Returns to Work in Occupational, Relational, and Corporate Settings–ReWORCS

The rise of platforms and remote work has refashioned concerns about work security and flexibility in public debates. Academic studies have documented an increase in non-standard work over decades, including polarization of rewards, shifting occupational boundaries, and winding paths among women and other marginalized groups. These findings had important policy implications but left questions about the unfolding of individual labor market experiences amid the more noticeable changes. This project mobilizes new techniques and data sources and overcomes divisions in research on work to address those problems. It will recover important complexity by (1) measuring the diversity of individual job trajectories in light of their economic returns, costs, and risks and by (2) grounding job trajectories in work activities and, crucially, workers’ interpretations of labor market structures. These objectives integrate previously divided formal and constructionist thinking to explain the interplay of contexts, practices, and meaning around work.

Funding: ERC-2023-STG #101117844

Team: Sofia Aouani, PhD; Florian Andersen; Ida Gaede.