezterminowe oraz lepiej wynagradzane, a wokół tego stabilnego rdzenia wytwarza się grupa miejsc pracy w mniejszym stopniu objęta ochroną oraz gorzej płatna, dla których typowa jest duża rotacja   pracowników.   Tego   rodzaju   podział   załogi   zwiększa konkurencję między pracownikami, osłabia możliwość wysuwania wspólnych   żądań,   jak   i   wprowadza   powszechne   poczucie niepewności, odczuwane także przez pracowników zatrudnionych na   stabilnych   umowach,   jako   że   świadomi   są   niepewności doświadczanej przez swoich współpracowników oraz wysokiego bezrobocia.   Prekaryzacja   nawet   tak   pozornie   stabilnych   miejsc pracy,   jakimi   są   urzędy   państwowe   wskazuje   na   trafność   tej kategorii w odniesieniu do współczesnego rynku pracy (Standing 2011).   Nadto   elastyczność   rozumiana   jako   dyspozycyjność   i gotowość do zmiany funkcji pełnionej w organizacji, na które to cechy jako charakterystyczne dla współczesnego rynku wskazuje Richard Sennet (2006) wydają się być coraz częściej obecne w pracy urzędniczej, Na   uwagę   zasługuje   również   nowy   rodzaj   technik zarządzania, umożliwionych dzięki niemalże pełnej informatyzacji pracy,   nakierowany   na   wyodrębnianie   prostych   czynności składających się na pracę biurową, a następnie ich kwantyfikację, co umożliwia   dokonywanie   porównań   między   pracownikami i podnoszenie   tempa   pracy   (intensyfikacja   wyzysku).   Możliwość dokonania podziału procesu pracy na proste jednakowe czynności wydaje   się   potwierdzać   tezę   Harrego   Bravermana   (1998)   o upodabnianiu się pracy biurowej do pracy fabrycznej, co umożliwia jej   analizę   w   klasycznych   marksowskich   kategoriach alienacji (Marks 1962).