Constructing Mobilities: The Reproduction of Posted Workers’ Disposability in the Construction Sector

Francesco Bagnardi, Devi Sacchetto and Francesca Alice Vianello
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Francesco Bagnardi: University of Milan, Italy
Devi Sacchetto: University of Padua, Italy
Francesca Alice Vianello: University of Padua, Italy

Work, Employment & Society, 2024, vol. 38, issue 6, 1703-1724

Abstract: Posted work is often framed as a business model based on social dumping. Widespread regulatory evasion is imputed to regulation’s opacity, firms’ predatory practices and trade unions’ inability to organise posted workers. Isolation and precariousness channel posted workers’ agency into individualised reworking or exit strategies. These perspectives, however insightful, focus either on formal regulations, enforcement actors or host countries’ institutional settings. Drawing on biographical interviews with Italian construction workers posted abroad, and semi-structured interviews with non-posted workers and stakeholders of the sector in Italy, the article adopts an actor-centred perspective and mobilises the concept of labour regime to show how its disciplining elements operating in the construction sector in Italy stick with workers during their postings and enhance their disposability. Although this sticky labour regime constrains workers’ agency abroad, it remains continuously contested and offers ways for workers to subvert it and improve their employment conditions.

Keywords: actor-centred perspective; construction sector; Italy; labour control; labour mobility; labour process theory; labour regime; posted workers; sticky labour regime; workers’ agency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:38:y:2024:i:6:p:1703-1724

DOI: 10.1177/09500170231225622

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