Continuity or change? Platforms and the hybridization of neoliberal institutional contexts.

In recent years, a wide range of contributions have sought to conceptualize the emergent effects of platforms on contemporary capitalism(s). One strand of literature has emphasized the novelty of platforms, stressing their disruptive features and proclaiming the rise of a new era - platform/digital capitalism. Another strand has tended to position platforms within the longue durée of capitalist transformation, focusing on the continuities and historical recurrences of platform-led transformations. In contrast to both strands of literature, this paper argues that platforms should be understood as reworking existing, neoliberal institutions from within, engendering a process of hybridization. It builds on the French Régulation approach to trace platform-led transformations in the wage relation and social reproduction. It argues that platforms have consolidated their dominance in the post-2008 financial crisis period by, on the one hand, inserting themselves into neoliberal 'innovations' in labor markets, benefitting from a flexibilized, precaritized and casualized workforce and, on the other, by responding to the neoliberal crisis in social reproduction, and the decades-long privatization, marketization and individualization of reproductive tasks. It explores these dynamics in the context of Amsterdam and Berlin, tracing the hybridization of the neoliberal wage-labor nexus in the context of food delivery, cleaning and care platforms.

Economic returns to reproducing parents' field of study.

Research on the influence of family background on college graduates' earnings has not considered the importance of the match between parents' and children's field of study. Using a novel design based on within-family comparisons, I examine long-term earnings returns to reproducing parents' field of study in Denmark. I find that individuals whose field of study matches that of a parent have earnings that are 2 percent higher than those of their siblings with college degrees in different fields, on average. Earnings returns to field inheritance are highest in the fields of law (9 percent), medicine (6 percent), and engineering (4 percent) and are driven mainly by income from self-employment. I find no direct evidence of nepotism as the earnings advantage does not arise from inheritance of parents' firms or employment in parents' occupational network. My findings indicate that, although a college degree generally equalizes family background differences in economic outcomes, there are additional payoffs to field inheritance, particularly in traditional fields characterized by a high degree of social closure and self-employment.

Hospitality Work as Social Reproduction: Embodied and Emotional Labour during COVID-19.

This article focuses on how the imaginary of a 'safe' environment was visualised and conveyed within the hospitality sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing on diaries and interviews with 21 workers in the UK. Our findings show increased workloads for hospitality staff, compounded by anxieties of risk and individualised COVID-19 regulation work. This includes workers' negotiations of corporeal boundaries and distancing from customers, the visible cleaning of communal areas and recuperation and care work for their own bodies and others in shared living spaces. We draw on conceptualisations of embodied and emotional labour to understand these experiences, reflecting on the importance of the actions performed by workers in maintaining community spaces and creating customer confidence in safely enjoying a 'hospitable' environment. This article contributes to social science scholarship of embodied and emotional labour, hospitality and social reproduction.

Any Time, Any Place, Any Way, Any Pace: Markets, EdTech, and the spaces of schooling.

For decades investors have sought to find ways of profiting off the billions of public dollars spent annually on systems of public schooling across the world. This interest has coincided with the growing marketization of systems of public schooling, especially in the United States, as well as the increased use of educational technologies (or EdTech). This study examines the implications of the growing use of profit-driven educational technologies for the politics and spatial practices of schooling. Specifically, it examines past experiences with market-oriented EdTech systems in Oregon and Michigan to highlight how the combination of market systems of governance and profit-driven EdTech practices depend on the deconstruction of links between schools, communities, and students in order to roll out aspatial and apolitical educational practices that maximize profits. The placeless vision for education embedded in profit-driven EdTech helps promote the reproduction of dominant orders and stifles place-based struggles over educational justice.

The critical temporalities of serial migration and family social reproduction in Southeast Asia.

The prevailing neoliberal labour migration regime in Asia is underpinned by principles of enforced transience: the overwhelming majority of migrants - particularly those seeking low-skilled, low-waged work - are admitted into host nation-states on the basis of short-term, time-bound contracts, with little or no possibility of family reunification or permanent settlement at the destination. As families go transnational, 'family times' become inextricably intertwined with the 'times of migration' (Cwerner, 2001). In this context, for many migrant-sending families in Southeast Asian source countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, parental migration as a strategy for migrating out of poverty or for socio-economic advancement requires the left-behind family to resiliently absorb the uncertainties of parental leaving and returning. Based on research on Indonesian and Filipino rural households (studied from 2008 through 2017) including paired life-story interviews with parental/non-parental adult carers and children, the article investigates the crucial links between the time construct of seriality in migration on the one hand, and the temporal structure of family based social reproduction on the other. It first focuses on how serial migration produces, and is produced by, spiraling needs and expanding aspirations, hence creating its own momentum for continuity. The paper then explores how competing temporal logics create difficult choices for migrants, leading to the recalibration of priorities within constrained resources. By drawing attention to the co-existence of and contradictions between multiple temporalities in the lives of migrants and their families, a critical temporalities framework yields new insights in understanding the social reproduction of families in a migratory context.

