“Free and Unfree Labour” working group Final programme 14 December 2015 14:30-16:15: Group Meeting 1 Getting to know each other and our research
16:45-18:15: Roundtable 1 What is “free” and “unfree” in labour relations? Chairs: Matthias van Rossum, Juliane Schiel Participants: Alain Blum, EHESS, Paris Ludolf Kuchenbuch, Humboldt-Universität, Berlin Maria Luisa Pesante, University of Turin Aurelia Martín Casares, University of Granada Klaus Weber, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder
18:15-19:45: Apéro and Book Boxing at Caffé Basaglia, via Mantova 34 (close to the conference venue) What’s new? Sitting over a glass of wine, all members of the working group “Free and Unfree Labour” are invited to present recent publications connected to labour history with an entertaining 2’ minutes statement.
15 December 2015 9:00-10:45: Thematic Session 1 Spatializing Free and Unfree Labour: Households, Workshops and Sex Industry Organiser: Jesús Agua de la Roza Chair: Rebekka von Mallinckrodt, University of Bremen Speakers: Juliane Schiel, University of Zurich Spaces of slave labour in late medieval Venice. Karsten Voss, Europa-Universität Viadrina What liberty could mean: Male slaves’ struggle for the tight to form families capable of holding rights in early colonial Saint-Domingue (1697-1715). Jesús Agua de la Roza and Victoria López Barahona, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Between free and unfree, paid and unpaid labour: Workshop-schools in eighteenth-century Madrid. Karwan Fatah-Black, University of Leiden Urban slavery in colonial Suriname.
11:15-13:00: Thematic Session 2 War and Labour Coercion Organisers: Fernando Mendiola and Zhanna Popova Chair: Laura Prosperi, University of Adelaide Speakers: Juan Carlos García Funes, Universidad Pública de Navarra/Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa Keys of the spatial location of the forced labour of Prisoners of War in Franco’s Spain: Stability, control, and administration (Castilla y León, 1937-1943). Fernando Mendiola, Universidad Pública de Navarra/Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa Coercion, unfree labour and skill levels during the Spanish Civil War: Railway enterprises, mining, and iron and steel industry in comparative perspective. Mikhail Nakonechny, Saint-Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences Prisoner mortality in late Imperial Russia (1885-1915) and the Soviet Union (1930-1953) in international comparative context. Zhanna Popova, IISH, Amsterdam Vast open-air prison: Katorga in Siberia. 14:30-16:15: Thematic Session 3 Early Modern Mediterranean Captivity: Conflicts, Interactions, and Repercussions Organiser: Tobias Auböck Chair: Tobias Auböck Speakers: Giulia Bonazza, University of Venice and EHESS, Paris The color of skin in the Mediterranean slaves exchanges: Palermo, Livorno, Algiers and Tunis. Tobias Auböck, University of Innsbruck Two versions of the truth: Class and perspective in early modern American captivity narratives from North Africa. Cecilia Tarruell, EUI, Florence Freed, but “free”? Degrees of dependence experienced by former Christian captives upon their return to Christian lands (16th-17th centuries).
16:45-18:15: Roundtable 2 Is There a Historical Tendency from Free to Unfree Labour Relations?
Chairs: Christian G. De Vito and Jesús Agua de la Roza Participants: Alessandro Stanziani, EHESS, Paris Marcel van der Linden, IISH, Amsterdam Rosanna Barragán, IISH, Amsterdam
16 December 2015 9:00-10:45: Thematic Session 4 Precariousness and Free/Unfree Labour at Global Level: Connections and Intersections in a Long Historical Perspective Organiser: Eloisa Betti, University of Bologna Chair: Nelson Lichtenstein, University of California – Berkeley Speakers: Christian G. De Vito, University of Leicester Labour flexibility and labour precariousness as conceptual tools for the historical study of the interaction among labour relations. Tommaso Bobbio, University of Turin Ahmedabad, India: Labour and the city, a continuous interdependence. Eloisa Betti, University of Bologna Gender and precarious labour in industrial and post-industrial Western Europe (19th-21st centuries). Chiara Bonfiglioli, University of Pula Precarious lives in post-socialism: Transition tales from the Croatian garment industry. Patricia Matos and Antonio Maria Pusceddu, University of Barcelona Comparing mining and call centre labour. A view from Italy and Portugal on the free/unfree labour debate.
11:15-12:30: Group Meeting 2 Discussion about future plans for the working group “Free and unfree labour”, e.g. developing the digital platform and improving internal communication; detailed planning for the sessions submitted for the ESSHC 2016 in Valencia; setting up a joint book project or programmatic article on free/unfree labour; setting up a joint project proposal.
Session abstracts Thematic session 1 Spatializing Free and Unfree Labour: Households, Workshops and Sex Industry Organiser: Jesús Agua de la Roza, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain Chair: Rebekka von Mallinckrodt, University of Bremen, Germany This session gathers a series of researches that examine the various forms of free and unfree labour, attending the multiple spaces in which labour relations take place. The study of these spaces gives us the possibility of approaching the coexistence and compatibility of free and unfree labour, as well as assessing, from a spatial perspective, the blurred boundaries that in practice emerge between free and unfree labour and their intermediate positions. In this framework, places such as households, workshops and plantations allow us to look more deeply into the living conditions, and the interaction between workers. The study of the space is not just limited to the physical workplace, but also extended to the spheres where workers associate themselves, or try to improve their situation (in a legal, judicial or religious scope), highlighting the individual and collective agency of those submitted to forced labour, among whom gender and age differences have consequences in their legal status and labour relations. The session also considers the space in a global perspective, as it encompasses the analysis of free and unfree labour in a variety of settings ranging from European cities such as latemedieval Venice, to American colonial context such as Dutch Atlantic slave society of Suriname. No global approach should forget time, and the session adopts a longue-durée view, covering from the preindustrial period to slave labour in the nineteenth century in a developing capitalism economy. Paper abstracts Juliane Schiel, University of Zurich, Switzerland, email:
[email protected] Spaces of Slave Labour in Late Medieval Venice In medieval Europe, “free” and “unfree” was no conceptual pair and the noun and concept libertas had no antonym like “unfreedom” – neither in Latin nor in the vernaculars. Nobody was “free” in the feudal system of the European Middle Ages: farmers tilled the fields of their lords, landlords received their power and authority from the king and the king was accountable to God. And even though during the urbanisation process the free imperial city and the free town citizen were invented, at least parts of someone’s rights and properties remained embedded in complex relationships of (inter)dependency. Yet, some were more unfree than others, of course, and slave labour, regaining in importance in the late medieval urban context, certainly belonged to the most unfree forms of bonded labour at the time. But although slaves can be distinguished from other indentured labourers by the fact that they were sold, bought and eventually freed, their living and working conditions overlapped with those of waged household servants, of journeymen in handicraft business or a vassal in agriculture. Their legal status differed from non-slaves, but their work world and living environment were closely intertwined with those of other bonded people.
In my book project, I portray slave lives in late medieval Venice (1350–1550) by confronting administrative and juridical documents, ordinances and proscriptions with narrative sources and by describing four different spaces of slave agency: (1) social environment, (2) contexts of labour, (3) religious spheres, and (4) worlds of justice. At the ELHN Conference in Turin, I would like to present and discuss a first draft of my second book chapter on different spaces of slave labour. The chapter will be divided in three subchapters: (a) household service, (b) handicraft, (c) sex and body industry. (a) Household service: In late medieval Venice, slaves usually lived under the same roof with their masters’ family and other household servants. They prepared meals, did the cleaning up, carried out errands and looked after the children. (b) Handicraft: Many of the non-noble Venetian citizens used their slaves clandestinely (because transgressing guild laws) as helpmates in their workshops. These slaves gradually learned the trade of their masters and became trained assistants illegally employed and competing the fellow guild members. (c) Sex and body industry: Female slaves appear as sex partners of their masters, as (host) mothers of their masters’ children and as wet nurses of their mistresses’ children or the children of their masters’ relatives, friends or neighbours to whom they were rented out for breastfeeding services. In all three sections, I will highlight individual cases and try to sound the source material, first, on interactions between slave labour and other forms of bonded labour and, second, on the choices slaves had in their specific work world and on their specific scope of agency in these fields.
Karsten Voss, Europa-Universität-Viadrina, Germany, email:
[email protected] What Liberty Could Mean: Male Slaves’ Struggles for the Right to Form Families Capable of Holding Rights in Early Colonial Saint-Domingue (1697–1715) Between 1697 and 1715 a group of military officers transformed the former corsairs’ operational base into the most productive slave plantation economy of the 18th century. They did so by using the slaves’ workforce. During the War of Spanish Succession (1702-1713) slaves constructed plantations, houses, streets, in short the whole built environment which facilitated a spectacular burst of sugar production in 1715. During the same period of time colonial elites struggled for implementing the regulations of the Code Noir (1685) which among others restricted the freedom of movement of the slaves who were bound to the plantations. Furthermore, it prohibited their right to marry without the consent of their owner. Finally, slaves could not own and inherit something and the children of slave mothers were to be slaves. Slaves, male and female, opposed these politics by all sorts of resistance. Most interesting is the struggle of male slaves for the right to form families capable of holding rights and to inherit. This surprising because the white working poor in the colony, male as well as female, opposed marriage much to the chagrin of the colonial elites. In this paper I will examine first how especially male slaves became aware of the advantages of the European concept of marriage and forming a legally protected household by the propaganda from the neighboring Spanish colony of Santo Domingo. There, authorities offered liberty for fugitive slaves from the French colony, expecting to incorporate the freed slaves in the local militia system. Secondly, I will explain how the ideology and legal conceptions of the French officers leading the development process in Saint-Domingue favored the manumission of certain slaves. Thirdly, I will show how colonial elites made use of certain male slaves’ desire to form families and households by offering them posts in the militia and participations in military enterprises which could lead (in case of extraordinary performance) to manumission. These politics led on the one hand to the incorporation
of slaves in the system of public police in the colony. Slaves protected slavery and especially the security of the public space in case of inner conflicts and military aggression. On the other hand these politics were at the origin of the creation of the militarily extremely experienced population of free people of color and slaves over the course of the 18th century.
Jesús Agua de la Roza, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, email:
[email protected] and Victoria López Barahona, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, email:
[email protected] Between Free and Unfree, Paid and Unpaid Labour: Workshop-Schools in EighteenthCentury Madrid This paper focuses on the development of state-sponsored workshop-schools in eighteenth-century Madrid and its rural surroundings. These institutions, aimed at apprenticing poor children and youths in textile crafts, were a key part of the monarchy’s reformist plan to increase domestic commodity production in order to substitute imports. Yet, under the guise of poor relief, workshop-schools actually operated as sweatshops for which labour recruitment was not the result of a free agreement between the parties, but rather one of coercion exerted upon impoverished families. Children –mostly girls, for the sexual division of labour underpinned the governmental project- toiled there full-time, often under a harsh discipline, for remunerations which equated to virtually nothing. This paper explores the different types of workshop-schools according to their urban or rural nature, their kind of output, for whom it was produced, and whether they were established in the neighbourhoods or confined in orphanages, hospices and prisons. We contend that, whereas the latter involved non-free or forced labour, the former encompassed free and –predominantly- halfway between free and nonfree labour relations. The primary sources we have consulted for this research work suggest that, in eighteenth-century Madrid and New Castile, workshop-schools provided a pool of underpaid, compulsory and often skilled labour force to Royal Factories and privileged entrepreneurs.
Karwan Fatah-Black, University of Leiden, The Netherlands,
[email protected] Urban slavery in Colonial Suriname An “agricultural myopia” has limited the understanding of Atlantic slave systems. With the increasing attention to the urban environment in recent years there is a possibility to better understand the changes in the Dutch Atlantic slave society of Suriname between the 18th and 19th century. Especially with regards to the paths slaves found through and out of slavery. Slave strategies were rarely individual, but often depended on kinship groups, partly enslaved, partly free, to try and find was to improve their situation. These kinship groups or bere tried to improve their situation by buying each other out of slavery, finding small niches in the colonial economy and operating in the informal sector.
