III. Methodological and Practical Problems of Research on Work and Employment in Modern Societies

We would like to invite you to participate in the international conference “Social Boundaries of Work. Methodological and Practical Problems of Research on Work and Employment in Modern Societies”, which will be held from the 27^th till 28^th of October 2017 in the Institute of Sociology of the University of Silesia in Katowice (Poland).

The conference is a continuation of a cycle of international conferences Social Boundaries of Work organized by The Sociology of Work Section of Polish Sociological Association.

The aim of this conference series is to systematically explore the meanings of work in the process of economic and cultural changes associated with globalization, Europeanization and the expansion of neoliberal variant of the capitalist economy.

Discussion during the third edition of the conference will focus on methodological and practical problems of research on work and employment. We want to tackle universal and particular problems of conducting research on work environment as well as organization of employment in private companies, including corporations, and in the public sector across various regions and countries.

We are interested in the methodology of social research on work regarding various levels of social life eg. experiences of working individuals; social groups in traditional and new workplaces; labour process in enterprises; functioning of local, national and transnational labour markets; role of state agencies and supranational organizations in shaping of contemporary world of work and labour.

We are particularly interested in an examination of research methods applied to issues such as: quality of work, protection of workers’ rights, recruitment, atypical and precarious employment, telework and crowd employment – as well as their impact not only on labour markets but also on lifestyles and levels of social inequalities related to class, gender, age, nationality and ethnicity.

We encourage to submit paper proposals regarding both the quantitative and qualitative methods of research on the shifting boundaries between work and non-work life, productive and reproductive work as well as standard and non-standard employment. In order to grasp various discourses on work, we would also like to address the theoretical and practical problems arising from various conceptualisations and measurements of working people cultural, social and economic capitals.

The objectives of the conference are:

• to move forward the discussion on the different types of work and their social meanings both for individuals and society, taking the methodological and practical issues of research on work as a focal point of analysis;
• to reflect and discuss the meaning of work in the context of growing diversification of the forms of contemporary employment and social inequalities generated by these new employment forms;
• to analyse methodological problems of quantitative and qualitative labour market research and discuss marginalized and dominant trends in this area – in particular: the relation of sociology of work, psychology of work and economics; the problems of methodology and methods of research on work; the challenges of research on the social boundaries of work; the problems of applied research on the work environment, including studies carried out within internal procedures aimed at monitoring the quality of work and work satisfaction of employees as well as customer satisfaction;
• to discuss how to conduct research on opportunities and challenges faced by trade unions representing workers in the various types of employment
• to reflect on various ways of conceptualisation and categorization of “capitals” present in the labour market as well assumptions accompanying the study of “capitals” (including issues of balancing economic and sociological perspectives);
• to analyse the role of emotions in the experiences of work-related individuals (employees, employers, managers, trade unionists etc.)

Languages of the conference: Polish and English

• 1^st day – in English
• 2^nd day – in English, selected sessions in Polish

The simultaneous translation of the plenary sessions (Polish-English, English-Polish) will be provided.