Beyond crisis? Using rent theory to understand the restructuring of publicly funded seniors' care in British Columbia, Canada.

Crises of seniors' care in countries like the UK and Canada, further highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, have been connected to processes of privatization and financialization. In this paper I argue that rent theory is important for disaggregating mechanisms, including of accumulation by dispossession, the devaluation of labour, and assetization, that underpin the process of financialization in the sector. Work on rents often divides between critical approaches, especially to land rent, and mainstream institutionalist and public choice approaches to rent-seeking. Critical rent theory is evolving beyond this divide to understand a broader range of types of rent. Yet, despite attention to the increasing importance of economic rents and forms of rentierism, labour and social reproduction are often excluded from the analysis of how rent relations arise. This paper demonstrates the problems with these exclusions. The argument is illustrated through an analysis of the restructuring of eldercare in British Columbia, Canada, in the last two decades, and employs a feminist political economy approach to examine the social production of rent relations.

Schools as Drivers of Capitalist Accumulation Conditional Socialized Reproduction in Shenzhen.

Based on fieldwork in an urbanized village of Shenzhen, this paper analyzes the place of schools in the reproduction of Chinese state capitalism. It retraces the circuit of socialized capital that allows for the social reproduction of the native elite and the exclusion of many migrant workers in the context of Shenzhen's development as a special economic zone and its efforts to upgrade the economy. The native villagers, now forming an urban upper-class of rentiers, have capitalized on their overseas connections and capital accumulation to finance their school, allowing for their elite's upward social mobility after, but also already under Mao. After China's transition to capitalism, this school has served as an asset in generating value in the context of redevelopment and the real estate-driven upgrading of Shenzhen's economy. Property ownership is now a major criterion in points-based systems for accessing school places. I make two interrelated arguments. First, there is a closer relationship between the secondary circuit of socialized capital and the larger circuit of capital than what the literature on social reproduction implies. Second, the conditionality of quality education upon value generation amounts to separating the population deemed worthy of socialized reproduction and the surplus population that is left out. The paper connects diverse strands of social reproduction theory, Althusser's interpellation and ideological state apparatuses, feminist agentive social reproduction theories, and Bourdieu's capital conversion recuperated within a Marxian framework, to provide an integrated approach to social reproduction within capitalism.

Does Internal Migration Contribute to the Intergenerational Transmission of Socioeconomic Inequalities? The Role of Childhood Migration.

The widening of socioeconomic inequalities in most developed countries makes it essential to improve understanding of the mechanisms underpinning social reproduction-that is, the transmission of advantage and disadvantage between generations. This article proposes that internal migration plays a role in transmitting socioeconomic inequalities. Theoretically, the article formulates a conceptual framework building on three lines of inquiry: (1) the intergenerational transmission of internal migration behavior, (2) the role of internal migration in social mobility, and (3) the educational selectivity of internal migration. Empirically, the article quantifies the links between long-distance internal migration and social reproduction in 15 European countries by using a structural equation model on retrospective life history data. The results show that children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to migrate, increasing their chances of migrating in adulthood, which is associated with higher socioeconomic status later in life. In addition, advantaged children are more likely to migrate to urban centers with their greater educational and employment opportunities. These results illuminate the socioeconomic impact of internal migration across generations, highlight the importance of conceptualizing internal migration as a life course trajectory, and emphasize the lifelong legacy of childhood migration.

"Having a guru is like having a licence": analysing financial relationships between khwaja sira gurus and chelas in Swat, Pakistan.

The focus of this study was on identifying themes regarding the financial relationships between gurus (leaders) and chelas (disciples) in khwaja sira communities in Khyber Pakhtunkwa, Pakistan. We interviewed 45 khwaja sira in Mingora, Swat on their experiences of guru-chela culture. All interviews were digitally audio recorded, then translated and transcribed directly from Pashto into English. Transcripts of the interviews were analysed using thematic content analysis in a manner informed by both social reproduction theory and notions of Islamic capital. We identified four major themes related to relationships within guru-chela culture: (1) financial relationships are highly structured; (2) financial exchanges can be mutually beneficial; (3) systems of payment and debt can be exploitative; and (4) financial ties to gurus continue throughout the life course of khwaja sira. Findings show how financial interactions within guru-chela relationships are reflective of larger social forces, reproducing kinship structures, systems of Islamic gift-giving, and capitalist processes occurring within Pakhtun society.