Thematic session 2 War and labour coercion Organisers: Fernando Mendiola, Universidad Pública de Navarra/Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa, Iruñea-Pamplona, Spain Zhanna Popova, IISH, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Chair: Laura Prosperi, University of Adelaide, Australia War radically transforms societies. This session invites researchers to analyse the warinduced change in one particular domain of the society: labour relations. The pervasive militaristic values start to play a bigger role in the areas of society where usually they are not important, and the labour market is reorganised to cope with the shortage of labour force and the military production. This accommodation to the war conditions happens in a variety of ways. It can manifest in the growth of the state control over labour and loss of rights for the free workers, involvement of the new groups of labourers previously marginal to the labour market (e.g. women or children), and installation of special labour regimes for prisoners of war and other groups (ethnic minorities, colonial populations, convicts, etc.). The body of literature on militarisation is extensive and versatile, but certain aspects are still missing. We would like to contribute to the existing debates by exploring the possibilities of chronological and geographical comparative studies. Questioning the traditional chronology of war allows to trace its long-lasting consequences and also to take into account the militarisation of societies not involved in war in conventional sense (e.g. USSR in 1930s, Spain in the 1940s and 1950s). The case studies of the participants will be used as a departure point for further reflection on the methodology of comparative approaches. Paper abstracts Juan Carlos García-Funes, Universidad Pública de Navarra/Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa, Spain, mail:
[email protected] Keys of the spatial location of the forced labour of Prisoners of War in Franco´s Spain: stability, control and administration (Castilla y León, 1937-1943). During the Spanish Civil War and the first years of Franco’s regime, the military bureaucracy coordinated and ruled a system of concentration camps for prisoners of war. This bureaucracy coordinates diverse types of forced labour for prisioners from these camps in Worker´s Battalions and resulted fundamental to understand the fact that political enemies were being used as unfree labour. After the war, the military bureaucracy transformed their bodies and mechanisms. These changes, based on a modification of the military service, meant that tens of thousands of young people joined the Discipline Battalions of Worker Soldiers (BDST). Some time later, young men of military age and leaving prison on parole started to be included in the BDST too. This study will try to track the use of forcibly recruited labour force during the war and post-war period across the Autonomous Community of Castilla y León, with a study detailed of the works developed in its nine provinces between 1937 and 1942. We will try to understand the keys to the war and post-war need for labour in captivity
through its location and quantification. Studying these provinces, submitted very early, we will enter the characteristics of forced labour in a stable and controlled territory.
Fernando Mendiola, Universidad Pública de Navarra/Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa, Spain, email:
[email protected] Coercion, unfree labour and skill levels during the Spanish Civil War: Railway enterprises, mining and iron and steel industry in comparative perspective. During Spanish Civil War forced labour for prisoners and prisoners of war was one of the tools for political repression in both sides, mainly under fascist one. In this paper we aim to better understand the economic logic of the deployment of thousands of captives, mainly regarding relationships between demand of unfree labourers and the skill level required. Taking into account the proposals by Fenoaltea and Acemoglu & Wolitzky we will consider to which extent demand of forced labour by enterprises was mainly oriented to effort-intensive and low-skill activities, and in which circumstances forced labourers were deployed by enterprises for high-skill activities. In order to deal in depth with this question we will analyse different sectors, such as railway companies, mining and iron and steel industry, not only during Civil War but also in its aftermath.
Mikhail Nakonechny, Saint-Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia, email:
[email protected] Prisoner mortality in late Imperial Russia (1885-1915) and the Soviet Union (1930-1953) in international comparative context” Death rate in the penitentiary system is considered to be one of the most fundamental statistical indicators in penology, directly connected to convict forced labour exploitation. Russian convict labour system, both of the tsarist and the Soviet period, has an extremely negative reputation in historiography, especially in terms of sanitary conditions and mortality. But how extraordinary prisoner mortality of both regimes really was in comparison with similar prison indexes of contemporary developed and under-developed countries? That vital question never has been explored so far. Although many historians claim that Soviet GULAG was simply a continuation of prerevolutionary convict labour (katorga) practices in a new social and economic circumstances (Pipes 1977; Gentes 2002), there are those few who, on the contrary, strongly object to such an assertion. Positive interpretation of the developments of late Russian imperial prisons, with strong emphasis on the shared "Western" tendency, was first introduced by Bruse F. Adams (1996) and continued by J. Daly (2005). Somewhat in between those extremes exists a middle position taken by Wheatcroft (2002). While accepting the positive trend before 1905, he insists that the major crisis of penal system in 1907-1910 was part of radical "first wave of increased repression as the modern police state made its first incursions into a semi-modern and rapidly modernising society". I intend to add to this longrunning debate through international comparative analysis of prisoner mortality, creating, so to say, a system of coordinates. I plan to introduce several prisoner death rates charts of several major European countries, some colonial prisons and the USA in 1880-1953. I intend to compare that data with late Imperial Russian and Soviet mortality prison figures to put them in international context. Numerous factors are taken into account. My chief goal is to define what was the precise place of Russian prison system in the hierarchy of several advanced countries and their colonies in the aspect of convict mortality. Moreover, I will discuss major reasons of Russian and Soviet penitentiary mortality trends connected with labour exploitation.
Zhanna Popova, IISH, Amsterdam, Netherlands, email:
[email protected] Vast Open-air Prison: Katorga in Siberia.
