Journal articles on the topic 'Labour market flexibilization'

This paper analyses the role played by the flexibilization of labour markets on functional income distribution. Specifically, we analyse whether employment protection legislation affects the evolution of labour income share, measured by the size of compensation of employees as a percentage of GDP, the sum of wages and salaries as a percentage of GDP and the size of the adjusted wage share, in twenty European economies. Our study?s results show that the evolution of labour income share is explained by the economic growth, the growth of employment and unemployment rates, and the growth of real wages. Regarding the role played by the flexibility of the labour market, and specifically of the employment protection legislation, only employment protection for temporary workers has a significant impact on the evolution of labour shares. Our results show that stricter provisions on the use of fixed-term and temporary agency contracts have a positive impact on the growth of labour shares.

Political, economic and social changes after the 1980’s that are viewed as a result of the development of neoliberal doctrine and the implementation of neoliberal policies represent the focus of this paper. Neoliberal doctrine highlights the importance of freedom, i.e., liberating society from state interventionism which is characteristic of not only socialist, but also of the Keynesian doctrine. By introducing these conceptual premises, neoliberal doctrine paved the way for the implementation of neoliberal policies, which usually implies the abolition of state regulation of economic activities, the privatization of public companies, trade liberalization, the reduction of budget expenditure and the welfare state. Pointing to the changes in the labour market which are influenced by the neoliberal turning point is the main aim of this paper. Neoliberal protocol implied significant institutional reforms in the form of reducing the protectiveness of labour legislature and promoting greater dynamism of the labour market, while neoliberalization of the labour market mostly referred to demands for deregulation and flexibilization of the labour market (demands may or may not be interconnected). The above-mentioned initiatives are not solely a result of the neoliberal point of view that the existing legal provisions protect workers too much or treat certain groups of workers unjustly, but these provisions also have a detrimental impact on economic production, thus preventing employers from adapting fast enough to external changes. As a result of demands for increasing economic competitiveness, deregulation and flexibilization have become preferred methods through which states are trying to restructure their own labour markets. Keywords: neoliberalism, neoliberal policies, deregulation, flexibilization, labour market

Internationally, the 1980s marked a shift in economic policy. In the Netherlands, it was the decade of the supposedly moderate neoliberal turn and of the first round of flexibilization. Nowadays, the degree of flexibility of the Dutch labour market is exceptionally high compared to neighbouring countries. This article examines how the trade union movement in the 1980s responded to increasing flexibilization, which strategy was used, and how this contributed to early Dutch flexibilization. In contrast to the literature with an institutional perspective, this article analyzes the trade union movement from a social-historical perspective and as a social movement organization. As a result, it argues that the effects of rising flexibilization were signalled very early on within the trade unions. Be that as it may, both the priorities that followed from the agreements with employer organizations and the internal dynamics, were decisive for the trade union movement’s relatively late and unassertive responses towards the flexibilization of labour in the 1980s.

The article illustrates and compares some of the persuasive strategies of the political and entre­preneurial discourse on labour market flexibilization in different contexts: within the political discourse on labour market reforms and on socio-democratic/leftist basic values, and within the entrepreneurial communication and self-presentation (job advertisements, annual relations, per­sonnel manager guides).

The article addresses the shifting patterns of atypical employment across the regions of Greece, severely hit by the 2009 crisis. Changes are depicted by NUTS-II level data for the pre- and post-crisis periods of 2005–2009 and 2009–2011. A regional categorization is suggested, as different forms of atypical employment, namely part-time, temporary, solo self-employment and family work, have expanded unevenly across space. The authors argue that different patterns are related to regional specialization and industrial structures differently affected by the crisis. Established forms of atypical employment have been shaken, while new highly precarious ones have been boosted. Moreover, regulatory reforms for higher labour flexibilization have also defined the emergent atypical employment patterns in Greece. The article points out that in the Greek labour market, already marked by high flexibility and poor job security and social benefits, recent regulatory reforms increasing flexibilization have deteriorated labour and devalued atypical employment.

Abstract This paper describes the procedures that minimized labour costs in a typical offshore factory of a large corporation from the global market: the Nokia factory in Cluj, Romania. Two interrelated factors contributed to this. Firstly, the arrival of neoliberal economic rationality created favourable conditions for transnational capital’s free passage through the country. Secondly, under the imperative of flexibilization, the 2011 Labour Code modifications diminished employee rights and increased employers’ privileges, allowing companies such as Nokia to freely assemble the region’s labour force – engaging it in a complex production process – and disassemble it without any major consequences. Flexibilization permitted the use of outsourced labour power in the form of external employees, partly from rural areas, with short-term contracts and minimum wages.

This article examines how the recent global recession, together with the general flexibilization of labour markets, is affecting young people. We examine different forms of social exclusion, including unemployment, temporary employment contracts and periods of inactivity, as well as the subjective insecurity arising from such labour market exclusion. We also examine what Member States have done to address this issue, especially as part of their response to the crisis. At both EU (through the Europe 2020 strategy) and national levels specific policy measures exist that target young people in the labour market, but these are mostly supply-driven. Thus, they do not take into account the true problems young people are facing, including problems finding first-time employment and bad-quality jobs with little prospect of moving up the employment ladder. In conclusion, a new generation with higher exposure to systematic labour market risks than previous generations is being left to fend for itself with little appropriate state support.

With mass unemployment in Germany and elsewhere showing no signs of abating, numerous economists and politicians of the neo-classic school have become vocal in calling for the flexibilization of the labour market. A demand for wage cuts forms the nub of their solution to the crises. The article shows that such approaches are both theoretically flawed and unable in practical terms to deliver what they promise, as cuts in wages will not lead th higher levels of employment but will rather increase the danger of a deflationary spiral. An alternative monetary-Keynesian model is proposed as a basis for more suitable labour market policymaking.

The hierarchy of labour law sources plays an important role in shaping the employment protection afforded by national labour law. This article provides a comparative overview of the global trends in the relation between the different layers of employment regulation. To this end, it considers three cluster of countries, respectively the European coordinated market economies, the liberal market economies and the European post-socialist countries. This analysis will make it possible to identify common patterns of transformation of the hierarchy of sources, indicating the current direction of labour law. Based on the three models, we discuss the following four trends and their interactions: (1) the increasing role of legislation; (2) the decentralization and decline of collective bargaining; (3) the growing importance of individual employment contracts based on waivers; (4) the erosion of the favourability principle by means of clauses allowing less favourable terms of employment. We argue that these parallel changes may lead to a worsening of employment conditions. Sources of Labour Law, Hierarchy, Favour Principle, Statutory Mandatory Rules, Collective Bargaining Decentralisation, Freedom of Contract, Flexibilization

This article provides an overview and critical assessment of the intense efforts made to reform French labour market institutions and labour law during the Presidency of François Hollande (2012–2017) and the first eighteen months of the Presidency of Emmanuel Macron. It focuses on the provisions of the El Khomri Act of 2016, the Macron Orders of 2017 and the 2018 Act reforming lifelong learning institutions. The article identifies a strong continuity between the two presidencies, except for the 2018 lifelong learning reform which aims at introducing real change. Compared to the German Hartz reforms of 2002–2005 (similar in scope and importance), and situating European reform strategies within a range of policy options, the article argues that the French reforms correspond to a particular version of ‘flexicurity’, characterized by strong State involvement in labour market policies but also leaning increasingly towards flexibilization and individualization. The article ends by highlighting the limits of the French strategy, especially in the context of slow growth and social unrest in 2018–2019, and outlines a number of principles and orientations that may lead to more efficient and acceptable policies.

PurposeThis article aims to explore how Japanese women with younger children changed their commitment to the labour market between 2000 and 2019 by comparing mothers in three-generation and nuclear family households.Design/methodology/approachJapan currently has the highest ageing rate in the world at nearly 30%. Since the 1990s, employment flexibilization and women's labour market participation have proceeded in parallel, and the conservative family values of the patriarchy and gender division of labour that have provided intergenerational aid for care within households have been shrinking, by conducting a descriptive analysis of the Labour Force Survey (LFS).FindingsThis study identified that a conspicuous increase in part-time employment among mothers in both household types and a decrease by half in the working mother's population in three-generation households. These results suggest that the function of inter-generational assistance by multi-generation cohabitation, which was once thought to be effective in helping working mothers with younger children, is declining.Originality/valueA study examining the transformation of mothers' employment behaviour differences between three-generation households and nuclear family households is rare. This paper makes a new contribution to the research regarding the grandparents' caregiving, household types and mothers' employment.

Abstract This critical-reflective essay seeks to discuss the medicalization of performance based on reflections on flexibility in the world of work and the phenomenon of self-entrepreneurship. In a context of economy financialization, productive restructuring and State’s weakening as guarantor of social rights, precarization and informality are increasingly prevailing, where the promotion of labour flexibilization occurs in line with political-ideological strategies of neoliberal inspiration. There emerge ways of individualization tied to the construction of a multifunctional worker, available to develop multiple abilities, which becomes a potential enterprise and has as a principle the same market dynamics as this enterprise. The entrepreneur of the self needs to invest in itself to keep being valuable and having great functioning conditions, in order to avoid, to the fullest, its own decapitalization. Therefore, in order to enable conditions to sustain the image of success and of author of its own story, the usage of medicines, stimulants and multivitamins has been used as a strategy in search of high performance. To reflect on “the entrepreneur of the self”, the new ways of subjectivity and the suffering derived from those, as well as the apparatus that produces them, is necessary and consists in a challenge for community health.

