Abstract
Unpaid work (or unpaid labour) is everywhere, from professionals working excessive hours to workers unable to complete tasks within a ‘standard working day,’ to employers guilty of wage theft across multiple industries. And this is before we mention the unpaid hours and entrenched gender inequalities that underlie the social reproduction of people and households. These features are endemic to modern capitalism, according to this outstanding new book on unpaid work in Europe. Unpaid work is characteristically inside, and not external to the capitalist market, while unpaid and precarious work are unavoidably linked, its authors argue.
The book is the outcome of a European Union-funded research project, ‘ResPecTMe,’ which aimed to challenge dualistic thinking about paid and unpaid work. The book also challenges the marginalization of unpaid labour in studies of paid employment historically. It is written primarily by the two lead authors, Valeria Pulignano and Markieta Domecka, with contributions by other project members.
The book deploys findings from a sample of 129 biographical narrative interviews and 38 audio diaries from workers across three sectors: creative (especially dancing); residential care; and online platforms. Workers were based in eight European countries: Belgium; France; Germany; Italy; the Netherlands; Poland; Sweden; and the United Kingdom. Samples were taken from a larger database involving hundreds of participants in the ResPecTMe project. Each work diary covered time spent on workers’ tasks over a 10-day period.
The book thus offers a very rich source of data to support its conceptual contentions. A detailed methodological appendix is a welcome addition. That the core data were gathered during the COVID-19 lockdown period (2020–2022) adds further weight to its impressive empirical haul.
The book is structured into three parts based on theory, empirics, and conceptual and policy conclusions, and comprises nine chapters, including the Introduction which establishes the book's contribution to precarious work studies with a comprehensive literature review. The Introduction frames unpaid work in a novel way: as a range of activities connected to commodified work that must be sustained with resources. Here, the authors emphasize ties between unpaid work, social class, social reproduction, household income structures, and national regulatory regimes.
Chapter 1 defines unpaid labour as any unpaid time and effort expended on tasks related to a job, capturing both unpaid overtime within formal workplaces as well as external investments of time. The authors emphasize a core inequality in worker orientations, with some able to treat unpaid work as a life-enhancing asset and others trapped in a cycle of intensifying disadvantage.
Chapter 2 challenges conventional dichotomies of paid/unpaid work. Unpaid work is framed as necessary not only for the reproduction of contemporary capitalism but also for individual workers to access and sustain paid work, based on a ‘grey zone’ of working time required to prepare and market oneself for the formal labour market. Chapter 3 theorizes that unpaid labour performs a politico-ideological function by diffusing an ‘ideal worker’ norm that motivates workers to undertake unpaid work to avoid stigma, win recognition, and to position themselves more favourably in labour markets.
Chapter 4 looks at the experiences of dancers in the Netherlands and Sweden. Here, an ‘ideal dancer’ norm compels dancers to sacrifice time and effort ‘for the sake of art’ through training, rehearsals, travel, and self-promotion. For some, this sacrifice pays off while, for others, precarity is entrenched. Classed and gendered access to institutional and household resources means that professional dancing has become increasingly dominated by upper-middle class people, with unpaid labour acting as mode of exclusion.
Chapter 5, co-written with Me-Linh Riemann, looks at residential care in Germany and the United Kingdom. Here, working-class and immigrant women are pushed to ‘work for two’ with unpaid overtime to cater for residents’ physical and emotional needs. An ‘ideal carer’ norm generates feelings of moral obligation, compelling women to sacrifice ‘for the sake of others.’
Chapter 6 analyses workers undertaking unpaid work on online platforms ‘for the sake of reputation.’ Emphasizing platform variety, some platform algorithms compel freelancers to make themselves permanently available and underbid each other, while others offer workers more favourable terms, providing limited autonomy to treat unpaid work as a career investment.
The final two chapters focus on conceptual implications and policy ideas based on project findings. Chapter 7, written by Bernard Grazier, concludes that people commonly undertake unpaid work because it has meaning or value to them. Precarity is not universal but arises when people lack resources to leverage unpaid working time to their advantage.
The concluding chapter, written by Damien Grimshaw, summarizes four remedial policy responses to the ‘damages’ of unpaid labour, including generous paid parental leave and accessible and affordable childcare. Higher unemployment benefits and sick pay are proposed to help workers balance unpaid work commitments with health needs, particularly for those classified (often misleadingly) as self-employed. The book also draws on findings from dancers in the Netherlands and care workers in Germany to promote the benefits of industry-scale wage bargaining by unions. Finally, digital rights are proposed to assist platform workers by, for example, limiting platform surveillance, an issue advanced effectively in Scandinavia but lagging in many other places.
This book's framing of unpaid work as a differentially distributed resource represents fresh thinking. It also skilfully weaves class theory with the capabilities approach, although understanding the extent to which this integrative approach replicates or differs from prevailing theories of worker agency and power resources requires additional reflection. Further consideration of workers’ cognitive framing of ‘work’ (paid or unpaid) would also be beneficial, a point implied especially in findings about care workers and one well-known in studies of the blurred lines dividing work, duty and obligation among women undertaking informal and home-based work in poorer countries.
These are matters for discussion rather than major criticisms. Overall, this book represents a mighty achievement of critical qualitative research and deserves to be read and discussed widely among researchers, activists and students interested in the sociology of work and by all those concerned with the contemporary exploitation of labour time.
