Przedstawiamy propozycje grup tematycznych nadesłane do organizatorów konferencji. Zapraszamy do zgłaszania propozycji referatów do grup tematycznych oznaczonych jako otwarte. Abstrakty mogą być zgłaszane również poza wskazanymi grupami. Prosimy o wskazanie w zgłoszeniu (abstrakcie) preferowanej grupy tematycznej lub zaznaczenie, że abstrakt zgłaszany jest poza listą grup tematycznych.

Otwarte grupy tematyczne

Accessibility of the world of work for persons with disabilities

Otwarta grupa tematyczna

Ewa Giermanowska, University of Warsaw e.giermanowska@uw.edu.pl

Anna Drabarz, Polish Disability Forum anna.drabarz@pfon.org 

Magdalena Kocejko, Warsaw School of Economics mkocej@sgh.waw.pl

In OECD countries, one in seven working-age adults identifies as a person with a disability, and the percentage is also significant and growing among young people (OECD 2022). Despite the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), persons with disabilities continue to have difficulty finding their way in the labour market, many are excluded from meaningful work and have low-income levels. The employment rate remains low. In 2019, in 32 OECD countries, about one in four persons with high support requirements and one in two persons with moderate support requirements had jobs. Overall, the employment rate for persons with disabilities was twenty-seven percentage points lower than for persons without disabilities, a gap that has remained steady over the past decade (OECD 2022). The persistent employment gap for persons with disabilities is accompanied by an education gap and a skills gap.  

Over the past decade, many countries have reformed their disability benefit systems, but the aggregate impact of the reforms on employment for persons with disabilities has been limited. In this thematic session, we would like to discuss topics related to the employment and working conditions of persons with disabilities, as well as issues of research methodologies and practice. The proposed topic areas are:    

• The impact of neoliberal reforms and crises (including pandemic, war, climate crisis) and changes associated with the development of modern technologies on the employment and working conditions of persons with disabilities. 
• The role of persons with disabilities, academic and non-academic experts, representatives of labour movements, civil society organisations in efforts to improve the quality of workplaces and protect the labour rights of underprivileged groups.
• Critical and traditional approaches in the study of work and employment of persons with disabilities. New methodologies and ethics in the study of vulnerable groups.  

We invite presentations of empirical national and international research results, theoretical and methodological considerations, including critical approaches and diagnoses. 

The world of work and therapeutic culture

Otwarta grupa tematyczna

Agata Krasowska, University of Wroclaw agata.krasowska@uwr.edu.pl

Katarzyna Waniek, University of Lodz  katarzyna.waniek@uni.lodz.pl 

This session is addressed to all those who explore the connections between the world of work and therapeutic culture as well as therapeutic discourse in their different configurations, at different levels and with different intensities. Taking as a starting point the findings of Nicolas Rose who claims that nowadays in liberal, democratic and capitalistic societies […] the stewardship of human conduct has become an inartistically psychological activity we seek submissions for papers that discuss the interaction between therapeutic culture and neoliberal form of governance that promotes self-realisation, self-responsibility, entrepreneurial self and creativity. Submissions that will focus on the impact of discipline and techniques of surveillance and subjugation on organizational practices and power relations. We are especially interested in biographical accounts and personal documents that expose the influence of the “psy”-sciences on individual experiences and the way people account for their everyday life practices, personal identity choices and biographical orientations – with particular emphasis on the sphere of work. It is also important for us to focus on and critically analyse different tools to identify and determine the nature and extent of the interplay between individual experiences and therapeutic culture that may be visible not only via its specific vocabulary. We are also interested in the following areas: 

• the therapeutic spirit of neoliberalism: living and working in neoliberal management policies; 
• therapeutic role of work; 
• work efficiency and Generation Z’s approach to work; 
• the neoliberal homo economicus: the idea of potential and entrepreneurship, which in capitalism defines who one is; 
• creating yourself: maximizing the potential of individuals, life management and self-care; 
• work as a tool for self-fulfilment and development of human capital for use on the labour market – the individual as capital in the labour market and self-fulfilment compulsion;  
• the requirement to work intensively on yourself and develop your own agency at work; 
• the idea of autotelic work, which does not result from any compulsion and is an extension of one’s own passions, and which masks the principle of efficiency; 
• the idea of mobility as one of the most important ideas of capitalism encouraging mobility in order to seek attractive employment; 
• the subsumption of work into capital, which is manifested in the contemporary organization of work, which has made the employee’s subjectivity the most valuable capital. It requires creativity, which extends to all areas of life, i.e. working on one’s own abilities and interpersonal relationships (primarily in the economic sense), increasing chances on the labour market. 

Zamknięte grupy tematyczne

Continuity in crisis? Polycrisis and the world of work in Poland in 2020-2024 

Zamknięta grupa tematyczna

Adam Mrozowicki, Uniwersytet Wrocławski adam.mrozowicki@uwr.edu.pl

Jacek Burski, Uniwersytet Wrocławski jacek.burski@uwr.edu.pl  

The proposed thematic group will debate the impact of socio-economic crises that hit Poland after 2020 on the selected aspects of socio-economic consciousness, job quality and life strategies of workers.  The concept of polycrisis became popular in academia and the media after the outbreak of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic which brought attention to the interactions and amplification of different types of crisis phenomena. Some crises, including the global climate crisis, the cost-of-living crisis especially for socially disadvantaged groups or the crawling crisis of public services under neoliberalism, are long-term, chronic processes. Other crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic or the full-fledged war stagged by Russia against Ukraine, were of much more sudden nature and their outbreak seemed to undermine the very foundations of social, political and economic orders involved. The question we would like to ask during this panel is what is the effect of the overlapping crises on the world of work in Poland with particular attention to the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic? The papers to be presented reflect the results of the research project „COV-WORK: Socio-economic consciousness, work experiences and coping strategies of Poles in the context of the post-pandemic crisis.” The selected papers will concern the socio-economic mentality of the working Poles, the quality of their jobs and coping strategies in key public services (education, health care, social care, logistics), the evolution of social dialogue and social conflicts at work after 2020 and the discourse around the crisis and work in the main Polish media. Overall, the analysis in the project calls for rethinking the concept of the polycrisis and consider its structural, institutional, discursive and biographical aspects which contribute to more chronicity and path-dependency than deep and far-reaching social changes.   

The proposed list of contributions: 

• The (poly)crisis – game changer or continuation? Interlinked crises in the world of work in Poland (Adam Mrozowicki, University of Wrocław) 
• The pandemic crisis in media discourse in the years 2020-2023 (Mateusz Karolak, University of Wrocław) 
• The socio-economic consciousness of working Poles in the post-pandemic situation (Juliusz Gardawski, Warsaw School of Economics) 
• The selected aspects of job quality in essential public services during the COVID-19 pandemic and following crises (Jan Czarzasty, Alicja Palęcka [Warsaw School of Economics], Aleksandra-Drabina-Różewicz, Szymon Pilch [University of Wrocław] 
• The revival of social dialogue or the trigger of social conflicts? Polycrisis in the Polish industrial relations (Adam Mrozowicki, University of Wrocław, Jan Czarzasty, Warsaw School of Economics)  
• Biographical experiences and coping strategies of essential workers in healthcare, social care, education and logistics (Jacek Burski, Agata Krasowska, University of Wrocław)