Typology of habitus in education: Findings from a review of qualitative studies.

Contextualized in the debate on the (mis)use of habitus in educational research, the present study addresses two research questions: (a) What are the different functions that habitus (i.e., the dispositions underpinning cultural capital that are accumulated through socialization and that guide individuals' daily practices) serves in students' educational experiences? and (b) What characterizes the pattern of continuity or discontinuity for habitus across different contexts? Results of the meta-ethnographic review synthesizing findings from 37 qualitative studies show that there was a typology of different functions associated with habitus (academic socialization, motivating learning, facilitating content learning, developing learners' self-identity and aspirations). These functions transcended cognitive, affective, and social dimensions in students' present and future learning. However, habitus could also serve as a coping or risk-mitigation mechanism. Furthermore, results show that habitus could be continuous or discontinuous across fields (student, familial, institutional) and sub-fields (educational levels, types of learning, subjects, programs, learners). These results suggest that the prolific use of habitus in research should not be simply dismissed as conceptual infidelity; rather, it enables researchers to clarify how habitus serves different functions in educational experiences of students varying in their learning needs at different stages of their learning and in different contexts. The study contributes to the development of a conceptual framework for habitus that can inform future research. Practical implications for improving disadvantaged students' learning are discussed. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11218-022-09724-4.

Dead Ends and Blind Spots in the European Semester: The Epistemological Foundation of the Crisis in Social Reproduction.

This article provides new perspectives on the persistent hierarchy between 'social' and 'economic' goals in European Union's (EU) economic governance. We operationalize insights from feminist economics and political economy to analyse the agenda-setting documents of the European Semester - the Annual Growth Surveys (AGS) - showing how the much-debated integration of social goals into the European Semester is fundamentally constrained by mainstream economic epistemologies. These epistemologies misrepresent interrelationships between the productive economy and the reproductive labour needed to maintain it. Using interpretive policy analysis, we show how multiple concepts and measurements used to conceptualize policy goals and impacts within the AGSs, coalesce to systematically misrepresent reproductive labour as a 'social' activity, an irrelevance, or a cost, rather than a macroeconomic input. This restricts the possibilities of enhancing the social dimension of the European Semester, in ways conspicuously ignored by the existing literature, which are of heightened salience in the wake of Covid-19.

From goods to goats: examining post-disaster livelihood recovery in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake 2015.

Disasters can have substantial impacts on people's livelihoods in developing countries. Further, if the need for livelihood interventions is ignored or delayed, the crisis may trigger unexpected harmful consequences in the affected households in the aftermath. Therefore, restoring livelihoods should remain a priority in the post-disaster recovery process. However, such recoveries in rural contexts and developing countries, like Nepal, are complex as the livelihood restoration process is affected by serious spatial, socio-economic, and political factors. We employed qualitative research methods in four highly affected districts in the 2015 Nepal Earthquake (7.8 Mw) to examine post-disaster livelihoods recovery. Our paper critically assesses the humanitarian response based on the narratives and lived experiences of affected households. The findings show that humanitarian assistance was crucial in addressing several unmet needs of disaster-affected rural households in resource-poor settings in Nepal. However, the interventions were generally fragmented, insufficient, neoliberal led (forcing market dependencies), and largely business-as-usual in their orientation. Previous studies in Nepal paid insufficient attention to the goods provided to affected households in the name of recovery. Therefore, our paper scrutinises selected humanitarian objects, such as power tillers, and unpacks their political economy and effectiveness in local contexts. Further, our findings show that some livelihood policies reinforced the gap between the haves and have-nots, thereby reproducing pre-disaster inequalities in the post-disaster field.

Critical realism methodology as a guiding framework for interdisciplinary theory enrichment: Reflections on a study of empowerment.

Philosophy of science and ontological assumptions underpin our work as scholars, explicitly, or implicitly. In this paper, we develop empowerment theory with a critical realism (CR) lens. Through the example of a study of empowerment, we examine how can it be used as a guiding paradigm for research in community psychology (CP). We sought to increase theoretical rigor by using a CR approach to interdisciplinarity. We put empowerment into conversation with Social Reproduction Theory and Black, Indigenous, People of Color feminisms, because both represent situated knowledge that address experiences with oppression and focus on dismantling systems of oppression. We illustrate how a CR approach shaped our understanding of empowerment, and in turn, provided an analysis that was (a) more nuanced and actionable, (b) more aligned with CP values and definitions of social justice, and (c) more likely to contribute to the field by developing an intersectional anticapitalist and feminist intervention into empowerment literature. This paper highlights how, aligned with an interdisciplinary CR approach, we questioned assumptions about empowerment theory, which influenced our empirical work so that we could provide a more focused critique of unjust social arrangements, and with it, the possibility to act upon those arrangements.

