work

Debates

Reimagining Skill

Nichola Lowe - 12 October 2021
Nichola Lowe argues that skill needs to be reimagined, not erased from efforts to strengthen the institutional...
From the Field

Cleaning and Care Worker Cooperatives in NYC: Empowerment Through Collectivization of Labor

Nora Komposch - 8 December 2020
Worker cooperatives have been shown to reduce precariousness and economic exclusion of marginalized groups....
Reviews

Aubervilliers: Portrait of a Working-Class Suburb

Anaïs Albert & translated by Oliver Waine - 21 February 2020
The republication of an early-20th‑century realist novel set in the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers brings...
From the Field

Open-Air Auto Shops: Subsistence Jobs in Working-Class Neighborhoods

Collectif Rosa Bonheur & translated by Oliver Waine - 25 October 2019
The informal activities of street mechanics observed by Collectif Rosa Bonheur in northern France attest to a much...
From the Field

Projecting Supply and Demand for Middle-Skill Occupations in US States and Metro Areas

James Orr & Ofronama Biu - 10 October 2017
Analysts have long noted difficulties in quantifying and projecting skill mismatches in local labor markets....
From the Field

Swept Away: Public Work and the Politics of Employment in New York City’s Parks

John Krinsky & Maud Simonet - 6 September 2017
Upwards of 4,000 unionized civil-service workers once cleaned and maintained New York City’s parks. Today about...
From the Field

Looking Inward, Across the Border

Harel Shapira - 19 April 2016
In the constellation of anti-immigrant politics in the United States, groups like the Minutemen, civilians who...
Debates

Reskilling Urban Manufacturing: Workforce Solutions from the Inside Out

Nichola Lowe - 15 December 2015
In the United States, a four-year college education has gradually come to be assumed as a prerequisite for entry...
Essays

In Cathedrals of Craft: Workplaces for the New Elite Service, Retail, and Manual Labor Jobs

Richard E. Ocejo - 12 May 2015
As artisanal economies emerge in postindustrial cities, the symbolic language and craft culture of the industrial...
From the Field

The Other Side of Austin, Texas

Caitlyn Collins & Katherine Jensen & Kristine Kilanski & Javier Auyero - 2 March 2015
Despite a booming economy, Austin, Texas, is a city where inequalities persist and grow in the shadow of neoliberal...
From the Field

The world of the blue-collar worker: changed, but not gone

Julian Mischi & Olivier Pasquiers & Caroline Pottier & Nicolas Renahy & translated by Oliver Waine - 19 February 2014
Despite deindustrialisation and increasingly acute economic difficulties in the former strongholds of heavy...
Essays

Could harmonised working times spell an end to the rush hour?

Emmanuel Munch & translated by Oliver Waine - 12 February 2014
Efforts to coordinate working hours across urban territories have increased in recent years. By exploring the...
Essays

Explaining the periurban right-wing vote: “social frustrations” of low-income households or the reshaping of the working classes?

Violaine Girard & translated by Oliver Waine - 13 June 2012
There is a growing interest in voting patterns in periurban areas, which tend to lean to the right or even far...
Reviews

From home to the workplace: “Mad Men” or the irresistible rise of women

Nicole Rudolph - 14 March 2012
Mad Men is often viewed as the ultimate sexist TV series. Through an analysis of the behavior of men and women at...

Series

New York Dossier: The Food Industry Faces the Covid‑19 Pandemic
Cities in the Age of Financialization
Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research
New York Tech Dossier: The Dark Side of New York’s Tech Economy
Progressive Mayors and Urban Social Movements
Land Rights in the Urban Global South
Climate Change and Social Change
Shrinking Cities
The Resurgence of Towers in European Cities

Featured

Debates

Covid-19, War, and Working-Class Neighborhoods

Pierre Gilbert & translated by Oliver Waine - 5 June 2020
The residents of France’s working-class neighborhoods, accused of exacerbating the coronavirus pandemic through...
Essays

Sentinel Territories: A New Concept for Looking at Environmental Change

David Blanchon & Frédéric Keck & François-Michel Le Tourneau & Stéphane Tonnelat & Adriana Zuniga-Teran - 8 May 2020
In this essay, the authors develop the concept of “sentinel territories,” or environments where humans can perceive...
From the Field

Who Cleans Paris? Garbage Collectors in Their Own Words

Coline Ferrant & Marie Mourad & translated by Oliver Waine - 21 June 2019
Who are Paris’s garbage collectors? Coline Ferrant and Marie Mourad highlight the diverse working conditions covered...
From the Field

Moving Inside City Limits: The Urban Mobility of Undocumented Youth

Stephen P. Ruszczyk - 4 June 2019
The urban context and public transportation shape how undocumented youths move within cities. In a comparison of...
Interviews

Teaching Art and the History of Tattoos at Rikers Island: An Interview with Tamara...

Lisa Jean Moore - 22 January 2019
An interview with Tamara Santibanez, who teaches art and the cultural and social history of tattoos to youth...
From the Field

Snowbirds’ Gift Economy in the Arizona Desert

David Frati - 7 November 2017
Each year, 200,000 retired people spend the winter in and around the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, in the...

Other resources online

Cycles of Violence: Analysing Media Discourse in the Newspaper...

Mobile Lives Forum
How are cyclist and pedestrian deaths depicted in newspaper reports, and how do these reports help shape...

Lahti: The First Carbon-Rationing Experiment Applied to Local...

Mobile Lives Forum
The city of Lahti in Finland was the first to experiment with a carbon-trading scheme among its inhabitants to...

Is Rationing Carbon for Travel a Fair, Efficient, and Realistic...

Mobile Lives Forum
In the wake of the pandemic, a carbon tax at Europe’s borders is now on the agenda, but a domestic version for...

Reducing Carbon-Emitting Travel: A Factor of Social Cohesion and...

Mobile Lives Forum
As part of France’s Mission on the Future of the Economic Model of Public Transportation, commissioned by the French...

Strasbourg, An Example of a Cycling City

Mobile Lives Forum
Strasbourg is the leading city for cycling in France and a constant source of inspiration for all French cities...

The Trinity of Walking, Cycling and Public Transportation Must Be...

Mobile Lives Forum
While emissions from the transportation sector remain at a very high level, all hopes are currently pinned on the...
Centre national de recherche scientifique
Journal supported by the Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales (Institute of Human and Social Sciences) of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

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