Resumo O presente ensaio crítico-reflexivo busca discutir a medicalização da performance a partir de reflexões sobre a flexibilização no mundo do trabalho e o fenômeno do empreendedorismo de si. Em um contexto de financeirização da economia, reestruturação produtiva e fragilização do Estado como esfera garantidora dos direitos sociais, impera a precarização e a informalidade, onde a flexibilização do trabalho ocorre em consonância com estratégias político-ideológicas de inspiração neoliberal. Emergem então, modos de individualização atrelados à construção de um trabalhador disposto a desenvolver variadas habilidades, que passa a ser um potencial empreendimento e ter como princípio a mesma dinâmica mercadológica deste. O empreendedor de si mesmo precisa investir em si para manter-se valorizado e em boas condições de funcionamento, de modo a evitar a sua descapitalização. Para dar condições ao sujeito de sustentar a imagem de sucesso e de autor de sua própria história, a utilização de medicamentos, estimulantes e polivitamínicos, tem sido usada como estratégia em busca de alta performance. Problematizar os “empreendedores de si”, as novas formas de subjetivação e o sofrimento advindo destas, bem como a maquinaria que os produzem é necessário, e se constitui um desafio para a saúde coletiva.

Introduction: the Italian way to internal devaluation; 1.a Precarization of labour and weakening of trade union action at company level (amendment of dismissal law); 1.b Circumvention of the CCNL by means of exceptional employment contracts; 1.c Downward competition on labour costs by means of outsourcing and value chains; 1.d Promotion of decentralized collective bargaining and its power to derogate from the law and freezing of collective bargaining in the public sector; 2. The trade union(s) strategies; 2.a Bargaining strategy; 2.b Judicial strategy; 2.c Confrontational strategy; 3. New challenges for workers and new challenges for their organization(s); 3.a Italian trade unions’ strategies; 3.b Alternative experiences of (and in favour of) precarious workers; 4. Anti-austerity protests: the involvement of trade unions and social movements; 5. Concluding remarks; Bibliography.

Non-standardization of employment has become the main trend of the labour markets in the globalized economy. Attempting to enhance the flexibility of employment relations the legislators in BRICS countries are also the part of this trend. The forms of the nonstandard employment are numerous, the present paper concentrates upon the following ones: temporary employment, part-time and multi-party employment relationship. The authors review the experience of four BRICS countries in regulating non-standard forms of employment and determine what were the specific reasons for adopting them in Russia, China, Brazil, and South Africa. The national parts are introduced by the consideration of the international standards of protection of employees working under non-standard contracts. It is argued that even though these four states did not ratify the ILO Convention No. 181 Private Employment Agencies Convention (1997) and only Russia ratified ILO Part-Time Work Convention (No. 175), the ILO approach has influenced the development of national regulations. Though the equal treatment of all workers is lacking in many aspects of employment relations. In the national parts the authors trace the changes in employment law which reflect the pursuit of flexibilization of the labour market and, as in Brazil, the need to formalize employment relations.

Owing to increasing labour market flexibilization, a growing number of people are likely to experience unemployment and, as a consequence, lower mental health and well-being. This article examines cross-national differences in well-being and mental health between unemployed people who engage in voluntary work and those who do not, using multilevel data from the European Quality of Life Survey on unemployed individuals in 29 European countries and other external sources. This article finds that, regardless of their voluntary activity, unemployed people have higher levels of well-being and mental health in countries with more generous unemployment benefits. Unexpectedly, the results also suggest that regular volunteering can actually be detrimental for mental health in countries with less generous unemployment benefits. This article concludes that individual agency exercised through voluntary work can partially improve well-being but the generosity of unemployment benefits is vital for alleviating the negative mental health effects of unemployment.

AbstractBy studying the guilds of the seven maritime cargo handling trades of Barcelona, this paper aims to contribute to the relatively limited, but growing scholarship of port labour during the late artisan phase, and of service-sector guilds in general. It examines the relationship between occupational and organizational cultures, the types and means of inculcating human and social capital, and the formal and informal determination of qualification in view of the different guild responses to liberalization and abolition. Unlike guilds in the secondary sector, these corporations were organized horizontally among masters and had neither journeymen, nor apprentices in their respective trades. Some of them provided services individually while others worked collectively. They generally prohibited internal and external employment schemes, and many of them used a turn system or another to level work opportunities. One of these guilds transitioned directly into a trade union; others became owner associations or dissolved into unorganized competitors. The period studied covers the flexibilization of the labour market through progressively advancing liberal reforms of monopolistic guild privileges and the formal abolition of Spanish guilds in 1836. Comparisons with other European ports further highlight the multiplicity of considerations for understanding occupational and organizational cultures and the trajectories of guilds in the service sector.

The conflict rules enshrined in Regulation 883/2004 on the coordination of social security were created six decades ago to offer those who exercise free movement rights ‘constant social security protection’. The main idea was to ensure that beneficiaries are always subject to the legislation of a single Member State and to indicate which Member State that was. Because beneficiaries were above all ‘standard’ employees working on a full-time basis for an indefinite period of time, it was initially quite easy to determine the ‘competent’ Member State. The processes of flexibilization, digitalization, enlargement and globalization, however, have posed new and often formidable challenges. In today’s dynamic labour market it is often particularly difficult to identify the applicable legislation, issues arise as regards swift and frequent switches in the applicable legislation, increased worker and company mobility may affect social security rights and problems have arisen because of the possible fraudulent use of the rules determining the applicable legislation. This contribution analyses some of the recent CJEU case law on topics like working in to or more Member States, posting, abuse and fraud, employment and/or residence outside the EU and gaps in in social security protection by EU workers. The overarching question is how, in the view of the CJEU, the classic conflict rules are to be applied so as to ensure cross-border movers continue to enjoy constant social security protection.

In its 12 years in government, Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) promoted inclusion through the labor market and through consumption with an increase in labor flexibility. Despite an increase in employment and incomes, the increase in the heterogeneity of the labor market and in flexibilization has resulted in a deepening of the insecurity and vulnerability of workers in line with the new trends that contemporary capitalism imposes on labor. These trends are being deepened in the postimpeachment situation. Em 12 anos de governo o PT promoveu um importante movimento de inclusão pelo mercado de trabalho e pelo consumo com avanço da flexibilidade laboral. Apesar do crescimento do emprego e da renda, o alargamento da heterogeneidade do mercado de trabalho e o avanço da flexibilização resultaram no aprofundamento da condição de insegurança e vulnerabilidade dos trabalhadores em linha com as novas tendências que o capitalismo contemporâneo impõe ao trabalho. Essas tendências estão sendo aprofundadas no cenário pós-impeachment.

Active labor market policies (ALMPs) are an important instrument for governments in dealing with the new challenges of globalization, flexibilization, and individualization of labor markets. Politics and research has focused on the supply-side of the labor market, that is, regulating the rights and obligations of the target groups of ALMPs (mainly unemployed and inactive persons). The role and behavior of employers is under-researched and under-theorized in the vast literature on ALMPs and industrial relations. In this article, we analyze ALMPs from the employers’ perspective by examining the determinants of firms’ participation in providing wage subsidy jobs for the unemployed. First, we examine the historical background to the introduction and development of wage subsidy schemes as an important ALMP instrument in Denmark. Second, we derive theoretical arguments and hypotheses about employers’ participation in ALMPs from selected theories. Third, we use data from a survey of Danish firms conducted in 2013 to characterize the firms that are engaged in implementing wage subsidy jobs and hypotheses are tested using a binary logistical regression to establish why firms voluntarily engage in reintegrating unemployed back into the labor market. We find that the firms which are most likely to participate in the wage subsidy scheme are characterized by many unskilled workers, a higher coverage of collective agreements, a deteriorating economic situation, a Danish ownership structure, and are especially found in the public sector. This shows that the preference formation of firms is more complex than scholars often assume.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on research on the strategies of inequality at the workplace level of multinational corporations within the context characterized by the weakening of traditional bargaining and representation structures. Through which specific strategies multinational corporations foster inequality across different workplaces across borders and how do trade unions in Europe respond to it? Design/methodology/approach This paper is a conceptual one and it is based on existing qualitative comparative research developed by the author. Findings The regulatory regime of organized and governed labor markets and employment relationships is undermined by the employment relationships becoming increasingly unstable in most industrialized countries in Europe. The breakdown in the collective structures for employment regulation, particularly collective bargaining, has led to growing insecurity and inequality among working people. At the workplace level of multinationals inequality is fostered by strategies of flexibilization and benchmarking which force trade unions to negotiate concessions regarding the working conditions of different workers. Trade unions are seeking effective responses to increasing labor market instability and inequality. The paper argues that the transnational regulation of employment relationships through the European Framework Agreements (EFAs) can serve the purpose of constraining benchmarking, while containing workplace inequality. Originality/value This paper offers an in-depth view that the EFAs can constrain the multinationals’ strategies of benchmarking and workplace inequality. This is because EFAs can potentially spread across countries the positive gains of local negotiations where unions are able to negotiate on employment protection to other local subsidiaries where unions may struggle to do so.

This article presents an overview of the recent work on precarious employment and employment quality in relation to workers’ health and well-being. More specifically, the article mainly reviews the work performed in the E.U. 7th Framework project, SOPHIE. First, we present our overarching conceptual framework. Then, we provide a compiled overview of the evidence on the sociodemographic and European cross-country distribution of employment quality and employment precariousness. Subsequently, we provide the current evidence regarding the relations with health and broader worker well-being indicators. A final section summarizes current insights on the pathways relating precarious employment and health and well-being. The article concludes with a plea for further data collection and research into the longitudinal effects of employment precariousness among emerging groups of workers. Based on the evidence compiled in this article, policymakers should be convinced of the harmful health and well-being effects of employment precariousness and (further) labor market flexibilization.

