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Book part
Publication date: 9 May 2023

Ebru Akçay, Aslı Şahinkaya Ermiş and G. Senem Gençtürk Hızal

As media texts, advertisements use representation practices to construct ideological meanings. This study traced the representation of the worker in advertisements with the help…

Abstract

As media texts, advertisements use representation practices to construct ideological meanings. This study traced the representation of the worker in advertisements with the help of content and thematic analysis. The study aimed to reveal the representation of the worker in the advertisements and to make the representations of the worker built through advertisements visible. The study was limited to ads that received an Effie Award in Turkey in 2020 and 2021. In the 2020 Effie Awards, 73 awards were given in 41 categories and in the 2021 Effie Awards, 68 awards were given in 42 categories. Content analysis was applied to 24 advertisements in 2020 and 31 advertisements in 2021. The quantitative data helped to determine the themes in the thematic analysis. Thematic analysis was carried out by regarding the worker as the (in)visible, the (un)voiced, and the bypassed. This study, which reveals that the worker is represented in advertisements through being invisible, unvoiced, and bypassed, claims that the labor of the worker in the production process is ignored through representation practices. In this context, it can be said that the worker is erased and omitted in TV ads on a symbolic level.

Details

Management and Organizational Studies on Blue- and Gray-collar Workers: Diversity of Collars
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-754-9

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 September 2023

Seyhan Özdemir, Betül Sarı, Ebru Demirel and Melih Sever

This photovoice study aims to explore how cleaners experience dirty and invisible work in the workplace.

Abstract

Purpose

This photovoice study aims to explore how cleaners experience dirty and invisible work in the workplace.

Design/methodology/approach

This research is twofold. The authors first used the photovoice technique, which is one of the visual data collection techniques, to elaborate on the phenomena. The data were obtained with the participation of seven people (four women and three men) from building cleaners working at two public universities in Turkey. Three photographs were requested from each participant and selected nine photographs were described and analyzed among the collected 21 photographs. In addition to photovoice research, five interviews gave insight into the cleaners’ experiences in the second stage of the study.

Findings

This research revealed that participating cleaners experienced invisible dirty work and they felt undervalued, despised, treated as “second class/low-level people” and stigmatized.

Practical implications

This study recommends that university administrations defend the rights and dignity of cleaners at work, provide services to support their inclusion and increase staff awareness.

Originality/value

This study sheds light into an understudied area which is the building cleaners’ invisible and dirty work experiences and how that impacts their lives via a photovoice research.

Details

Facilities , vol. 42 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-2772

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 February 2023

Cecilia Vergnano

Two important measures concerning the management of the workforce were introduced in Italy during the COVID-19–related health emergency: the regularization of irregular migrants…

Abstract

Purpose

Two important measures concerning the management of the workforce were introduced in Italy during the COVID-19–related health emergency: the regularization of irregular migrants working in the domestic and agro-industrial sector, and the introduction of the health-pass requirement to access all workplaces. This article analyses the impacts of such measures on a specific category of workers: migrant farmworkers, notably racially subaltern, marginalized and exploited. Implicit ideological and normative assumptions underlying Italian policies to address the health emergency and related labor shortages raise important questions about the meaning of “life” and whose lives matter in emergency contexts, which this article aims to address.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on the case study of the informal settlements for seasonal migrant workers in the agro-industrial district of Capitanata (Apulia).

Findings

Based on the aforementioned case study, this article shows that Italian measurs concerning the management of the workforce during the COVID-19–related health emergency resulted in various forms of blackmail to which migrant farmworkers were especially subjected, and increased their exploitability and “expulsability” from the labor market. In particular, it argues that the aforementioned measures resulted in significant shifts in the relationship between migrant farmworkers and the state, on the one hand, and between migrant farmworkers and employers, on the other.

