The Future of Work: Regulation, Temporalities and the Institutions of Change

How is the future of work being regulated, and on what time horizons? This session examines the institutions, rules and temporalities through which actors shape what work is becoming. Across regions, the standard employment relationship is being reworked, working-time arrangements are renegotiated, careers and occupations are recomposed, and social partners, public authorities and expert bodies advance competing forecasts about labour. Rather than treat these futures as given, the session asks how regulation, regulatory cultures and the temporal ordering of work mediate technological and economic change, and with what consequences for security and for the distribution of work.

We welcome contributions on collective bargaining and labour law, working time, social dialogue and tripartite foresight, the governance of platform and telework arrangements, careers and professional groups, and the forms of expertise that anticipate work futures. Single-case and comparative designs are equally welcome.

An empirical contribution is essential: papers should present and analyse original evidence, whether quantitative, qualitative or mixed, rather than remain purely conceptual. Theoretical framing is valued when it is grounded in such material.

The session connects to the Congress theme, Global Sociology in Turbulent Times, by asking how institutions and rules hold, bend or fail as work is transformed. By bringing classical questions of regulation and temporality to bear on emerging objects, it seeks to clarify what is genuinely new, and what is not, in the contemporary world of work.