A profissão de secretariado passou por transformações ao longo dos anos e englobou atividades que não eram, tradicionalmente, da sua base técnica, como atividades de cogestão, gestão de pessoas e equipes, liderança, entre outras. Estas atividades surgiram em função do processo de adaptação da profissão ao mercado e ao mundo do trabalho. No entanto, com as novas atribuições, se tornou perceptível um processo de intensificação do trabalho secretarial e de flexibilização, seja das atividades, das posturas ou das formas de trabalhar. Neste sentido, este artigo busca investigar os processos de intensificação e flexibilização do trabalho na área secretarial. As questões norteadoras da pesquisa são: Houve um processo de intensificação ou as atividades deste trabalhador são predominantemente intensas na sua essência? Como se configura o trabalho dos profissionais de secretariado nas corporações públicas e privadas no Brasil? Para tanto, foi realizada uma pesquisa de campo por meio de um survey com 444 (quatrocentos e quarenta e quatro) profissionais de secretariado. A pesquisa é de natureza aplicada, de cunho exploratório e descritivo e com abordagem quantitativa e qualitativa para análise dos dados. Como resultados principais, percebe-se um aumento da exigência por mais trabalho, além da necessidade de polivalência e versatilidade dos profissionais de secretariado. Isso indica um processo de intensificação e flexibilização das atividades e do próprio perfil profissional no cenário brasileiro. ABSTRACT The secretariat profession, the executive assistants, has undergone transformations over the years and encompassed activities that were not traditionally part of its technical base, such as co-management activities, human resources and teams management, leadership, among others. These activities arose because of the process of adapting the profession to the market and the world of labor. However, with the new attributions, a process of intensification of the secretarial work and flexibilization, whether in activities, postures, or ways of working, became noticeable. In this sense, this article aims to investigate the processes of intensification and flexibilization of labor in the secretarial area. The guiding questions of the research are: Was there an intensification process or are the activities of this worker predominantly intense in their essence? How it configures the work of secretarial professionals in public and private corporations in Brazil? Therefore, field research was carried out with 444 (four hundred and forty-four) working secretariat professionals. The research has an applied nature, exploratory and descritive approach and with a quantitative and qualitative approach to data analysis. As main results, there is an increase in the demand for more work, in addition to the need for versatility of executive assistants. This indicates a process of intensification and flexibilization of activities and the professional profile itself in the Brazilian scenario.

The gig-economy is a flexible form of labor characterized by project employment on digital platforms. The purpose of the article is to analyze the essence of the gig-economy in order to assess its impact on the work of the older generation. The analytical review was made taking into account the following tasks: 1) analysis of relevant literature, 2) secondary analysis of quantitative, qualitative and statistical data, 3) assessing the impact of the gig-economy on the employment of pensioners in terms of precarization. An analysis of the literature shows that the “flexibilization” of the labor market is described in ambiguous terms: a number of authors describe the positive aspects (no set schedule, growth of individuality, eradication of bureaucratic restrictions), while others focus on the negative consequences (instability of income, lack of social guarantees, overexploitation, etc.). The author highlights a number of negative risks for the elderly gig-employed (forced self-employment, vulnerability to fraud, lack of social guarantees from the employer, etc.), but comes to the conclusion that the gig economy has a fairly positive impact on the employment of the elderly: 1) social security (basic pension income and social state protection), 2) integration into a new labor reality and opportunities to improve well-being, 3) resocialization, etc. A separate advantage of selfemployment is a fiscal innovation that is beneficial for the elderly which allows pensioners to obtain the status of self-employed without sacrificing pension indexation. The scientific novelty of the study lies in analyzing the employment of the older generation through the lens of the gig-economy and precarization.

Introduction. Studying the issues of secondary employment of higher education students, which is a factor in the youth integration into the social and professional structure of society and in the extended reproduction of its human capital, is of particular relevance in the context of the prospects for transformation of the social space of the modern labor market. The processes of differentiation, flexibilization, and expansion of non-standard forms of employment focus on studying the features of the structure of secondary employment of students in terms of identifying self-employment practices as a way of implementing creative and entrepreneurial activities of the youth. Materials and Methods. The materials of the author pilot focus group study and the data from a sociological survey conducted among final-year students of institutions of higher education in the Republic of Mordovia were used. To carry out an analysis, the methods of calculating the indicators of descriptive statistics, of assessing connections between variables, as well as that of multivariate statistical analysis were employed. Results. It has been shown that secondary employment of senior undergraduate students of institutions of higher education in the Republic of Mordovia is a common practice. The employment of students is mainly localized in the private sector and is not predominantly related to the profession the institution of higher education trains students for. Self-employment makes up a significant proportion (nearly 25 % of secondary employment. The segment of student self-employment is associated with the provision of a wide range of services, freelance and tutoring being the most popular ones. Self-employment practices are structured by type of activity, depending on gender, as well as on the novelty (or traditional nature) of the work done. Discussion and Conclusion. Self-employment contributes to students’ adaptation to and integration into the labor market and is a factor in stimulating the migration attitudes of young people and instability of vocational orientations. The practical significance of the research consists in the possibility of using its results by the authorities of the Republic of Mordovia when developing the regional youth policy and state programs in labor and employment, and when optimizing the human resources policies of organizations and agencies.

Resumo: O presente artigo investiga a Base Nacional Comum Curricular- BNCC, a flexibilização do currículo e a ideia de protagonismo juvenil, expressa por meio da Reforma do Ensino Médio, implantada no ano de 2017. A Metodologia utilizada foi a pesquisa bibliográfica de caráter qualitativo, tendo como referenciais os documentos que tratam sobre a reforma. Baseia suas reflexões no Materialismo Histórico Dialético, para o entendimento de elementos históricos e discursivos que permitam a compreensão de que a reforma está alinhada a um discurso neoliberal. As incursões apontaram que o processo proposto pela reforma desresponsabiliza o Estado pela ampla formação da juventude e seus processos de escolarização, assumindo um discurso de que o protagonismo juvenil se caracteriza como a condução dos jovens sobre seus projetos de vida, sua inserção no mercado de trabalho e por sua conduta cidadã, tendo a BNCC como instrumento alinhador desta política de educação.Palavras-chave: Base Nacional Comum Curricular, Flexibilização Curricular, Protagonismo Juvenil.BNCC, CURRICULAR FLEXIBILIZATION AND YOUTH PROTAGONISM: CURRENT MOVEMENTS OF "CONSTRUCTION" OF BRAZILIAN HIGH SCHOOL, FROM LAW 13.415 / 2017Abstract: This paper investigates the National Common Curricular Base - BNCC, the flexibility of the curriculum, and the idea of youth protagonism, expressed through the High School Reform, implemented in the year 2017. The methodology used was the qualitative bibliographic research, having as reference the documents dealing with the reform. It bases its reflections on Dialectical and Historical Materialism, to comprehend historical and discursive elements that allow the understanding that the reform is aligned to a neoliberal discourse. The incursions pointed out that the process proposed by the reform makes the State not responsible for the extensive formation of youth and their schooling processes, assuming a discourse that youth protagonism is characterized as the conduction of young people over their life projects, their insertion in the labor market. work and for its citizen behavior, having the BNCC as an alignment instrument of this education policy.Keywords: National Common Curriculum Base, Curricular Flexibility, Youth Protagonism

<p><span>As reformas recentes na legislação trabalhista de Brasil e França abriram uma porta para a comparação. A rationale que as presidiu tem inspiração comum: a flexibilização das formas de uso do trabalho em países nos quais a legislação era reputada muito rígida, dificultando o ajuste das empresas às mudanças constantes na competitividade mundial. Embora Brasil e França ocupem lugares muito distintos na divisão internacional do trabalho, e sofram pressões competitivas também distintas, os motivos alegados pelos reformadores dos dois lados são espantosamente semelhantes. Modernização das relações de trabalho, geração de empregos (e combate ao desemprego), crescimento econômico, melhoria da renda dos trabalhadores e das condições de trabalho. Mas a promessa de segurança socioeconômica vem acompanhada de formas de regulação que geram, na verdade, insegurança no emprego, na renda e nos direitos trabalhistas. O estudo procura avaliar algumas dimensões dessa insegurança, comparando os dois países em torno da noção de “precariedade”.</span></p><p> </p><div><p class="trans-title"><strong>LABOR REFORMS AND THEIR MARKETS: a comparison Brazil-France</strong></p><p>Recent reforms in labor legislation in Brazil and France have opened a door for comparison. The rationale behind them has a common inspiration: flexibilization of forms of labor use in countries where legislation was considered very rigid, making it difficult for companies to adjust to constant changes in global competitiveness. Although Brazil and France occupy very different places in the international division of labor, and face different competitive pressures, the motivation of the reformers on both sides are strikingly similar. Modernization of labor relations, job creation, reduction of unemployment, economic growth, improvement of workers’ income and working conditions. But the promise of socioeconomic security is accompanied by forms of regulation that actually generate insecurity in employment, income, and labor rights. The study tries to evaluate some dimensions of this insecurity, comparing the two countries around the notion of “precariousness”.</p><p><strong>Key words: </strong>Brazil; France; Labor reform; Socioeconomic insecurity; Precariousness</p><p class="trans-title"><strong><br /></strong></p></div><div><p class="trans-title"><strong>LES REFORM</strong><strong>ES DU TRAVAIL ET LEURS MARCHES: une comparaison Brésil-France</strong></p></div><p>Les réformes récentes de la législation du travail au Brésil et en France ont ouvert une porte à la comparaison. Elles sont inspirées par une logique commune : la flexibilisation des formes d’utilisation de la main-d’œuvre dans des pays où la législation était considérée comme très rigide, empêchant les entreprises de s’adapter aux changements de la compétitivité mondiale. Bien que le Brésil et la France occupent des positions très distinctes dans la division internationale du travail avec des pressions concurrentielles différentes, les motivations des réformateurs des deux côtés sont remarquablement similaires. Modernisation des relations de travail, création d’emplois (et lutte contre le chômage), croissance économique, amélioration du revenu et des conditions de travail des travailleurs. Mais la promesse de sécurité socio-économique s’accompagne de formes de régulation qui génèrent effectivement une insécurité en matière d’emploi, de revenu et de droits du travail. L’étude évalue certaines dimensions de cette insécurité en comparant les deux pays autour de la notion de “précarité”.</p><p><strong>Key words: </strong>Brésil; France; Réforme du travail; Insécurité socioéconomique; Précarité</p><p><span><br /></span></p>