Originality/value

Rather than promoting migrant farmworkers' social, economic and health rights, this double shift turned into increased oppression, exploitability and dependency on the employer.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 43 no. 3/4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

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Article
Publication date: 12 July 2023

Athena Michalakea

This paper aims to shed light on the spatial constraints of sex work in Greece. The objective is twofold: to illustrate the intertemporal stance of the Greek state to push sex…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to shed light on the spatial constraints of sex work in Greece. The objective is twofold: to illustrate the intertemporal stance of the Greek state to push sex work at the edge of both the city and the law produces sex workers as always already marginal subjects and to identify how a spatial-based understanding of sex work could help in acknowledging sex workers’ full community citizenship.

Design/methodology/approach

This article examines the legal geographies of sex work in modern and contemporary Greece. The author is a doctoral student in critical jurisprudence with a professional background in urban planning law, who also works voluntarily with Athens-based sex worker’s organizations. Law’s materialization within space (Bennet and Layard, 2015, p. 406), namely, the implication of law in the discursive and material production of place, is examined through archival research with primary and secondary sources, including legislations and LGBT publications such as Amfi and Kráximo from the 1980s and 1990s found in the Archives of Contemporary Social History (ASKI) in Athens. Additionally, as the author is currently conducting fieldwork with people who are working or have worked in the past in sex in Greece as a part of her PhD dissertation, the paper contains data provided by ten interlocutors to highlight their own personal experience. The researcher has used the critical oral history method, as it is committed to recording first-hand knowledge of experiences of marginalized community members who are often unheard or untold, with the additional goals of contextualizing these stories to reveal power differences and inequities (Lemley, 2017, Rickard, 2003).

Findings

The paper provides insight into how regulationism establishes the brothel – a metonymy of prostitution – as a heterotopia within the urban space. Contemporary approaches, such as LULUs and broken window policies, are used to indicate the historically marginal placement of sex work.

Research limitations/implications

The interviews presented here were conducted in the summer of 2022, in the context of the author’s PhD research. Despite her six years of activist-level involvement with sex workers’ rights organizations, due to ethical constraints, only the findings of interviews conducted up to the writing of this paper are presented here, while details of private discussions with members of these organizations are omitted.

Originality/value

The paper examines a significant and timely matter of place making and spatial justice. Unlike earlier research on prostitution in Greece that focused on the brothel either as a heterotopia or as an undesirable land use, the novelty of this paper is that it highlights the intersections between policing, planning, public hygiene, anti-immigration policies around the regulation of the sex market. By critically discussing the implications of the de facto illegality of sex work in Greece, the study highlights the importance of including the voices of sex workers in decision-making and contributes to the debate around the decriminalization of sex work in Greece.

Details

Journal of Place Management and Development, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1753-8335

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 May 2023

Jo Bates, Elli Gerakopoulou and Alessandro Checco

Underlying much recent development in data science and artificial intelligence (AI) is a dependence on the labour of precarious crowdworkers via platforms such as Amazon…

Abstract

Purpose

Underlying much recent development in data science and artificial intelligence (AI) is a dependence on the labour of precarious crowdworkers via platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. These platforms have been widely critiqued for their exploitative labour relations, and over recent years, there have been various efforts by academic researchers to develop interventions aimed at improving labour conditions. The aim of this paper is to explore US-based crowdworkers’ views on two proposed interventions: a browser plugin that detects automated quality control “Gold Question” (GQ) checks and a proposal for a crowdworker co-operative.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors interviewed 20 US-based crowdworkers and undertook a thematic analysis of collected data.

Findings

The findings indicate that US-based crowdworkers tend to have negative and mixed feelings about the GQ detector, but were more enthusiastic about the crowdworker co-operative.

Originality/value

Drawing on theories of precarious labour, this study suggests an explanation for the findings based on US-based workers’ objective and subjective experiences of precarity. The authors argue that for US-based crowdworkers “constructive” interventions such as a crowdworker co-operative have more potential to improve labour conditions.

