Emerging Professionalism in Dirty Jobs/Works: A Focus on the Margins and the Borders of Professions and Work

Tuesday, 8 July 2025: 15:00-16:45
Location: SJES023 (Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences (JES))
RC52 Sociology of Professional Groups (host committee)
RC30 Sociology of Work

Language: English

In the literature, the notions of dirty jobs / dirty works were related to jobs or roles that are seen as disgusting or degrading, with stigma affecting the formation of professional identity and negatively influencing workers’ processes of constructing self-esteem (at the individual level) and professionalization (at group level). Within the literature on dirty jobs/works, the attention was often focused on the dirty workers’ actions to reduce or neutralise stigmatisation. But recent contributions focus on the socially contingent nature of dirty work is constructed, on the relations between material and symbolic aspects of work, and the agency played by practitioners in this process.

With this session we aim to explore the enrichment process of the literature on dirty jobs/works and merging it with the emerging professions debate. In this call for contributions, we would like to focus on studies concerning all those professional groups that deal with tasks considered to be unpleasant, disgusting or humiliating, or that simply position themselves at the borders of the professional system.

The following (non-exhaustive) list includes some of the groups that we would like to debate during the session: care workers, sexual assistance, environmental sustainability and urban liveability jobs, green economy and circular economy jobs, and digital labour platforms workers. We also would like to invite contributions from new medical professions, focusing on the manual tasks of care that are necessary for the wellbeing of the patient, as well as the routinary assistance to the demands of citizenships.

Session Organizers:
Diego COLETTO, Università degli Studi di Milano - Bicocca, Italy and Lara MAESTRIPIERI, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
Chair:
Lara MAESTRIPIERI, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
Oral Presentations
From Collecting Dirty Waste to Collecting Clean Data? Exploring the Intersection of Waste Work, Digitalization and Shifting Professionalisms
Charlotte BENEDIX, Harz University of Applied Sciences, Germany; Lina SCHÖNE, Harz University of Apllied Sciences, Germany; Diana AYEH, Harz University of Applied Sciences, Germany; Alena BLEICHER, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Germany
Between Law and Practice: The Persistent Reality of Manual Scavenging As Modern Slavery in India
Nihal RAJ, National Institute of Technology Patna, India
Money Transfer Locations: From Core to Margins? Border, Spatiality, and Participatory Insights from the City of Palermo
Antonina ALBANESE, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy
The Dirty Work of Facilities Management: Exploring Its Place within Human Resource Management
Patricia MCCARROLL, Education, United Kingdom; Toyin ADERIYE, United Kingdom
Rodents, Bodily Fluids, and Dirty Plates: The Management of ‘Dirty Work’ in the UK Hospitality Industry
James GREEN, United Kingdom
Poor Work Around the Streets of Milan: An Ethnographic Study of the Informal Street Vending Sector
Sara RECCHI, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
Distributed Papers
Managing Leaky Bodies in the Workplace – a Forgotten Form of Dirty Work?
Jennifer REMNANT REMNANT, United Kingdom; Kendra BRIKEN, University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
Effects of the Increase in Labor Costs in the Home Help Service in Spain
Miguel CENTELLA MOYANO, Spain; Francisco Jesús PADILLA FALCÓN, University of Extremadura, Spain
The Dirty Creative Work of the Secondhand Economy
Alida PAYSON, Cardiff University, United Kingdom; Triona FITTON, University of Kent, United Kingdom
El Trabajo “Invisible” De Los Productores Rurales Desde La Perspectiva De La Ergonomía De Yves Schwartz
Luciana Arminda GOMES, Universidade fEderal de Goiás, Brazil; Brasil BRASIL BRASIL, UEG - Universidade Estadual de Goias, Brazil
See more of: RC52 Sociology of Professional Groups
See more of: RC30 Sociology of Work
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