<p>Este artículo analiza las modalidades recientes de proletarización de los trabajadores rurales de los agronegocios de flores y brócoli en la provincia de Cotopaxi, en la sierra del Ecuador. Se trata de un territorio rural donde la modernización capitalista no requiere de la expropiación total del recurso tierra; por lo mismo, utiliza tanto a trabajadores sin tierra ubicados en la parte baja como a campesinos indígenas que todavía disponen de parcelas ubicadas en la parte alta. Para esto, se indagan las estrategias desplegadas por los empresarios<br />para conservar su dominación en el campo social y que buscan la reproducción de relaciones clientelares, así como el cambio de habitus entre los asalariados de este territorio. Se examinan también las limitaciones de los asalariados rurales en el ámbito organizativo frente a flexibilización del mercado laboral. Este trabajo se basa en investigaciones realizadas desde el año 2012 hasta la actualidad en las cuales se utilizaron encuestas a familias rurales y entrevista a actores clave del territorio.</p><p><strong>A ESPECIFICIDADE DOS RECENTES PROCESSOS DE PROLETARIZAÇÃO NA SERRA EQUATORIANA</strong></p><p>Este artigo analisa as recentes modalidades de proletarização de trabalhadores rurais na agroindústria de flores e de brócolis que atuam na província de Cotopaxi, no altiplano equatoriano. Este é um território rural onde a modernização capitalista não exige a expropriação total dos recursos da terra, por isso utiliza tanto os trabalhadores sem-terra localizados na parte baixa como os camponeses indígenas, que ainda têm parcelas de terras localizadas na parte alta do território. As estratégias implementadas pelos empresários para preservar seu domínio no campo social são investigadas em relação à reprodução das relações de clientela, bem como à mudança do habitus entre os trabalhadores assalariados desse território. Também examina as limitações dos<br />trabalhadores rurais no campo organizacional e a atual implementação de políticas públicas que conduzem a uma flexibilização do mercado de trabalho. Este trabalho baseia-se em pesquisas realizadas desde 2012 até o presente, utilizando sondagens às famílias rurais e entrevistas com atores-chave no território.</p><p>Palavras-chave: Proletarização. Agronegócio. Campo Social. Flexibilização. Organização social.</p><p><strong>THE SPECIFICITY OF RECENT PROLETARIANIZATION PROCESSES IN ECUADORIAN HIGHLANDS</strong><br /><br />This article analyzes there cent modalities of proletarianization of rural workers in flower and broccoli agribusinesses in the province of Cotopaxi in the Ecuadorian highlands. This is a rural territory where capitalist modernization does not require the total expropriation of land resources. Therefore, it<br />uses both landless workers located in the lowerpart, as well as indigenous peasants who still have plots located in the upper part. The strategies deployed<br />by the businessmen to preserve their domination in the social field are being investigated, and they are seeking there production of clientelist relations, as<br />well as the change of habitus among the workers of this territory. It also examines the limitations of rural workers in the organizational field and<br />the current deployment of public policies that lead to a flexibilization of the labor market. This work is based on research conducted from 2012 to the present, using surveys of rural families and interviews with key actors in the territory.</p><p>Keywords: Proletarianization. Agribusiness. Social Field. Flexibilization. Social Organization</p><p><strong>LA SPÉCIFITÉ DES RÉCENTS PROCESSUS DE PROLÉTARISATION DANS LES HAUTS PLATEAUX ÉQUATORIENS</strong><br /><br />Cet article analyse les récentes modalités de prolétarisation des travailleurs ruraux dans les entreprises agroalimentaires de fleurs et de brocolis dans la province de Cotopaxi, sur les hauts plateaux équatoriens. C’est un territoire rural où la modernisation capitaliste n’exige pas l’expropriation totale des ressources foncières. Elle utilise donc à la fois des travailleurs sans terre situés dans la partie basse, ainsi que des paysans indigènes qui ont encore des parcelles situées dans la partie haute. Les stratégies déployées par les hommes d’affaires<br />pour préserver leur domination dans le domaine social son tétudiées, et elles visent la reproduction des relations de clientèle, ainsi que le changement<br />d’habituschez les salariés de ce territoire. On y examine également les limites des travailleurs ruraux dans le domaine organisationnel et le déploiement<br />actuel des politiques publiques qui conduisent à une flexibilisation du marché du travail. Cet article s’appuie sur des recherches menées depuis 2012, à partir d’enquêtes auprès des familles rurales et d’entretiens avec les acteurs clés du territoire.</p><p>Mots-Cles: Prolétarisation. Entrepriseagricole. Champ Social. Flexibilisation. Organisation sociale.</p>

Internationally, the 1980s marked a shift in economic policy. In the Nether­lands, the supposedly moderate neoliberal turn and the first round of flexibilization characterized the decade. Nowadays, labour market flexibility is exceptionally high in the Netherlands compared to neighbouring countries. This article examines how the trade union movement in the 1980s responded to increasing flexibilization, which strategy was used, and how this contributed to early Dutch flexibilization. In contrast to literature reflecting an institutional perspective, the trade union movement is analysed in this article from a social-historical perspective and as a social movement. As a result, it is argued that the effects of rising flexibilization were noted very early on within the trade unions. Be that as it may, both the priorities that followed from the agreements with employer organizations and the internal dynamics were decisive for the trade union movement’s relatively late and unassertive responses to the flexibilization of labour in the 1980s.

The cultural and creative industries (CCI) is a sector where the workforce is highly educated, yet precarious working conditions are prominent. Although flexible and marginal work is often treated as an overall feature of the sector, this study based on register data on all workers in the sector shows that processes of flexibilization and marginalization are highly divergent between its subsectors. In half of the CCI subsectors, some form of collectively bargained response to the ongoing flexibilization and marginalization has emerged. This first of all shows that creative workers do indeed not only care about expressing their creativity but also about their material working and living conditions. Also how employers’ organizations and trade unions respond to these developments by means of collective agreements varies. Where they disagree, concrete action is postponed. Where they align, either counteracting measures are included, or attempts are made to bridge the divide between employees and the self-employed to some extend in the collective agreement. By doing so, they counteract processes of dualization, paving the road for innovative approaches of industrial relations actors. Still, this counts only for part of the CCI as much of it remains not covered by collective agreements.

Sociology of work in the Netherlands 1984-2009: cumulation of knowledge and debate about its micro foundation Sociology of work in the Netherlands 1984-2009: cumulation of knowledge and debate about its micro foundation The article describes the development of the sociology of work in the Netherlands during the period 1984-2009 from three different perspectives. The first perspective focuses on the question how sociology of work as field of knowledge and as academic discipline has developed, and what have been the main determinants of that development. The second perspective is that of themes and hypotheses. Focussing on the themes of quality of jobs, flexibilization of the labour market and differences in the work of women and men, it is shown how debates developed and knowledge has grown during the past 25 years. The third perspective concerns the micro foundation of the sociology of work, which is the recurrent theme in debates about the discipline. The article concludes that the new challenges for the sociology of work are in research about the conditions of the contribution of work to human well-being.

This article examines the effects of the flexibilization of working time in terms of gender segmentation in the labor market. It proposes and analyzes eight categories of women’s participation in the labor market and the effects of flexibilization on each of them. By using household survey data and case studies, the research shows that some forms of flexibilization reinforce the sexual division of labor, for example, low pay for precarious, part-time home-based work, and low social status that perpetuate caregiving roles for women in the private realm. Concurrently, forms of flexibilization associated with better pay do not consider the existing sexual division of labor, in that they demand women’s total availability for work, thus impacting their careers and lives negatively. JEL Classification: J01, J16, D63

Abstract The rise of flexible employment in advanced democracies has been predominantly studied in the insider-outsider framework of the dualization literature. However, against the background of rising income inequality, it seems questionable to assume that all labor market insiders are equally affected by flexibilization. This paper explores whether flexibilization increases wage inequality among labor market insiders. I argue that flexibilization exposes insiders to a set of wage risks that are concentrated among low- and middle-income insiders, creating downward wage pressure on those insiders. The empirical analysis, covering 22 democracies between 1985 and 2016, finds that the deregulation of non-standard employment is associated with declining wage shares of low-income and middle-income earners, while top earners benefit. These major distributional shifts imply an important qualification of the dualization literature: rather than pitting insiders against outsiders, flexibilization ‘at the margins’ seems to exacerbate divides among insiders.

Abstract Since the 1970s, labor markets have been neoliberalized worldwide. In this context, labor market intermediation has been increasingly privatized and the temporary staffing industry (tsi) has undertaken a process of internationalization and diversification. This article seeks to discuss how and to what extent leading staffing firms have become powerful global labor market actors while diversifying their staffing services internationally. Building on the literature on the internationalization/globalization of the tsi in the 2000s, the article outlines a theoretical perspective for understanding current leading staffing firms as global labor market intermediaries (glmi) and discusses the key empirical results of two case studies conducted during 2020 on the international diversification of the two main glmi s: Randstad and the Adecco Group. The article suggests that glmi s have developed this strategy to expand and, consequently, secure their “classification power” in order to increase labor market flexibilization and the consequent informalization and precarization of work.