COVID-19: Interrogating the capitalist organization of the economy and society through the pandemic.

This editorial introduces eight papers included in this special issue on COVID-19. Together, these papers draw key theoretical and political insights for critical organization studies from the pandemic along three main lines. First, they examine how COVID-19 has denaturalized global capitalism, leading to a broad interrogation of the organization of the economy and our societies. Second, they point to how COVID-19 has unveiled the close relation between capital and the state in producing inequalities old and new, a relation that neoliberalism tends to hide from view. Third, they leverage COVID-19 to give voice to the largely female disposable workforce in the Global South on whose work global commodity flows, consumption and capital accumulation rest. We conclude by pointing to the need to address constitutive interdependencies, such as those between wage work and reproductive work, the global North and the global South, the market and the state, to name only a few. We further call for expanding traditional understandings of struggle to include a broader range of social antagonisms (e.g. for sufficient time to care, education, healthcare, housing, safe public spaces, accessible to all) as part of a theoretically and politically renewed organizational research agenda fostering solidarity.

For feminist geographies of austerity.

Austerity policies and austere socio-economic conditions in the UK have had acute consequences for everyday life and, interconnectedly, the political and structural regimes that impact upon the lives of women and marginalised groups. Feminist geographies have arguably been enlivened and reinvigorated by critical engagements with austerity, bringing to light everyday experiences, structural inequalities and multi-scalar socio-economic relations. With this paper I propose five areas of intervention for further research in this field: social reproduction, everyday epistemologies, intersectionality, voice and silence, and embodied fieldwork. To conclude, I argue for continuing feminist critique and analyses given the legacies and futures of austerity.

Educación y determinismo social: algunas reflexiones a partir del concepto de Movilidad Educacional Intergeneracional (MEI) / Education and social determinism: some reflections about the concept of Intergenerational Educational Mobility

Resumen La movilidad educacional intergeneracional (MEI), entendida como la asociación del nivel educacional alcanzado por los padres con relación al nivel educacional alcanzado por hijos, se presenta como un concepto que ha alcanzado relevancia en la investigación social durante el último tiempo. Diferentes estudios lo han utilizado para caracterizar los procesos de expansión de los sistemas educacionales contemporáneos, así como para comprender la evolución del fenómeno de la desigualdad educacional. Sin embargo, se ha utilizado mayormente como un indicador dentro los análisis. En este artículo proponemos una reflexión del concepto de movilidad educacional intergeneracional en tanto concepto teórico-sociológico que permite reflexionar sobre los procesos de determinismo social, en la línea de los trabajos que prolongan conceptos como el de habitus. Para lograr este propósito, este artículo se desarrolla de la siguiente manera. En primer lugar, se presenta el concepto de movilidad educacional intergeneracional y su influencia en tanto indicador de igualdad y referente de la movilidad social. En segundo lugar, se relaciona esta movilidad social con los conceptos de habitus y campo académico, además de poner en evidencia las trayectorias que rompen con el esquema de reproducción social; el llamado milagro sociológico. En tercer lugar, se examinan los elementos de aculturación y asimilación que se ponen en marcha en el proceso de migración y movilidad social. Por último, presentamos la relación entre los distintos factores de facilitación y obstaculización con los conceptos tratados.

Abstract Intergenerational educational mobility, understood as the association of the educational level attained by parents in relation to the educational level attained by their children, is a concept that has gained relevance in social research in recent times. Different studies have used it to characterize the expansion processes of contemporary educational systems, as well as to understand the evolution of the phenomenon of educational inequality. However, it has been used mostly as an indicator within the analysis. In this article we propose a reflection on the concept of intergenerational educational mobility as a theoretical-sociological concept that allows us to reflect on the processes of social determinism, along the lines of works that extend concepts such as habitus. To achieve this purpose, this article is developed as follows. First, the concept of intergenerational educational mobility and its influence as an indicator of equality and a referent of social mobility is presented. Secondly, this social mobility is related to the concepts of habitus and academic field, in addition to highlighting the trajectories that break with the scheme of social reproduction; the so-called sociological miracle. Thirdly, we examine the elements of acculturation and assimilation that are set in motion in the process of migration and social mobility. Finally, we present the relationship between the various facilitating and hindering factors with the concepts discussed.

