Working and Learning Lives In Transition: Biographical Approaches to Work, Education, Professions, and Social Inequalities

The worlds of work are undergoing profound transformations. Flexibilization, digitalization, platformization, the reorganization of professional fields, the erosion of stable employment trajectories, and growing uncertainty about occupational futures have reshaped work and biographies. Work and professions are increasingly experienced as unstable fields in which individuals seek recognition, autonomy, belonging, and meaning. These transformations are deeply intertwined with social inequalities. Social class, gender, ethnicity, migration status, generation, and territorial location shape unequal opportunities and constraints across working lives, influencing access to education, employment, professional recognition, social mobility, and occupational futures.A biographical perspective is well suited to exploring how social change and inequalities are experienced, interpreted, negotiated, and challenged within individual life histories. It enables the study of work and professions not only as structural processes but also as lived and narrated experiences. This session invites papers that explore transformations in the worlds of work and professions through biographical, narrative, life history, or oral history approaches. We particularly welcome contributions on changing labour relations, professional identities, career patterns, educational and occupational transitions, digital work environments, migration, generational experiences, precarious employment, and social inequalities as they are embedded in and interpreted through life stories. The session discusses how biographical research can deepen our understanding of the changing meanings of work and profession, the persistence and transformation of social inequalities, and their links to broader processes of social change, subjectivation, and the reconfiguration of contemporary life courses.