Details

Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, vol. 21 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1477-996X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 5 February 2024

Sajia Ferdous

This chapter discusses work-life interface (WLI) issues for migrant-citizen older British women of South Asian heritage living in the UK. It shows how WLI issues are inevitably…

Abstract

This chapter discusses work-life interface (WLI) issues for migrant-citizen older British women of South Asian heritage living in the UK. It shows how WLI issues are inevitably entangled with the active ageing agenda for the older workforce and that we need further attention from scholars exploring these issues across life courses to appreciate and understand how ageing across locations, times and contexts unveils unique aspects of WLI. The chapter discussion rethinks some of the existing constructs of WLI and introduces new ones to its periphery, including people’s social identities and the spatio-temporal nature of those identities. Such a rethinking process is supported by critical empirical evidence on the lived experiences of a group of older ethnic minority British women living in Greater Manchester, UK, who juggled between work and caring throughout their lives, and abruptly quit paid work due to unmanageable overlapping demands. The evidence indicates how migrant women from the global south struggle to navigate UK WLI norms/culture and their meanings, especially when irreconcilable differences exist between the community/family norms and the social norms in the host country. The chapter findings have implications for the future of an inclusive labor market as it recommends early planning, provisioning and addressing ageing migrants’ WLI issues to draw sustainable/inclusive future labor market policies.

Details

Work-Life Inclusion: Broadening Perspectives Across the Life-Course
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-219-8

Keywords

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 29 November 2023

Mariko Yang-Yoshihara, Susi Poli and Simon Kerridge

This chapter delves into the evolving identity of professionals within the field of research management and administration (RMA), examining the shifts in their roles and…

Abstract

This chapter delves into the evolving identity of professionals within the field of research management and administration (RMA), examining the shifts in their roles and expectations in the changing landscape in higher education. After the introductory section, Section 2 offers a conceptual framework that emphasises identity as a dynamic process rather than a static concept. This framework sheds light on the changing roles and expectations that define the RMA profession. In Section 3, we explore the contextual backdrop of shifting expectations surrounding RMA roles while stressing the importance of recognizing the multiplicity of identities to comprehend the nuances of the RMA profession. Section 4 analyzes empirical data and explore the diverse pathways that lead individuals into the RMA profession. We uncover that a notable proportion of RMAs possess scientific training and research experience and highlight the complexities surrounding the identity of RMAs with doctoral training (DRMAs). Lastly, Section 5 discusses key observations that yield valuable insights for future research on the evolving professional identity of RMAs. We emphasise that, through self-exploration and introspection, practitioners in the field can contribute to a deeper understanding of their roles and actively shape their professional identity.

Details

The Emerald Handbook of Research Management and Administration Around the World
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-701-8

Keywords

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 29 November 2023

Abstract

Details

The Emerald Handbook of Research Management and Administration Around the World
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-701-8

Book part
Publication date: 18 September 2023

John Quin

Abstract

Details

Video
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-756-3

Article
Publication date: 3 October 2023

Priya Kataria and Shelly Pandey

The purpose of this paper is to study the experiences of middle-class working mothers from the ITES (Information Technology Enabled Service) sector in India during the COVID-19…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study the experiences of middle-class working mothers from the ITES (Information Technology Enabled Service) sector in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their experiences of work from home are studied in the backdrop of the ideal worker model at work and the adult worker model at home. Further, the study aims to identify the need for sustainable, inclusive practices for working mothers in Indian organizations to break the male breadwinner model in middle-class households.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative approach to collect data from 39 middle-class mothers working in MNCs in four metro cities in India. The semi-structured, in-depth interviews focused on their experiences of motherhood, care and work before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Findings

The pandemic made it evident that the ideal worker model in organizations and the adult worker model at home were illusions for working mothers. The results indicate a continued obligation of the “ideal worker culture” at organizations, even during the health crisis. It made the working mothers realize that they were chasing both the (ideal worker and adult worker) norms but could never achieve them. Subsequently, the male breadwinner model was reinforced at home due to the matrix of motherhood, care and work during the pandemic. The study concludes by arguing the reconstruction of the ideal worker image to make workplaces more inclusive for working mothers.

Originality/value

The study is placed in the context of Indian middle-class motherhood during the pandemic, a demography less explored in the literature. The paper puts forth various myths constituting the gendered realities of Indian middle-class motherhood. It also discusses sustainable, inclusive workplace practices for mothers from their future workplaces' standpoint, especially in post-pandemic times.

Details

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-7149

Keywords

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