RGS-IBG Annual International Conference
London - 29th August to 1st September 2023
2nd Call for papers
The many faces of labouring transport: attending to workers across mobility modes, technologies and spaces
Session organisers
Wojciech Kębłowski (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Université libre de Bruxelles)
Chiara Vitrano (VTI, The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute)
Monika Maciejewska (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Merlin Gillard (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research, Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Keywords: transport, mobilities, labour, working conditions, agency
Transport policies and practices are usually scrutinised against the alleged benefits they may provide to users in terms of accessibility, flexibility, speed, and cost reduction. However, they are rarely assessed in terms of their impact on diverse workers engaged in mobility, their workload, job security, work-life balance, time pressure, and access to key opportunities. To address this gap, this session aims to focus on transport workers as producers, users, and resisters of mobility systems.
As producers of mobility services, workers experience how innovations in mobility systems shape their working conditions (e.g. job contracts, wages, security, access to social protection, workspaces and working times quality, skills and competences required), which are also strictly related to the capacity to provide a good quality, safe, and reliable service. As users, transport workers may belong to groups who are exposed to accessibility inequalities due to specific access needs (e.g. the need to use mobility services in non-standard time slots due to atypical working time arrangements or the need to reach peripheral destinations, e.g. depots or end/start stations, sometimes from likewise peripheral origins) and due to lower resources for access. As resisters, transport workers are active agents that engage in collective bargaining and collective actions towards improving their livelihood, which may cause temporary service disruption and regulatory changes.
We welcome theoretical and empirical papers that explore one or several mobility modes, technologies and spaces to engage with passenger and/or freight transport workers. We are open to contributions across geographical scales and contexts the global North, South and East. The themes explored may include (but do not have to be limited to):
The livelihoods, working conditions and agency of transport workers
Changing working conditions within formal transport companies and operators
Informalisation of transport work, e.g. in “digitalised” mobility platforms
Spatialities and temporalities of transport work
Technological innovations and their relation to work-related stress
Transport decarbonisation and transport workers
Transport related activism: unions and strikes
Everyday mobility practices of transport workers
The work of being a (public) transport passenger, e.g. calculating routes, looking out for transport, helping others
If interested in joining the session, please send a short (up to 250 words) abstract along with your name, email address, and affiliation by 24th February 2023 to [log in to unmask]
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