Katorga was a specific penal regime in Russian Empire that ceased to exist in 1917 and was reintroduced in the Soviet Union in 1943. Even now, this word in the Russian language metonymically signifies hard labour; however, the practices of katorga have never been explored in a long chronological perspective. Focusing on one specific region, Western Siberia, I propose a close-up analysis of this penal regime starting from 1879. In the first place, I will elucidate the ideas of Imperial administrators behind the introduction of the forced labour of convicts, and trace the repercussions that these ideas had in local practices. Then, I will discuss how the practices characteristic of this regime have changed over time, notably by looking at the Soviet reinterpretation of the katorga and the connections between war conditions and its re-introduction. Finally, I will show how a study of this regime helps to better understand the Russian economy of punishment.
Thematic session 3 Early Modern Mediterranean Captivity: Conflicts, Interactions and Repercussions Organiser: Tobias Auböck, University of Innsbruck, Austria Chair: Tobias Auböck The workshop investigates captivity in the Mediterranean from the late medieval to the early modern period in order to look at the various diplomatic, literary, cultural and historical manifestations of these stories of conflict and contact. The phenomenon of Mediterranean captivity was closely connected to the demand of labour in the countries involved. In the Christian as well as in the Islamic world, captives were used as workforce, in the building of harbours, palaces, and fortifications, and also as galley slaves. Others were employed as servants in distinguished households. Many captives, however, were held for ransom or were exchanged for captives in other countries, which introduced new dynamics and ways of interactions to the conflict. The distinction into “free” and “unfree” labour is difficult in this case, as former captives could work in servility even after their release. At the same time, they had ways to negotiate their own status even while in captivity (depending on, among other factors, their language skills). Also their former social status affected their conditions in captivity. Consequently, the use of highly charged terms such as “slave” and “captive” is heatedly discussed in this field and will also be touched upon in the course of the proposed session. Paper abstracts Tobias Auböck, University of Innsbruck, Austria, email:
[email protected] Two Versions of the Truth: Class and Perspective in Early Modern American Captivity Narratives from North Africa The loss of the battleship USS Philadelphia was the worst defeat the United States had to suffer during the first Barbary War between 1801 and 1805. American readers eagerly awaited firsthand accounts from the frontlines of this heatedly debated conflict. This led to one of the very few cases in the history of Barbary Coast captivity where more than one narrative was published about the same event. The two texts under closer analysis in this study were written by Jonathan Cowdery, an officer on the ship, and William Ray, a common sailor. In Ray’s account, he portrays the harsh lives of the common captive in Tripoli, something that is distortedly represented in Cowdery’s narrative. In miniature, these narratives hint at a deeper issue that underlies most, if not all, accounts of captivity in Northern Africa: subjective or even fictionalized experience is represented and often received as objective and factual observation. This in turn directly influences future captives, their narratives, and, by extension, the contemporary readership. The existence of conflicting accounts, such as Cowdery’s and Ray’s, sheds light on these complex mechanisms of representation and reception. This is only intensified by the simultaneous emergence of American prose fiction, which had a tremendous influence on many of these writers, and especially on Ray, who turned out to be an aspiring author. Examining these overlapping influences not only provides insight into the nature of the genre of captivity narratives, which blurs the lines between fact and fiction like almost no other, but also helps understanding the great impact it had on American culture as a whole.
Cecilia Tarruell, EUI, Fiesole, Italy, email:
[email protected] Freed, but ‘free’? Degrees of dependence experienced by former Christian captives upon their return to Christian lands (16th-17th centuries). As scholars have argued, one of the major aspects differentiating the Early Modern Mediterranean bondage from the Atlantic slave trade was the likely possibility for the captives to be freed after a given time. However, this liberation did not necessarily imply to become “free” in the way we usually understand the term. Hence, the aim of this paper is to analyse different degrees of dependence experienced by former captives and slaves after their release. In particular, this paper will focus on cases of former Christian captives who settled in the territories of the Hispanic Monarchy during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Special attention will be paid to various situations of economic dependence. Dependence could come from impoverishment but also lead to more extreme situations. We will discuss two cases among these extreme fates. First, this paper will tackle the case of imprisonment for debt of the former captives who were unable to reimburse their ransom. This situation could paradoxically entail longer detentions than those experienced in the Barbary Coast. Secondly, the paper will also examine the mechanism developed in the North African presidios, where captives who were unable to immediately reimburse their ransom to the governors were forced to work for free during a certain time. This mechanism, in practice, implied frequent abuses and became a form of forced labour.
