Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

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Changes in the Global Class Structure: The Precariat in the North and South. Part I

RC02 Economy and Society (host committee)

Language: English

This session calls for papers that are related to all issues regarding changing Global North and South class structures and precarious labor. Precarious labor is an old story but the contemporary precariat is a newly emerging global class thanks to globalization and neoliberalism. Thus the session covers a wide range of topics that are relevant to class structure and inequality on precarious workers in relation to income, migration, education, family, gender, race, ethnicity, crime, health, mobility, labor markets, the environment, space, and social movements and social networks. 
The session is open to various theoretical frameworks, perspectives and methodologies. Papers relevant to global class analysis, class relationships in local, national, and global contexts, and variant forms of social movements are welcome, but will not be limited to these themes and approaches. A wide range of studies that address various developing forms of precarity in Asia, Europe and countries of the Global South are also welcome.  
Structures of power and prestige have been evolving at the global scale; local and national level inequality structures have been increasingly impacted by global and transnational processes. Ongoing and novel reconfigurations of class relationship and networks show growing inequality in various forms. Simultaneously, a new mass class, the precariat, and movements involving this class suggest potential transformations toward new structures. The issue of the session is to examine and address the novel formation of class structures and precarity in different regions at local and global levels. Posters: