Sociología del Trabajo

Summary of the expert report "Work and Mental health: A ROADMAP FOR HEALTH ADMINISTRATIONS IN SPAIN." Mental Health Commissioner of the Spanish Ministry of Health

2025-06-26T11:37:25+00:00

This is a summary of the report of the expert group on work and mental health established by the Mental Health Commissioner of the Spanish Ministry of Health in June 2024.

This group was tasked with developing an Intervention Guide for health authorities that would, first, allow for the detection of work-related mental health problems in primary care, and second, develop intervention protocols to address the problem at different levels (labor inspection, social security, medical-psychiatric treatment, etc.).

“Ramírez Melgarejo, A. J. (2024): Estrategias de reproducción social de las clases populares. Trabajo, crisis y reconocimiento en el sureste español. Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas”.

2025-04-27T21:11:01+00:00

The definite decline of the German model?

2025-03-13T17:17:13+00:00

Germany has been for decades the benchmark society for the combination of a buoyant economy and a stable political system with an integrated institutional order capable of leading a European Union in its process of progressive integration. The coherence of its political-institutional order and its economic structure with its cooperative culture of social dialogue and its confederal model of the Länder have motivated its consideration as a model.

This article aims to analyze the crisis of the German model from a dynamic perspective in its interrelated economic, political and cultural dimensions. For this purpose, the concept of the German model is first defined. In a second step, its historical development is reconstructed from the Fordist era to the present day with special attention to the institutional base and its recent erosion. We conclude with some final reflections on the risks of this crisis for the future of a democratic and inclusive Europe.

Freedom Utopia in the Era of Platform Capitalism. The case of Workana in Argentina

2025-01-08T20:07:45+00:00

What does it mean to be free? What does it mean to have the liberty to define our own vital itinerary? This article examines the emerging utopia of liberty and autonomy in the platform environment, focusing on Workana, one of the most representative platforms of this new conception of labour. Together with other platforms such as UpWork, Fiverr and Freelancer, Workana is integrated within a global ecosystem that connects workers and clients from all over the world. In this context, we analyze three key dimensions of the kind of liberty and autonomy provided by the platform: temporal and geographical flexibility in the workday, allowing for a better balance with other activities; financial liberty; and autonomy in the negotiation within labour-capital relations. This article presents the developments of an ongoing research project that combines traditional social research methods with innovative approaches, such as “digital ethnography” (Di Prospero & Daza Prado, 2019).

Digitalization on the farm: Transformations of the production process in the pig sector

2025-01-08T17:41:02+00:00

The objective of this research is to analyze the role of digitalization in the evolution of the production model of the pork sector. Based on their uses, implications and the discourses surrounding the phenomenon, we study how ICTs relate to workers, pigs and other natures, which, from the interpretive framework of Jason Moore's World-Ecology, have been put to work in favor of capital accumulation. To this end, semi-structured interviews have been carried out with workers involved in the different phases of production: livestock farming, meat processing factories and digitalizing companies in the sector.

Among the main results we can consider the use of digitalization and automation as fundamental elements to homogenize, intensify and have greater control over workers and production, linked to global food chains.

Gamification, control and resistance in the delivery app courier sector in Brazil: the iFood case

2024-10-30T10:34:35+00:00

This paper is intended to clarify the new forms of labor organization and resistance on the part of digital platform workers, particularly delivery app motorcyclists in Brasília, the Federal District of Brazil. We will attempt to show relations between structuring a category of motorcycle couriers – characterized by heterogeneity and fragmentation – and the difficulties of putting collective and unity actions together. We will therefore indicate the strategies for political fight and negotiation of their demands with the companies and the State. We will also indicate relations between the obstacles to their organization and the flexible workforce management strategies implemented by digital companies, in particular the modality known as iFood's Logistics Operator. This paper is grounded on data secured from empirical research, particularly semi-structured interviews with Summary

Social policies, justice and solidarity. Upholding contributory principles in expansive phases of protection in Argentina

2025-03-13T16:51:46+00:00

The relationship between work and social protection has taken on renewed complexity since the close of the 20th century, a matter that directly concerns the validity of the contributory principle as a foundation of justice and a framework for the solidarities that underpin distributive acts. This article contributes to the reflection on this issue by examining the controversies sparked in Argentina surrounding the implementation of the "pension moratorium" during an expansive phase of socio-labor policies (2003–2015). Through archival research on political and specialized debates, we reconstruct critiques of this policy arising from distributive injustices generated by the relaxation of the contributive principle. These critiques can be interpreted as "defenses" of a strict conception of this principle, a finding that broadens the discussion on the legitimacy of substantive transformations in the inherited protection structure. Furthermore, it invites an examination of the influence of an unequalizing perspective within protection systems.

“MercadoLibre's 'B-side'” in Argentina: Labour Exploitation Strategies in the Tech Giant's Logistics Services

2025-03-28T11:31:22+00:00

Digitalisation, automation, and globalisation of supply chains –coupled with increasingly flexible, customised, outsourced, and sustainable processes– have profoundly reconfigured the logistics sector. These shifts have precipitated significant changes in labour dynamics, regulatory frameworks, and industry competitiveness. Moreover, the ascent of e‐commerce giants such as Amazon, Alibaba, and, in Latin America, MercadoLibre, has further accelerated these developments. This article examines, through a case study, the strategies adopted by MercadoLibre Argentina in developing its logistics operations while assessing their implications for employment and working conditions. The findings indicate that these processes are underpinned by the integration of diverse contractual modalities, which blend varying degrees of contractual and organisational dependency, ultimately resulting in the recruitment of a vast, low‐skilled workforce exposed to intensifying workloads and heightened precarisation.

The importance of job training to reduce structural unemployment in Chile

2025-03-28T11:26:06+00:00

The article aims to examine the importance of job training policies as an essential element to improve the employability possibilities of workers, especially those who are unemployed. From a sociological point of view, structural unemployment refers to when certain groups of people lack the job skills required to fill the jobs demanded by industry, generating in society a structural inequality in access to job opportunities and the emergence of long-term unemployment. In a labor market in constant transformation due to the phenomenon of globalization and technological advances, job training policies are essential to contribute to closing gaps and mismatches between supply and demand, especially in those people who are most vulnerable in an increasingly segmented labor market. In this research, the quantitative method was used by applying surveys to a sample of unemployed people who attended the Municipal Labor Information Offices (OMIL) in the Atacama region, Chile.

Global south´s health Denmark? Some keys from the health labor market and its care in Mexico

2025-05-12T19:08:27+00:00

The analysis of the health and care labor market is a tension between professional fields that translates into unequal segments in health and care services. This work addresses the Mexican case based on the National Occupation and Employment Survey from the theoretical perspective of the segmentation of labor markets. For the analysis, a statistical approach was used from Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and Hierarchical Classification Analysis by the Ward Method. The results found were five segments within this service sector in which their performance in the labor market is configured in different ways by different factors and actors, including public policy as a transversal axis. Among the factors, we find: the disciplinary field of the profession, type of economic unit, its position within the unit and income; These make up a heterogeneous labor insertion network for groups of health professionals: medicine, nursing, dentistry, nutrition, physical health and sports, and psychology. The sector with the best performance was the public sector, which offers better quality jobs, followed by the private sector, dominated mainly by lower quality jobs, and, on the other hand, self-employment and informality, the latter two closer to precariousness.

Uneasines sregarding industrial past. Memory, nostalgia, heritage, history

2025-03-24T18:21:00+00:00

The article explores the relationship between history, heritage and memory, together with their respective treatments of the past, in the face of deindustrialization phenomena in Spain over the last half century. Focusing mainly on the working population of those regions of industrial tradition, it examines some knowledge gaps and raises the possibility of arguing for the recognition of the working class as a whole as an intangible industrial heritage.