AbstractThe place of labor regulation in contemporary development discourse revolves around the validity of the neoclassical assertion that any interference with market wage-setting mechanisms leads to a cruel twist–workers left unemployed in a less productive economy. The push for reducing individual and collective labor rights across the globe, commonly termed labor flexibilization, has been justified on the grounds that not only do “rigidities” arising from ostensibly pro-worker regulations hurt workers, they are also key and central impediment to growth. While the empirical grounds of the neoclassical assertion have become ever murkier over time, the appeal of this pro-growth assertion has been recurrent in economies of diverse incomes. For lower-income countries this has been doubly true, with pro-worker legacies cast as urgently necessary targets for reform. However, no true sustained example has emerged of a country that has unleashed employment growth through workplace deregulation. Instead, most attempts at such reform have ultimately led to political backlash when this promise has not materialized and populations have suffered the dislocations of ever-more precarious work. In this context, this paper looks at the recent discourses on workplace deregulation as applied to three of the largest global economies: Brazil, India and China. Each currently is at a different stage of what will be called “the flexibilization cycle.” In China, the Chinese Communist Party is grappling with a fundamental challenge to its legitimacy stemming from the accumulated dissatisfaction with weak workplace regulation and has rejected the flexibilization agenda. In India, workplace regulation has been promised by a new administration, but has been frustrated in attempts to combat significant backlash. And in Brazil, a new political administration has made the promise of flexibilization as foundational to reinvigorated growth after a pause in a decade of inclusive growth. Examining these case examples will expose why the cruel neoclassical twist never materializes and then leads to popular unrest. The twist’s assumptions about wage setting, especially in lower-income nations, ignores but is ultimately undermined by inherently unequal power dynamics in workplace institutions and the primacy of enforcement mechanisms. Further, general levels of human capital formation are far more central to actual economic development, which are in turn eroded by precarious work. The common emergence of labor flexibilization discourses during periods of economic recession is driven instead by opportunistic attempts to re-entrench elite status by diverting attention away from meritocratic reforms. By refocusing the debate on human capital development, the truly elusive growth potential of genuine meritocracy, rather then flexibilization, becomes clear as a driver of developmental success and as an explanatory factor in politics of labor regulation debates.

Abstract This article reframes the debate on the consequences of flexibilization in European labour markets focusing on the unexplored impact of temporary employment on occupational wages for permanent workers. Exploiting the variation in the temps’ density within occupation and age groups across European countries between 2003 and 2010, we find that temporary contracts negatively affect occupational average wages for insiders’ workers. These results are still robust using a dynamic system based on generalized method of moments (GMM-SYS) to account for potential endogeneity issues. We also explore the existence of heterogeneity across different occupational clusters and institutional settings. Our estimates indicate that the knock-on effect is large in countries with low employment protection legislation and it is driven by occupations characterized by untechnical work logics.

With the emergence and expansion of post-manufacturing knowledge economies, formerly industrial inner cities in the West have become intensified staging grounds for a range of spatial claims. Among these are processes of residential gentrification, the cultural politics of heritage preservation, the struggles for community development, and the growth of creative industries, such as art, design, architecture, publishing and film, which I focus on here.1 Throughout the last two decades in the UK, inner cities and central city fringe districts have been subject to an assortment of strategies that have endeavored to revitalize them economically and socially. Prominent among these attempts has been the encouragement of new, and the incubation of existing, small-scale creative enterprises. Regeneration executives choose these enterprises for a range of reasons. Creative activities are associated with popular culture that disaffected, unemployed youth find appealing; they are able to occupy and rehabilitate underused existing building stock and to sensitively recycle historic buildings, thereby preserving urban scales; and, as a number of scholars have pointed out, they exhibit transaction-rich, network-intensive organization (Castells 1992; Lash and Urry 1994; Scott 2000). As a result, concerted efforts to design creative industry quarters have sprung up across the UK, including Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, and Birmingham. In London, a whole band of formerly industrial, inner-city districts from King's Cross, down through Clerkenwell, Hoxton, Shoreditch and Spitalfields, and along the wharves of the Thames's South Bank, are being or have been revitalized in part through the strategic deployment of creative industries. Certainly, how creative industries and economies develop varies. At King's Cross, nonprofit and commercial creative companies have emerged quietly in a context of protracted struggle over the future of the Railway Lands, which will be reshaped by the coming terminus of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. At Spitalfields, high-profile conversions of Truman Brewery and the Spitalfields Market site into artisanal stalls, creative businesses, and leisure (café, restaurant, and sport) facilities are generating a new local creative economy, bringing in visitors and creating new customer bases for Spitalfields' Bangladeshi restaurant keepers and garment entrepreneurs.2 Whatever the conditions for growth, creative industries have been aided by the rhetoric of Cool Britannia and New Labour's cultural -- or more accurately --creative industrial policy. I would even put forth that, in the form of the creative quarter, the creative industries represent the urbanist logic of Cool Britannia, threatening to elaborate, following the other logics of BritArt and BritPop, a BritSpace. Now, according to some of Britain's foremost cultural critics, Cool Britannia was born sometime in 1996 in the Sunday Times, and died two years later, soon after a piece in the New Musical Express that showcased young musician discontent with New Labour creative industrial policy (Hewison 1996; McRobbie 1999, 4). Yet, before we close the casket, I want to suggest that Cool Britannia be understood as a symptom of a range of 'causes' that have been transforming the idioms of politics, governance, culture, citizenship, social organization; and, as the creative quarter evokes, the city. An itinerary of these causes would include: the expansion of a consumer-driven service/knowledge economy; the growth and globalization of communication and information technologies; the 'flexibilization' of regimes of production; the mutation of the function of the welfare state and corresponding meaning of citizenship; and, the dominance of intellectual property notions of culture. While these shifts are transforming societies around the world, in the UK, they became closely identified with New Labour and its attempts to institutionalize the rhetoric of the Third Way during the late 1990s (e.g., Blair 1998; Giddens 1998). In imagining itself as a force of change, New Labour capitalized on two events that gave birth to Cool Britannia: (1) the glamorization of British art and young British artists in the mid-1990s; and (2) the emergence of a discourse of 'rebranding' Britain, disseminating from reports from brand specialists Wolff Olins and think tank Demos (Bobby 1999).3 The first, producing the nBA (new British Art) and the yBAs (young British Artists) are media events with their own genealogies that have received copious critical attention (e.g., Ford 1996; McRobbie 1999; Roberts 1996, 1998; Stallabrass 1999; Suchin 1998). This glamorization involved the discovery of the artists by the mainstream media and a focus on artistic entrepreneurship in creating, shaping and responding to an enlarged market for cultural products. In the process, some of these artists effectively became brands, authoring, legitimating and licensing a certain kind of ironic, post-political art that was palatable to the international art market.4 The second cause stems from responses to anxiety over post-imperial Britain's future in a post-manufacturing, globalized, knowledge economy. For both the Demos thinkers and Wolff Olins consultants, these were centered on the need to re-imagine British national subjectivity as if it were a commercial brand. The discourse of branding is tangential to that of intellectual property, in which brands are value codings managed through networks of trademarks, patents, copyrights and royalties. Rosemary Coombe (1998) has written, albeit in a different political context, on the increasing dominance of notions of culture defined through intellectual property, and adjudicated by international trade experts. Indeed, New Labour creative industrial policies, as demonstrated in former Culture Secretary, Chris Smith's, essays that linked creativity, entrepreneurship and economic growth (Smith 1998) and initiatives under the Creative Industries Mapping Document (DCMS 2001) reveal how the relationship between the state and national culture is being renegotiated. Less meaningful is the state that served as sponsor or patron of cultural activities for its citizens. Rather, under New Labour, as Nikolas Rose argues (1999), and critics of New Labour cultural policy interrogate (Greenhalgh 1998; Littler 2000), the state is an enabler, partnering with entrepreneurs, small-scale firms, and multinational enterprises to promote the traffic in cultural property. How such a shift affects the production of urban space, and the future meanings attached to the British city remain to be explored. In the context of the American city, M. Christine Boyer (1995), elaborates how an iterative regime of architectural styles and planning ethics functions as a late capitalist cultural logic of urbanism that discards elements, often in decaying and abandoned sections, that cannot be easily incorporated. Borrowing on Kevin Lynch's (1960) notion of the imageable city, she writes: physically, these spaces are linked imaginatively to each other, to other cities, and to a common history of cultural interpretations (82). Within this scenario, the elements of the creative quarter copy, print, art supply and film developing stores, hip cafes and restaurants, galleries, studios, loft conversions and street furniture are gradually linked together to form a recognizable and potentially iterative matrix, overlaid on the disused former industrial district. Moreover, as a prominent, coordinated technique in the revitalization strategies of British cities, and given the aftermath of Cool Britannia, the creative quarter must be seen also as a symptom of a symptom. For, if Cool Britannia is itself produced through the application of branding discourse to the level of national subjectivity, and to the glamorization of the artist, then it is only a short step to contemplate the urbanist logic of the creative quarter as BritSpaceâ„¢. Notes 1. A creative industry is one that has its origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which [has] a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property. I am following the definition of creative industries used by the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport. It was first used in the Creative Industries Mapping Document, released in November 1998 and was maintained in the second, more extensive mapping exercise in February 2001. The list of activities designated as creative are: advertising, architecture, art and antiques, crafts, design, designer fashion, film and video, interactive leisure software, music, the performing arts, publishing, software and computer services, television and radio. 2. I discuss the emergence of creative enterprises at King's Cross and Spitalfields at length in my doctoral dissertation (Deckha 2000). 3. As Bobby (1999) reports, the Wolff Olins consultants commented that looking at business attitudes towards national identity and UK industry found that 72% of the world's leading companies believe a national image is important when making purchase decisions. In light of this, and worryingly for British business, only 36% of our respondents felt that a 'made in the UK' label would influence their decision positively. 4. Lash and Urry describe this process of branding in the creative or cultural industries: What (all) the culture industries produce becomes increasingly, not like commodities but advertisements. As with advertising firms, the culture industries sell not themselves but something else and they achieve this through 'packaging'. Also like advertising firms, they sell 'brands' of something else. And they do this through the transfer of value through images (1994, 138). References Blair T. (1998) The Third Way: New Politics for a New Century. The Fabian Society, London. Bobby D. (1999) Original Britain' could succeed where 'Cool Britannia' failed Brand Strategy November 22: 6. Boyer M C. (1995) The Great Frame-Up: Fantastic appearances in contemporary spatial politics, Liggett H., Perry D. C., eds. Spatial Practices. Sage, New York. 81-109. Castells M. (1992) The Rise of the Network Society. Blackwell, Oxford. Coombe R. (1998) The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Deckha N. (2000) Repackaging the Inner City: Historic Preservation, Community Development, and the Emergent Cultural Quarter in London. Unpublished MS, Rice University. Department of Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS]. (2001) Creative industries mapping document [http://www.culture.gov.uk/creative/pdf/p...] Ford S. (1996) Myth Making Art Monthly March: 194. Giddens A. (1998) The Third Way. Polity, Cambridge. Greenhalgh L. (1998) From Arts Policy to Creative Economy Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, 87, May: 84-94. Hewison R. (1996) Cool Britannia Sunday Times, 19 May. Lash S. and Urry J. (1994) Economies of Signs and Space. Sage, London. Littler J. (2000) Creative Accounting: Consumer Culture, The 'Creative Economy' and the Cultural Policies of New Labour in Bewes T. and Gilbert J. eds. Cultural Capitalism. Lawrence & Wishart, London. 203-222. Lynch K. (1960) The Image of the City. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. McRobbie A. (1999) In the Culture Society. Routledge, London. Roberts J. (1996) Mad for it!: Philistinism, the everyday and new British art Third Text, 35 (Summer): 29-42. Roberts J. (1998) Pop Art, the Popular and British Art of the 1990s in McCorquodale D. et al, eds. Occupational Hazard. Black Dog, London. 53-78. Rose N. (1999) Inventiveness in politics: review of Anthony Giddens, The Third Way Economy and Society, 28.3: 467-493. Scott A.J. (2000) The Cultural Economy of Cities. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Smith C. (1998) Creative Britain. Faber and Faber, London. Stallabrass J. (1999) High Art Lite. Verso, London. Suchin P. (1998) After a Fashion: Regress as Progress in Contemporary British Art in McCorquodale D. et al, eds. Occupational Hazard. Black Dog, London. 95-110. Links http://www.culture.gov.uk/creative/pdf/part1.pdf Citation reference for this article MLA Style Deckha, Nityanand. "Britspaceâ„¢?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.2 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/britspace.php>. Chicago Style Deckha, Nityanand, "Britspaceâ„¢?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 2 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/britspace.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Deckha, Nityanand. (2002) Britspaceâ„¢?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(2). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/britspace.php> ([your date of access]).

