In this session, PhD researchers, Tiago Ferraz Vieira, William Sørensen, and Sven Schreurs will present their ongoing doctoral research.
‘Beyond misclassification: algorithmic management as challenge to the Standard Employment Relationship’
Tiago Ferraz Vieira (Doctoral researcher, EUI)
Discussant: Maxime Borg (PhD Researcher, EUI)
Abstract:
Extant literature has depicted algorithmic management as a facilitator of surveillance and control, leading to workers’ discrimination, intensification, and unfair treatment. However insightful these analyses are, most data informing such conclusions comes from Platform Work, where workers operate outside the scope of conventional employment relations. This limitation brings a double interrogation to the fore: First, whether and in what way is the standard employment relationship (SER), as we have known so far, potentially moulded by workers’ exposure to algorithmic management? Second, what lessons can be extracted from the Spanish pioneer real-life experiment to design future policies aimed at embedding platform workers in standard employment? Up to now, the answers could only be speculative; however, recent regulatory changes in Spain forced delivery platforms to hire couriers as employees under open-ended contracts. This transformation means platform couriers working in Spain are now expected to enjoy a SER. Nevertheless, following 23 semi-structured interviews three weeks of non-participant observation in Madrid, reality seems to point in a different direction. While the (semi-)automated decision-making feature of algorithmic management seems to lose relevance, it becomes a powerful artifact to amplify human managers’ surveillance and discipline powers. As such, the unregulated presence of algorithmic governance techniques in couriers’ labor process short-circuits what would otherwise be a SER. This stems from the surveillance possibilities offered by algorithmic management, leveraged by human managers in ways that compromise the normative underpinnings of such employment relationship and inviting extra caution from policymakers in future instances of regulating Platform Work.
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‘Scrutinizing the Nordic Paradox : comparing concepts of violence in the European Union’
William Sørensen (Doctoral researcher, EUI)
Discussant: Josef Hien (Visiting fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre)
Abstract:
It created quite a stir, among violence scholars, when the European Agency for Fundamental Rights, in 2014, released its report on violence against women in the European Union (EU). The survey data seemed to suggest that the internationally recognized gender equalitarian Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Finland and Sweden), had the highest prevalence of violence against women in the EU. This puzzling and apparent reversed relationship between violence against women and equality has since been coined the Nordic Paradox (Gracia & Merlo, 2016) which validity and usefulness still is debated. In this presentation, a review of the literature leads to the posing of a novel hypothesis: There exists no consensus on what constitutes violence across EU member states. To probe it, a study of concepts of violence, in use in Danish policy and practice, is performed, which brings insights for further direction of research.
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‘New roads to social Europe? Ideas and the evolution of EU social policy from Maastricht to the present’
Sven Schreurs (Doctoral researcher, EUI)
Discussant: David Bokhorst (Postdoctoral Researcher, EUI)
Abstract:
In past decades, the coordination of social policies at the European level has proceeded in a slow and haphazard fashion, leading some to conclude that such ‘positive integration’ is an unfeasible business altogether. But despite assertions to the contrary, the EU has accumulated an array of legislative and coordinative social policy instruments that go beyond the lowest common denominator of national provisions. How can we explain the scope and changing direction of this social integration since the adoption of the Social Policy Agreement in 1992? Theories that emphasize divergent national interests, historically ingrained neoliberalism and a market-making institutional bias may account for the limits to a 'social Europe', but less for its evolution within these shifting boundaries. I argue, instead, that an actor-centred institutionalist perspective that foregrounds changing normative repertoires, cognitive theories, interaction orientations and legitimacy dynamics can shed more light on the (constrained) expansion of the Union’s social dimension. The presentation of the research puzzle and theoretical argument will be followed by a brief overview of the intellectual history of EU social policy from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Hybrid event. The link to the session will be provided following registration.