Studying Remote Work through an Intersectional Lens – Reflections on Methodology

In recent years, digitalisation has drastically changed how, when and where work is performed. The spatial flexibilisation associated with the growth of remote work arrangements has ambivalent implications for women's labour market participation: On the one hand, the ability to work from home, for example, may facilitate the integration of paid work and care. On the other hand, research has shown that this often increases the burden on women, who remain largely responsible for care and reproductive work. While there are several studies on gendered experiences of remote work, especially on subjective well-being, there is very little literature on other dimensions of gender inequality and even less on the intersection of multiple dimensions.

The Horizon Europe project "REmote-working Multiple impacts in the Age of disruptions: socioeconomic transformations, territorial rethinKING, and policy actions" aims to understand the impacts, conditions, opportunities, and challenges of remote work in Europe. As part of this, we examine how remote work is shaped by different systems of power, aiming to shed light on remote work beyond a white, middle-class, cisgender workforce.

We examine how opportunities to work remotely, and the experiences associated with them, are shaped by intersecting categories of gender, age, migration and citizenship status, and more. In our presentation, we reflect on how feminist epistemologies and participatory approaches can aid us in producing situated knowledges that are meaningful beyond the academic sphere and can contribute to making remote work more equitable and inclusive. In doing so, we draw on interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observations in two case studies from the project: one on remote work after the pandemic in the metropolitan area of Bologna, Italy, and one on remote work in the context of forced migration in Berlin and Brandenburg, Germany.