Inspired by Z. Bauman’s ideas this empirical study attempts to analyze the structure and logic of a way of life corresponding to the “liquid modernity” emerging both in Western countries and modern Russia. It is described by the metaphor of social surfing. One of the key characteristics of this way of life, mainly typical for young people, is overcoming the effect of social inertia (individual path dependency) in all spheres: education, labor market, professional activities, housing strategy, leisure, and private life. Following the logic of Grounded Theory and using a series of biographical semi-structured interviews with residents of large cities, mostly aged 17 to 35 years, the author constructs a model of social surfing as a way of life. The theoretical sample primarily consists of informants demonstrating the elements of the lifestyle under consideration (social surfers). Such a nature of the sample precludes generalizations applicable to the entire Russian youth. The social surfing model consists of two main blocks: (a) the logic of social surfing in different spheres of life, and (b) the factors that increase the probability of choosing such a lifestyle. The model of social surfing includes several levels that permeate all spheres: 1) macro-level institutional shifts (flexibilization of structures), 2) patterns of social surfers’ practices, and 3) surfer’s personal characteristics.

É sobre a crise no sindicalismo como fenômeno da desmontagem da relação salarial constituída historicamente no Brasil que o presente artigo se debruça, de maneira a explicitar a transição pela qual passa o mundo do trabalho. A crise da relação salarial passa pela fragilização do princípio do direito do e ao trabalho, princípio esse que outrora havia reduzido, em certa medida, a disparidade entre capital e trabalho no mercado. No caso do Brasil, o processo instaurado nos anos 1990 aprofundou situações de crise no sindicalismo, quando o governo flexibilizou as relações de trabalho em aspectos centrais da relação de emprego, tais como remuneração, tempo de trabalho, formas de contratação/demissão e as formas individuais de solução dos conflitos. Embora não tenha sido alterado o sistema de representação e negociação, estimulou-se a descentralização das negociações coletivas. O desemprego, a precarização do trabalho e as transformações em curso ameaçam desintegrar os vínculos que possibilitam a reprodução social e criam novos desafios ao sindicalismo frente às ofensivas do regime de acumulação flexível, como se pode constatar na realidade dos metalúrgicos da indústria automobilística no Paraná, Brasil. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: sindicalismo, relação salarial, trabalho, flexibilização, metalúrgicos, crise, indústria automotiva.WAGE RELATION CRISIS AND UNIONISM IN NEOLIBERAL TIMES Maria Aparecida Bridi This paper is about the crisis in unions as a byproduct of the dismantling of the historically built wage relation in Brazil, detaching the current transition through which labor world passes. Such crisis consists in the weakening of the work legislation and of the right to work, both of which had reduced the disparity between capital and work in the market. In Brazil, such process began in the 90’s, deepening critical situations for unions as the government flexibilized the labor relations in central aspects of the employment relation, such as payment, working time, manners of hiring/dismissal and the individual forms in the solution of conflicts. Even if the system of representation and negotiation remained untouched; the decentralization of collective negotiations was stimulated. The unemployment, the precarization of jobs and the ongoing changes threaten to disintegrate the bonds which allow social reproduction and create new challenges to unions in the face of attacks of flexible accumulation regimen, as can be verified in the reality of metal workers in automobile industry in the State of Paraná – Brazil KEYWORDS: unionism, wage relations, labor, flexibilization, metal workers, crisis, automobile industry.LA CRISE DE LA RELATION SALARIALE ET LE SYNDICALISME À UNE ÉPOQUE NÉOLIBÉRALE Maria Aparecida Bridi Cet article essaie d’expliciter la transition par laquelle passe le monde du travail, en tenant compte de la crise du syndicalisme considérée comme phénomène de démantèlement de la relation salariale historiquement constituée au Brésil. Cette crise passe par l’affaiblissement du principe du droit du travail et du droit au travail. Principe qui, dans une certaine mesure, avait autrefois réduit la disparité existante entre le capital et le travail disponible sur le marché. En ce qui concerne le Brésil, le processus instauré dans les années 1990 a approfondi des situations de crise au sein du syndicalisme, lorsque le gouvernement a rendu les relations de travail plus flexibles quant à des aspects centraux dans la relation d’emploi, comme par exemple quant à la rémunération, au temps de travail, aux règles d’embauche et de démission et aux manières individuelles de résoudre les conflits. Même si le système de représentation et de négociation n’a pas été modifié, la décentralisation des négociations collectives a été encouragée. Le chômage, la précarisation du travail et les transformations en cours risquent de désintégrer les liens qui permettent la reproduction sociale et créent de nouveaux défis pour le syndicalisme face aux offensives du régime d’accumulation flexible, ce qui peut être constaté dans la réalité des métallurgistes de l’industrie automobile à l’état du Paraná au Brésil. MOTS-CLÉS: syndicalisme, relation salariale, travail, flexibilisation, métallurgistes, crise, industrie automobile.Publicação Online do Caderno CRH no Scielo: http://www.scielo.br/ccrh Publicação Online do Caderno CRH: http://www.cadernocrh.ufba.br

