"Demographic and technological trends have yielded new forms of work that are increasingly more precarious, globalized, and brand centered. Some of these shifts have led to a marked decrease in the visibility of work or workers. This edited collection examines situations in which technology and employment practices hide labor within the formal paid labor market, with implications for workplace activism, social policy, and law. In some cases, technological platforms, space, and temporality hide workers and sometimes obscure their tasks as well. In other situations, workers may be highly visible--indeed, the employer may rely upon the workers' aesthetics to market the branded product--but their aesthetic labor is not seen as work. In still other cases, the work occurs within a social interaction and appears as leisure--a voluntary or chosen activity--rather than as work. Alternatively, the workers themselves may be conceptualized as consumers rather than as workers. Crossing the occupational hierarchy and spectrum from high- to low-waged work, from professional to manual labor, and from production to service labor, the authors argue for a broader understanding of labor in the contemporary era. This book adopts an interdisciplinary approach that integrates perspectives from law, sociology, and industrial/labor relations"--Provided by publisher.

The purpose of this book is to highlight contemporary changes in the world of work and employment by exploring the importance of the informal economy in Western Europe and the United States. The book examines the myriad of ways in which individuals, households and communities turn to informal economic activities in order to achieve some level of economic security in precarious economic environments. Madeleine Leonard also illustrates the continued ambiguous nature of work and the ever changing boundaries between formal and informal economic activity.

As the first and largest guestworker program, the U.S.–Mexico Bracero Program (1942–1964) codified the unequal relations of labor migration between the two nations. This book interrogates the articulations of race and class in the making of the Bracero Program by introducing new syntheses of sociological theories and methods to center the experiences and recollections of former Braceros and their families.

In Art Work, Katja Praznik counters the Western understanding of art – as a passion for self-expression and an activity done out of love, without any concern for its financial aspects – and instead builds a case for understanding art as a form of invisible labour. Focusing on the experiences of art workers and the history of labour regulation in the arts in socialist Yugoslavia, Praznik helps elucidate the contradiction at the heart of artistic production and the origins of the mystification of art as labour. This profoundly interdisciplinary book highlights the Yugoslav socialist model of culture as the blueprint for uncovering the interconnected aesthetic and economic mechanisms at work in the exploitation of artistic labour. It also shows the historical trajectory of how policies toward art and artistic labour changed by the end of the 1980s. Calling for a fundamental rethinking of the assumptions behind Western art and exploitative labour practices across the world, Art Work will be of interest to scholars in East European studies, art theory, and cultural policy, as well as to practicing artists.

In a world where an increasing number of people work remotely, Invisible Work is a new skillset and framework to ensure personal and business success - from the author of The Creative Economy. Just as power has moved from boardrooms into the domain of dynamic individuals, Invisible Work maps the evolution of this new way of being and succeeding. It is a mindset of deeply focused, value-added thinking and sharing. It is a process of creativity that combines emotional intelligence and collaboration. It is the key to the success of a growing army of self-employed workers. This is an emerging field of work in which new business domains and creative endeavours are based on personal interests and digital connections. Howkins lays out a visionary framework for working practice and success. He focuses on the ways in which we think most innovatively, how we best share those private ideas, and how we make unseen connections and remain authentic while staking out our domain in a virtual world.

This book investigates the life, working conditions, and urban experiences of support service workers, such as janitors, security guards, culinary workers and carpool drivers, in the information technology (IT) sector of India. Largely omitted from academic discourse, support service workers are crucial to the Indian IT industry. Drawing on interviews with such workers in seven Indian cities with a large concentration of software service companies, this volume: Uses quantitative and qualitative analyses to map and assess workers' responses to migration from rural occupations to a modern urban employment setting; Explores the everyday grind of migrant workers in the context of the homogenizing effects of globalization in an alienating urban environment and discusses how their dislodgment from the structures of rural life – gender and caste roles – has placed them in a space of contestation between traditions and the opportunities and challenges offered by digital society in the form of freedom, individualism, flexibility and innovation; Traces the evolution of new areas of class, and identity formations, as well as the hegemonic relations within that ethos imposed by contractors and corporations. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of sociology and social anthropology, urban studies, development studies, labour studies, social exclusion and South Asian studies.

Across the world, workers labor without pay for the benefit of profitable businesses—and it's legal. Labor trends like outsourcing and technology hide some workers, and branding and employer mandates erase others. Invisible workers who remain under-protected by wage laws include retail workers who function as walking billboards and take payment in clothing discounts or prestige; waitstaff at “breastaurants” who conform their bodies to a business model; and inventory stockers at grocery stores who go hungry to complete their shifts. Invisible Labor gathers essays by prominent sociologists and legal scholars to illuminate how and why such labor has been hidden from view.