Giulia Bonazza, University of Venice, Italy, and EHESS, Paris, France, email:
[email protected] Persisting Mediterranean Captivity: Captives’ cases in Naples and Rome in the first half of the 19th Century The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that captives’ cases persisted in Naples and Rome until the first half of the 19th Century. The route of the captives must be placed not only in the broader context of the Mediterranean slavery but also of the Atlantic slavery. Captives arrived in Naples also from the Atlantic and they were often converted but the process of conversion was not always forced. Slaves wanted sometimes convert themselves in order to obtain a free condition of life. The baptism was not a guarantee of freedom, at least not immediately. Baptism was an instrument: on the one hand, it was a demonstration of the slave’s agency and on the other hand, of the policy of assimilation by the community that captured the slave. The change of the name and the new identity was a very special creation to demonstrate the free and unfree interactions between master, state and captives. For example, masters or nobles families but also cardinals gave to the slave their own name during the celebration of the baptism. The particularity of captivity in Naples is the captives’ cases from the Atlantic; in Baptism Books it is possible to find interesting descriptions of slaves’ biographies. In Rome, captives were first deployed in papal galleys in Civitavecchia and after, if they wanted to convert themselves, they were brought in the Pia Casa dei Catecumeni (House of Catechumens) and finally they were employed in Castel Sant’Angelo (Saint Angelo Castle) as soldiers or after the baptism with employments of responsibility.
Thematic session 4 Precariousness and Free/Unfree Labour at Global Level: Connections and Intersections in a Long Historical Perspective Organiser: Eloisa Betti, University of Bologna Chair: Nelson Lichtenstein, University of California – Berkeley The session aims to explore the historical connection between job precariousness and free/unfree labour by adopting a global approach. Looking at labour relationships from the perspective of Free/Unfree labour provides an important theoretical framework for analysing precarious work in the long duréé, overcoming the traditional Global North/South hierarchy and questioning the Western “Standard Employment Relationship” as a norm. At the same time adopting the category of job precariousness to investigate the multiple forms of free/unfree labour in diachronic and synchronic perspectives, allows us to better understand their level of “stability” and whether “stability” matters in perpetuating or reducing the spread of certain free/unfree labour forms over the centuries. In a long historical perspective, job precariousness has characterized not only the whole history of industrial capitalism but also pre-industrial societies as the session aims to unveil. Following this approach, job precariousness cannot be defined as a labour relationship as such but can be viewed as a “condition” in which female or male workers can find themselves as a consequence of both subjective and objective factors. From an objective point of view, it seems to be linked to three main aspects: wage stability, job length and continuity, the relationship between the labour contract and social/labour rights. From a subjective point of view, precariousness should be viewed in a relative manner and referred to the condition of the so-called stable workers, their self-perception and social perception. If insecurity, informality and precariousness represent the real standard of global capitalism and stable labour relationships can be viewed as historical exception spreading throughout Western countries in the third quarter of the 20th century, questioning the relationship between free/unfree labour and job stability/precariousness can be particularly fruitful for understanding the process behind the commodification of labour in the long run. Furthermore, the recent new spread of unfree labour forms both in the Global South and North, seems to be related to the issue of job stability/precariousness. Gender, race, ethnicity, age play a crucial role, revealing how certain groups such as women, migrants and child have been more likely in the long run to be involved in forms of precarious labour (both free and unfree). Freedom of movement, and more broadly speaking mobility, represent an additional lens to investigate the relationship between free/unfree labour and job stability/precariousness. By intersecting spatial mobility, job stability and free/unfree labour in the different historical periods allows us to recognize hidden forms of “precarious work” as well as unexpected stable jobs. The session addresses several aspects of the relationship between job precariousness and free/unfree labour in different historical periods, ranging from 18th century to the New Millennium, and spatial contexts such as Western, Eastern and Northern Europe, Latin America and India. The different free/unfree labour forms will be investigated though the lens of job precariousness in regard to the Global North, the Global South and former
Socialist countries. All the economic sectors will be taken into account, as well as longlasting figures of precarious workers such as servants, industrial homeworkers, day labourers, construction workers. Paper abstracts Christian G. De Vito, University of Leicester, UK, email:
[email protected] Labour flexibility and labour precariousness as conceptual tools for the historical study of the interaction among labour relations. The paper seeks to highlight the potential of the concepts of labour flexibility and labour precariousness in developing the historical study of the interactions between (“free” and “unfree”) labour relations. At the same time, it highlights the impact of a global and long-term approach to labour flexibility and labour precariousness on the contemporary debate in this field. To this double aim, I define labour flexibility as the relative advantage attached by employers and policy-makers to certain labour relations, based on the opportunity to recruit, locate and manage workforces in the place, time and task most conducive to the former’s own economic and political goals. In other words, labour flexibility expresses the employers’ and policy-makers’ quest to synchronise the availability of what they perceive as the most appropriate workforce, with their productive and political needs. In turn, labour precariousness is defined here as the workers’ own perception of their (lack of) control over their labour power, in relation to other workers, the labour market, and the social reproduction of their workforce. The relational nature of these definitions represents one of this paper’s contributions to the debate on labour flexibility and labour precariousness in both historical studies and contemporary debates. Whereas many contradictory definitions of these phenomena exist in scholarship, those provided here have arguably the advantage of connecting labour flexibility/precariousness to the issue of control over labour: they indicate how labour flexibility relates to external (employers’ and/or policymakers’) control over the workforce, whereas labour precariousness relates to workers’ control over their own labour force. By foregrounding the question of control, and ultimately of power, these definitions additionally allow for a focus on the “constraint agency” of historical and contemporary actors at the crossroads of materiality and perceptions, external categorisation and self-representation. My argument especially builds on the findings of two distinct streams in recent scholarly literature: the re-conceptualisation of the role of multiple labour relations in the process of labour commodification, which has been proposed within the context of Global Labour History; and the studies that have addressed contemporary labour precariousness from a historical and global perspective. Starting from these new approaches, the paper explores five directions. The first part sketches the outlines of a conceptualisation of labour flexibility and precariousness vis-à-vis the process of labour commodification. The second part, largely referring to my own empirical research and selected examples from secondary literature on late-colonial and post-colonial Spanish America, poses space, time, and State- and private control of the workforce as key components of labour flexibility. Based on the same empirical findings, the third section addresses the limits of the employers’ control over the workforce. The fourth part raises the question of the workers’ perception of the precariousness of their labour, and its interrelation with workers’ agency. The concluding section points to distinct fields where the global, long-term, and relational approach to the study of labour flexibility and precariousness directly contributes to contemporary debates and scholarship in the field.
Tommaso Bobbio, University of Turin, Italy, email:
[email protected]
Ahmedabad, India: labour and the city, a continuous interdependence By taking as example the trajectory of an industrial city – Ahmedabad – and of its army of industrial and casual workers, my paper seeks to illustrate how the spatial and social development of the city is intimately connected with the changing conditions of its labour market over time. Within the span of a century, Ahmedabad experienced an extraordinary industrial development, labour conflicts and the rise of trade unions, then a slow and steady contraction that led to a collapse of its major sector – textile – in the 1980s/1990s. Within this picture, categories such as casual and formal, free and unfree labour, assume a greater significance if seen as part of a whole process that transformed the urban environment in the direction of a further marginalisation of its most vulnerable population. Over the span of a century, the trajectories of migrant labourers coming to Ahmedabad showed that the entrance in the urban labour market meant by no means a path from casual to formal labour and from insecurity to security, but often forced individuals into forms of dependency – from contractors, from slumlords – that stuck them at the margins of the urban space and society. Although in its phase of expansion the textile industrial sector absorbed a great portion of the city's labour force, most migrant labourers remained employed in the informal economy for the whole life. The collapse of the textile sector exacerbated this situation, as masses of former industrial workers had to seek different sources of income as street vendors, home-based laborers or small entrepreneurs, with always great reductions both in income and social security. By looking at the interactions between labour and spatial development this paper encloses issues pertaining unfree and casual labour into the broader spectrum of informality within the city, as for increasingly large portions of society urban life is identified with a sense of helplessness and subjection.