RESUMOObjetivo: analisar as controvérsias do modelo de gestão na implantação do Programa Cegonha Carioca. Método: trata-se de estudo qualitativo, descritivo, com método de narrativa de vida, com 15 participantes entre enfermeiros da atenção pré-natal, do módulo Transporte e Gestores do Programa (enfermeiros e médicos). Realizou-se a produção de dados a partir entrevista aberta. Gravaram-se e se transcreveram simultaneamente as entrevistas, agrupando-as por unidades temáticas, e se destacaram, neste artigo, as narrativas que tratam da implantação do Programa e a contratualização do serviço. Resultados: contemplaram-se as narrativas que marcaram a criação e a implantação do PCC, destacando-se as controvérsias na contratualização de recursos por Organizações Sociais em Saúde (OS’s) para a sua operacionalidade. Conclusão: evidencia-se que as narrativas de vida levaram à identificação e à análise de três principais controvérsias no modelo de gestão que marcaram a implantação do Programa Cegonha Carioca: a inconstitucionalidade da gestão por Os’s, a autonomia concedida com a justificativa de eficiência e qualidade do serviço e a flexibilização da força trabalho, que leva à instabilidade do profissional atuante no PCC. Descritores: Política de Saúde; Enfermagem Obstétrica; Saúde da Mulher; Serviços de Saúde Materno-Infantil; Planos e Programas de Saúde.ABSTRACT Objective: to analyze the controversies of the management model in the implementation of the Programa Cegonha Carioca. Method: this is a qualitative, descriptive study, with life narrative method, with 15 participants among nurses of prenatal care, of the module Transport and Program Managers (nurses and physicians). Data were produced from open interview. The interviews were simultaneously recorded and transcribed, grouping them by thematic units, with emphasis, in this article, on the narratives addressing the implementation of the program and the service contractualization. Results: the study included the narratives that marked the creation and deployment of the PCC, highlighting the controversies in contractualization of resources by Social Health Organizations (SHOs) for its operability. Conclusion: the life narratives allowed identifying and analyzing three major controversies in the management model that marked the implementation of the Programa Cegonha Carioca: the unconstitutionality of management by SHOs, the autonomy justified by the efficiency and quality of service and the flexibilization of the labor force, which leads to instability of the professional working in the PCC. Descriptors: Health Policy; Nursing; Obstetrical Nursing; Women's Health; Maternal-Child Health Services; Health Programs and Plans.RESUMEN Objetivo: analizar las controversias del modelo de gestión en la ejecución del Programa Cegonha Carioca. Método: este es un estudio cualitativo, descriptivo, con el método narrativo de la vida, con 15 participantes entre enfermerao de atención prenatal, módulo de Transporte y Gerentes del Programa (enfermeros y médicos). Los datos fueron producidos a partir de entrevista abierta. Las entrevistas fueron grabadas y transcritas simultáneamente, agrupándolas por unidades temáticas, destacándose, en este artículo, los relatos relacionados con la ejecución del programa y la contractualización del servicio. Resultados: se contemplaron las narrativas que han marcado la creación y despliegue del PCC, destacando las controversias en la contractualización de recursos por las Organizaciones Sociales en Salud (OSs) para su operatividad. Conclusión: las narrativas de la vida condujieron a la identificación y análisis de tres de las principales controversias en el modelo de gestión que caracterizó la ejecución del Programa Cegonha Carioca: la inconstitucionalidad de la gestión por parte de OSs, la autonomía concedida con la justificación de la eficiencia y la calidad del servicio y la flexibilización de la fuerza de trabajo, lo cual conduce a la inestabilidad de la actuación profesional en el PCC. Descriptores: Política de Salud; Enfermería; Enfermería Obstétrica; Salud de la Mujer; Servicios de Salud Materno-Infantil; Planes y Programas de Salud.