Land grabbing and agribusiness in Argentina: five critical dimensions for analysing corporate strategies and its impacts over unequal actors.

This paper critically analyses the complexity of the land grabbing phenomenon in Argentina. We study land grabbing processes linked to the expansion of agribusiness by focusing on corporate regionally extended land grabbers' strategies through five dimensions: (1) forms of control over land (and other resources) are not restricted to the formal acquisition of property, (2) the role of both national and foreign actors are essential in land grabbing dynamics, (3) land grabbing is not expressed exclusively by the scale of the area traded, (4) the current cycle of land grabbing is part of the convergence of multiple crises and (5) forms of political action are complex and involve diverse positioning. We conclude that land grabbing mechanisms unfold differently depending on the diversity of socio-spatial formations they encounter in each territory and that forms of political action "from below" are complex and not restricted to overt conflict.

COVID-19 Outbreaks in Canada and the Crisis of Migrant Farmworkers' Social Reproduction: Transnational Labour and the Need for Greater Accountability Among Receiving States.

In 2020, migrant farmworkers in Canada, cast as essential to sustaining the national food supply, experienced relatively high COVID-19 infection rates. Taking Southern Ontario as its focus, this article reveals how the federal government response to COVID-19 in agriculture perpetuated the effects of longstanding laws and policies requiring migrant farmworkers, circumscribed in their ability to politically mobilize on account of their institutionalized deportability, to shoulder disproportionate amounts of economic, social, and health risks. Centering the transnational character of migrant farmworkers' renewal, it identifies meaningful interventions to limit the structural disempowerment of migrant farmworkers and the externalization of their social reproduction.

Reproduction, Life-course and Vital Conjunctures in the Context of Austerity.

Reproduction is a considerable concern in contemporary Europe and has attracted growing academic interest in the context of austerity. This paper brings together literature on social reproduction, the life-course and vital conjunctures, and develops innovative methodologies to understand reproduction in the context of everyday life in austerity. Using biographical vignettes from family ethnographies, themes of welfare restructuring, debt and care responsibilities emerge. Empirical insights explore social reproduction and defaulted futures, indebtedness and indecision as reproductive conjuncture, and incongruous biographies and absent possibilities. Conclusions call for further research on the relationship between reproductive futures and austerity, and methodological experimentation.

Dinâmica entre potenciais de fortalecimento e desgaste na vida de jovens da escola pública: pesquisa-ação com oficinas emancipatórias / Dynamics between potential for strengthening and weakening in the lives of public-school youth: action research with emancipatory workshops

Resumo O objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar a dinâmica entre os potenciais de fortalecimento e desgaste inerentes às condições de reprodução social de jovens escolares. Com base no Materialismo Histórico-Dialético, em particular, na Teoria da Determinação Social da Saúde, a análise considerou as dimensões universal, particular e singular da totalidade social. Trata-se de pesquisa-ação, desenvolvida em 13 oficinas emancipatórias, durante um período de cinco meses, com 12 alunos do ensino médio de uma escola pública da cidade de São Paulo, Brasil. As condições de reprodução social expuseram as configurações familiares dos participantes, que sofrem com a precarização do trabalho e o desemprego, a ausência ou inconsistência de apoio paterno e o precário processo de ressocialização e sociabilidade. Os jovens discutiram as inseguranças e dificuldades que enfrentam nos territórios onde vivem, os conflitos familiares, as repercussões das pressões sociais para enfrentar o futuro, o lugar da escola e da família em suas vidas, além de dúvidas sobre sexualidade e uso de drogas. A pesquisa-ação emancipatória permitiu aos participantes irem além da aparência, e revelou a essência da realidade dos jovens, mostrando que a perspectiva da emancipação está pautada no entendimento das dimensões singular, particular e universal das relações sociais.

Abstract This action research analyzes the dynamics between the potentials for strengthening and weakening inherent in the social reproduction of young students. Based on the historical-dialectical materialism, particularly on the Theory of Social Determinants of Health, the analysis considered the universal, particular, and singular dimensions of social totality. The study was developed in 13 emancipatory workshops, during a five-month period, attended by 12 high school students from a public school in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The conditions of social reproduction exposed the participants' family configurations, which suffer from precarious work and unemployment, the absence or inconsistency of paternal support, and a precarious process of resocialization and sociability. The teenagers discussed insecurities and difficulties faced by them in the territories where they live, family conflicts, the repercussions of social pressures to face the future, the place of school and family in their lives, and doubts regarding sexuality and drug use. The emancipatory action research allowed the participants to transcend appearance and demonstrated the essence of their reality, showing that emancipation is based on the understanding of the singular, particular, and universal dimensions of social relations.