Eloisa Betti, University of Bologna, Italy, email:
[email protected] Gender and precarious labour in industrial and post-industrial Western Europe (XIX –XXI century) The contribution investigates the historical relationship between gender and precarious labor in XIXXXI century Western Europe, by comparing the historical path of countries such as Italy, France, England and Germany thanks to both primary and secondary sources. A gendered historical approach actually shows that different production modes and working conditions were present not only in late 19th – early 20th century but also in Fordist and post-Fordist societies, questioning the “Standard Employment Relationship” as a norm even in Western Europe. Women, as well as migrants, experienced a significant level of precariousness even in the so-called golden age of the 20th century. Sexual division of labour and sex-based discrimination seem to lie at the very heart of the gendered nature of precarious work, a long dureé nexus that has characterized both industrial and post-industrial European societies. By approaching the question of job precariousness as a multi-faceted phenomenon, this contribution claims that the subsequent spread of precarious work in the 19 th, 20th and 21st century was directly affected by labour and women’s movement struggles, on the one hand, and by the role of the state and politics in defining and redefining the labour law relationship, on the other. The gender approach plays a crucial role in deconstructing well-known periodization and interpretation (i.e. Fordism/Post-Fordism) mainly provided from economic history and sociology as well as in investigating the relationship between economic cycles and employment stability, which appears to be the fruit of a non-linear process, not exclusively dependent on the economic cycles. The relationship between precarious labour and free/unfree labour will be explored, in order to understand how job precariousness have influenced the recurrent spread of unfree labour in industrial and postindustrial societies and viceversa.
Chiara Bonfiglioli, University of Pula, Croatia, email:
[email protected] Precarious lives in post-socialism: transition tales from the Croatian garment industry
The paper addresses the worsening of labour and social rights that followed the end of socialism in post-Yugoslav states, looking in particular at the Croatian garment industry, a traditionally feminized sector that was heavily affected by deindustrialisation, precarious labour relations and unemployment in the last twenty years. These processes, in turn, had a strong impact on gender relations and on working women's identities. Textile workers' relatively stable position during socialism will be discussed in relation to their contemporary precarity, on the basis of oral history interviews and archival sources. The issue of post-socialist precarity will also be connected to the question of free and unfree labour, as employees of state-owned factories often worked without receiving a wage during transition, in the hope that their factory would recover. After privatization or bankruptcy, instead, years of wages and social contributions were lost for thousands of workers in Croatia and across the former Yugoslavia.
Patrícia Matos, University of Barcelona, Spain, email:
[email protected] Antonio Maria Pusceddu, University of Barcelona, Spain, email:
[email protected] Comparing mining and call centre labour. A view from Italy and Portugal on the freeunfree labour debate Neoliberal discourse on the transition from industrial to post-industrial economy stresses a qualitative difference in the modes of deploying and mobilizing social labour – broadly popularized by the shift from “manual” towards “mental labour”, an emphasis on “freedom” and “responsibility” of workers, new patterns of cooperation and increased involvement of workers in the management of the labour process. However, striking similarities can be traced between patterns of control over the labour process in Fordist and post-Fordist work organization. This paper examines differences and similarities between Fordist and neoliberal patterns of labour process control and disciplining of the labour force, by comparing the call centre industry in contemporary Portugal and mining industry in 20th century Italy. It is argued that the comparison of an epitome of neoliberal “precarity” – call centre labour – and an emblematic example of Fordist heavy industry – mining, can provide a fruitful contribution to the free-unfree labour in neoliberal capitalism. At a broader level, this paper asks: does a comparison of the manual and service labour process provide a useful ground from which to reexamine the free-unfree labour debate in the context of the Fordist/post-Fordist transition? If so, and more specifically, does the passage to a neoliberal-driven post-Fordist regime of production entail a different kind of labour power exploitation, hence surplus value? Our comparative findings between the mining and the call centre regimes of labour tend to contradict the notion of a qualitative shift in the ‘post-Fordist transition’, while emphasizing lines of continuity in capitalist labour exploitation, surplus value extraction, and capitalism necessary imperative of articulating free and unfree forms of labour. This is illustrated by referring to the themes of co-operation, teams and team-working, as well as mainstream narratives, discourses and representations of both miners and call centre labourers. We show that both in the mining and the call centre labour process, co-operation, teams and team-working among labourers, tough deployed according to distinct managerial ideologies and differently mobilized by workers, ultimately fulfil the necessary requirements for the profitable maintenance of each sector. Also, both miners and call centre labourers have often been portrayed as de-humanized subjects of production, the former as creatures working underground and the latter as humans disguised as robots. Nonetheless, as shown, these representations obscure capitalism continuous necessity of mobilizing the agentive components of labour power in both Fordist and post-Fordist realms of production. Consequently, it is suggested that the free and unfree labour debate can only prove to have analytical relevance when considered through a particular historical conjuncture, and
the comparison of emblematic and apparently distinct labour processes and modes of labour force regimentation.