IntroductionWhen a baby girl born in Britain was endowed with the topical name ‘Hashtag’, a social media post decried the naming, and a media storm followed. Before she was even home from hospital, headlines were at the ready: “Did a mother really just name her child Hashtag?” (Nye) and “Baby Hashtag: has the search for original names gone too far?” (Barkham). Trollers were also poised to react, offering: “The first name is REALLY dumb. And you're even dumber,” prompting a rejection of the baby’s name as well as her ostensibly ill-equipped parents (Facebook). Dubbed a “Public Figure” on her Facebook page, Hashtag Jameson accrued a particularly premature type of celebrity, where, with a handful of baby selfies, she declared via Twitter, and only hours after birth, that she was “already trending”.In this article, I consider the relationship between the infant child and the visual-digital economies in which it – as in the Hashtag hoax, above – performs. The infant child is brought into view with the very first sentence that frames John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. “Seeing comes before words”, he writes. “The child looks and recognizes before it can speak” (1). Berger’s reference to the seeing child positions it as an active agent in cultures and practices of visuality, but also uses an idea of the child to position vision as the primary communicative means by which we “establish our place in the surrounding world” and in which we are enveloped “before” speech (7). Here, I explore the intensified relationship between the visual culture of infancy and the economised digital movement of vision that it produces in one highly specific image-genre: the baby selfie. In doing so I aim to characterise the depictive nature of this format in terms of how it compositionally documents – to further borrow the language of Berger, who was then discussing oil paintings – “a way of seeing the world, which was ultimately determined by new attitudes to property and exchange” (87).The new sociology of childhood has been concerned with the construction of the child figure as it has interfaced with new cultural and political realities since the early 1980s (Prout). These include “phenomena such as the flexibilization of production … expanding networks of knowledge … and shifts in labour market participation, work and the global economy” (Prout 5). I suggest here that the baby selfie can be seen as an unprecedented social marker of these transformations, signalling a heightened degree of priceless sentiment within which the child – as an animator of amateur affects, viral tendencies and algorithmic logics – is given to operate. I focus on the compositional propensities of the baby selfie in order to characterise how it visually construes a particular kind of self that is intrinsically entangled with the conception of the image as a form of capital exchange. That is, I suggest that in its intense and yet paradoxical self-performativity the baby selfie depicts a way of seeing that is predicated on, but also troubles, the conceit of a commodified social relation. What Does the Baby Selfie Say?“Should babies really be taking selfies?” yells a headline warning against the perceived dangers of youth digital cultures (Cox). The 2014 story references a phone app built by father Matthew Pegula that uses front-facing cameras to “unintentionally teac[h] your baby to take selfies of themselves” by generating “rattling sounds, pictures of cute animals, and more to get the baby’s attention.” The article explains that “[w]hen the baby reaches out to touch the screen, the camera snaps their selfie and saves it to the device”. While Pegula’s Baby Selfie App is available for purchase on Google Play’s app store for $1.09, a similar device named New Born Fame, featuring “Facebook and Twitter symbols that are activated when the youngster reaches for them” and inclusions such as “a pair of shoes with an internal pedometer that tracks kicks and posts the activity online, a squeezable GPS tracker and a ‘selfie-ball’ that photographs the baby and uploads the shot whenever the ball rotates” (Peppers), artistically interrogated this relatively new category of “insta-infa-fame”.In their article “What Does the Selfie Say?”, Theresa M. Senft and Nancy K. Baym argue that the selfie exists as the hallmark genre of a new kind of self-reflexive image-making, one that is formally characterised by the “self-generated” nature of the photographic portraiture it depicts, which is in turn conceived for its transmissibility, occurring “primarily via social media” (1589). Popularised in part by new technologies (the camera phone, the smart phone, and then the front-facing phone camera) and in part by new digital platforms (“Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, Tumblr, WeChat, and Tinder”) (1589), Senft and Baym further explain that the selfie is simultaneously a photographic object which transmits human feeling, a practice of sending (as well as of depicting), and third, a monetized assemblage curated by nonhuman agents. It is this last factor which renders the objecthood of the selfie as it relates to the vernacular that it enacts as well as the practice of its making, political.Notions around the simultaneously constituting and yet virally distributed “self” of social media are not new. A now prominent literature around how the selfie graphically manifests and performs: intimate publics (Walsh and Baker), a normative or resistive image repertoire (Murray), and emotionalised, communicable affect (Bayer et al.), gives rise to a range of viewpoints that aim to characterise how the hyper self-reflexivity of the selfie depicts – visually as well as ontologically – the self as an agent of their own transmissibility (Holiday et al.). From these we understand that the selfie is distinct for its (i) self-representational image-format (it is an image made by the self, of the self, and thereby is identifiable for its capturing of the self in this very process of self-composition); ii) its methods of distribution (selfies are taken and distributed often instantaneously, and thereby are not only objects of, but active agents of, the reshaping of digitally communicative economies); iii) its idiomatic performance of a sociality and aesthetic of the amateur or vernacular (Abidin).The doubled glance both inwards and outwards that the selfie casts is further characterised for how it traces as well as points to a gestural self-awareness held within its compositional characteristics (Frosh). This moves us from a semiotic reading of the selfie to a reading of its “kineasthetic sociability” – that is, its embodied inception of new forms of autobiographical inscription which say “not only ‘see this, here, now,’ but also ‘see me showing you me’” (Frosh 1609-10). Here, the selfie is less a static object and more a gestural imprint of the communicative action in process: it is “simultaneously mediating (the outstretched arm executes the taking of the selfie) and mediated (the outstretched arm becomes a legible and iterable sign within selfies of, among other things, the selfieness of the image)” (Frosh 1611). In this sense, its compositional logic offers a tracing of this very enactive, embodied tendency, which bears more than an indexical relationship to the field that it marks – it depicts itself as a constituting part of that field.While these characteristics are broadly accepted as being true of selfies, the “selfieness” of a baby selfie might be seen to offer a paradoxical reframing of these depictive qualities. That is, if a selfie is a self-depiction of a process of self-depiction, the baby selfie most usually performs this self-reflexivity with recourse to an external agent who is either present in the image frame or who is occluded from it but nonetheless implied by the very nature of the image (a parent or the image-facilitator, or indeed, a baby app). The baby selfie’s scene of self-depiction, then, might be thought of as a kind of self-depiction-by-proxy. At the same time, the baby selfie asks us to invest in the belief that the picture was knowingly self-taken, and in doing so, models a kind of aspirational autonomy for the child/baby figure who is depicted. In this sense, the baby selfie, by its very nature, disrupts the accepted distinguishing format of the selfie: that the picture is both self-depicting and is self-composed. Instead, the baby selfie can be seen to gesturally reincorporate into its visual scene the very question of this structural im/possibility.Depicting the Viral ChildThe figure of the child has been considered by a range of theorists as the organising principle of modernity. Philippe Aries’ foundational work has argued that the modern discovery of childhood is reflected in the rise of the nuclear family and consequential shifts from sociability to privacy. Viviana Zelizer similarly positions the emergence of the economically “useless” but sentimentally “priceless” child against comprehensive social and industrial transformations taking place across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that excluded the child as a labourer and instead situated it with the disciplinary regime of education. The hetero-normatively white child has since been shown to emblematise concepts of social futurity (Edelman) and myths of morality, humanity and the “ordering of time” (Pelligrini 98).Following Zelizer, the more recently ‘digitally’ visual cultures of childhood can be seen to spin the figure of the child around new socio-economic and discursive imperatives. Lisa Cartwright writes about photographs of waiting adoptee children, in which “children of poor countries become commodities and their images become advertisements in a global market” (83). Deborah Lupton similarly considers the coding of infant bodies in popular media for their “represent[ation] as helpless, vulnerable, uncontrolled, dirty and leaky in opposition to the idealised adult body that is powerful, self-regulated, autonomous, clean, its bodily boundaries sealed from the outside world” (349). More recently, children have been considered for how they either accidentally or volitionally interact with mediated technologies (Nansen) as well as for how they are increasingly digitally surveilled as the objects of a necessary – and increasingly normalised – parental “culture of care” (Leaver 2). These studies make clear that while children are increasingly positioned as the ‘viral’ agents of new kinds of visual markets, they are also infantilised as victims in need of unprecedented cyber-protection.In 1994 Douglas Rushkoff coined the term “media virus” to account for the rapid and uncontrollable ways that popular media texts performed to either coerce or awaken viewing publics. While Rushkoff’s medium of reference was television, Henry Jenkins et al. later reframed virality to instead encompass ideas of user-led agency by linking it with a logic of “stickiness” – evoking what he termed a “peanut butter” analogy to describe the “spreadable” (3) movement of ideas in more recent social media practices. Indeed, Liam French finds a strong parallel between the “phenomenal rise in user generated content” and the turn towards newer visual cultures within social media practices more broadly, noting that it is “ordinary people” (French’s term) who actively generate the very forms of visual cultural production that become key to communicatory circulation. The selfie, in this regard, becomes both a format and an icon of the new ways of seeing brought into perspective by social media practices.Given the political, social and industrial ecologies that constitute such image cultures, it is only recently that the “viral” child, as the next delineation of the sentimentally “priceless” child, has arrived into view. Here, the baby Hashtag hoax can be seen to critically narrate a specific cultural moment: one that is concerned with stabilising the figure of the child even as it constitutes the ground through which that figure also becomes undone. I refer to the way that Hashtag, as a figural baby, presents a tautological identity, where the digital grammar of # names the mechanism by which she would also search for herself. If Hashtag is emblematic of the algorithmic and affective assemblage of contemporary image-cultures of childhood – whose image-work shapes the new temporal dimensions of our watching and viewing practices – she also illustrates how the child has been become not only an object, but a medium of the economic logics of communicative capitalism. That is, the image-work of the baby selfie can be seen to point to the very question of autonomous agency that frames the figure of the child and in doing so, provides a disruptive counterpoint to the “peanut butter” logic of spreadable visual cultures of so-called “ordinary people” more broadly.It is this light that I ask (drawing on Senft and Baym): what does the baby selfie say about how we understand or construe the figure of the child? More specifically, I ask (via Berger) what culture of vision is brought into view by the rise of such visual cultures of the viral child? The “Gestural Gaze” of Digital Infant Agency Ellentv.com recently advertised a call for viewers to send in their favourite baby selfies: “If you've got a baby and a camera, it's time to take some selfies! Take a photo of you and your baby making the same face, and send it to us!” The legal disclaimer accompanying the callout additionally advised that “[b]y submitting Materials, … you … do not violate the right of privacy or publicity of, or constitute a defamation against, any person or entity; that the Materials will not infringe upon or violate the copyright or common law rights or any other rights of any person or entity” (Ellentv.com). From the outset, there appears within baby selfie culture a curious calibration of the agency of the child, who is at once a selfie-self-taker but who is also excluded from a legal right to privacy that concerns “any person or entity”. In this respect we might further ask – following Jacqueline Bhabha’s question “what sort of human is a child?” (1526) – what sort of human is a viral child, and how does the baby selfie depict this paradoxical configuration of infantile agency?While the formality of the baby selfie still demonstrates a range of configurations which often incorporate the figure of a parent and hence contradict the discreet self-composing parameters of the selfie, here I focus in closing on one specific baby selfie that I suggest is emblematic of an increasing prevalence of apparently “true” baby selfies which operate on a range of image-sharing platforms and meme sites. These baby selfies are distinguished by seeming to be (i) an image that is made by the self, of the self, and thereby is identified for its capturing of the self in this very process of self-composition; ii) an image that is construed for methods of often instantaneous distribution; iii) an image that puts forward an idiomatic performance of an amateur vernacular – or what Abidin has called “calibrated amateurism”.One compilation, “12 of the Cutest Baby Selfies You Will Ever See”, foregrounds the autonomy of the figure of the viral child as depicted by baby selfie culture, explaining that “These babies might be small, but they can do a lot more than just laugh, crawl, and play. It turns out they can also work their way around a camera and snap some amazing selfies. Talk about impressive!” (Campbell). While all the images in the selection depict the embodied gestural sociality of the selfie that Frosh characterises – that which is “simultaneously mediating (the outstretched arm executes the taking of the selfie) and mediated (the outstretched arm becomes a legible and iterable sign within selfies of … the selfieness of the image)” (1611) – one in particular is arresting for its striking interpellation of the “innocent” figure of the child with what I will extend via Frosh to call the inherent mediality of her gestural gaze. In this iconic baby selfie, the gestural gaze is witnessed in the way that the baby’s outstretched hand seems to be extending towards us, the viewer, but is rather (we think we know) extended towards the phone camera, in order to better see herself.The infant in the image is coded female, wearing a pink bonnet, dummy clip and dummy. The dummy is centred defiantly in the baby’s mouth and doubly defiantly in the centre of the image frame as an infantile ‘technology’ that seems to undercut the technology of the phone camera apparatus. The dummy imbues the image with an iconic sense of the baby’s innate “baby-ness” which seems to directly contradict the strength of her gaze, which also appears, in following the outwards arc of her selfie-taking arm, to reach beyond the image frame and address her viewer directly. It seems to say – to paraphrase Frosh – see me here, now, showing you me. The ambivalent origins of the image are also key to how it is read and distributed here. The image in question can be found on the media site Woman’s World, which offers an untraceable credit to Instagram for its original source. The image has also, since, spread itself, appearing across a range of other multilingual sites and feeds, depicting the child at the centre of its frame as somewhat entangled in a further labour of self-duplication. The baby selfie in circulation says not only “‘see this, here, now,’” and “‘see me showing you me’,” but ‘see all of this here, and again, here and again, here.’John Berger writes of two related image genres that connect histories of vernacular depiction to histories of the evolution of the publicity image as a medium and sign of capital exchange. Writing on oil painting, he notes how the materiality of the medium signified the “thingness” of its depiction: “if you buy a painting you also buy a look of the thing that it represents” (83). He finds, therein, an “analogy between possessing and a way of seeing which is incorporated in oil painting” (83) and which, as he later explains, becomes tied to “the tangibility, the texture, the lustre, the solidity of what it depicts” (88). The textural qualities of oil painting, which for Berger construe the “real” as that which can be materially conveyed or indexed as commodity, might be compared to the gestural residue that is contained within the selfie. While oil painting construed the materiality of things – and hence, the commodifiable nature of any particular relation – the selfie might be seen to depict the self in the process of its own self-labour: the material gesture of taking the image necessitates that the self becomes an agent who then becomes the immaterial self of transmission. The selfie is in this way a depiction of the self in a form of capital relation to itself.While the selfie – as a digital composition – is not materially “real” in the same way that oil painting is, the indexical nature of the arm that reaches out beyond the image frame to point to the inherent transmissibility – and hence capital value – of the image, might be. While the baby selfie imitates these capacities, I suggest here that it also traces a compositional logic that further complicates that which Frosh charts. This is because in the very moment that the spectator of the image is confronted with the baby selfie’s call to “see me showing you me” (1609-10), the spectator is also confronted with the figure of the infant as an autonomous agent capable of their own image-constitution. In essence, the baby selfie posits a question around the baby’s innate ability to knowingly generate its image-frame, even as that very image-frame is what casts the infant into the spreadable contexts within which it will then operate – or, indeed, become ‘knowable’.In its heightened self-referentiality but tenuously depicted sense of rhetorical agency, the baby selfie then faces us with what we think we know, or do not know, about the figure of the child. This central ambivalence inherent to the compositional makeup of the baby selfie in this way both depicts and disrupts the economics of circulation that are intrinsic to selfies more broadly, pointing to a decomposing of the parameters by which a selfie is interpreted and understood. Further, it enables us to question relationships between ways of seeing and ways of being – how does the baby selfie envision the figure of the chid? What sort of human does it become? While there are valid discussions to be had around the absence of “direct self-representational agency” (Leaver) and moral rights or wrongs of the parental management of children’s image-work in online spaces, the baby selfie also opens up questions around how we understand the very contours of infantile agency, how we perceive rhetorical knowingness, and what we mean to mean by the relentless circulation of this imagery of the viral child. Indeed, as Wendy S. Hesford writes, it can be helpful to shift an understanding of agency from being an “individual enterprise” to being understood as that which is “enabled and constrained by cultural discourses and material forces” that compel it into material circulation (156).Here, I am not aiming to foreclose debates about the role of infants (or children more broadly) living with and in digital cultures. Neither do I aim to cast judgement upon on those image practices which enfold child subjects within them. I rather aim to circumvent those important debates to find – following Berger – a trace of how the image cultures that co-constitute digital infancies operate to formulate as well as depict a new field of vision that is predicated upon a seemingly impossible but nonetheless compelling logic of the contradictory impulses of the viral child. That is, it challenges us to think more carefully about what we think we know about children as well as about how we come to know them.ReferencesAbidin, Crystal. “#familygoals: Family Influencers, Calibrated Amateurism, and Justifying Young Digital Labor.” Social Media + Society (Apr.-June 2017): 1–15.Aries, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. Trans. Robert Baldick. 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