This event is part of the RECET Festival of Historical and Social Sciences "Transformations of Labor".
Event venue: Campus of the University of Vienna („Altes AKH“), festival tent in Hof 1
Position of the tent: https://goo.gl/maps/8FjYQNtdnaUiKCcs6
Roundtable Discussion with Simona Durisova (IG24), Adam Mrozowicki (University of Wrocław), SEZONIERI, moderated by Agata Zysiak (RECET).
This roundtable will explore the intersections of care work, informal labor, and labor migration in East-Central Europe. Drawing on both academic research and practitioners' perspectives, we will analyze how crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic have exposed and intensified existing vulnerabilities, while also generating new forms of collective response and political imagination in the region. By focusing on workers whose labour is essential yet structurally undervalued, we will investigate how labour mobilities between Austria, Germany, and their post-socialist neighbouring countries intersect with the increasing precarization of national labour markets. By integrating academic analysis with grounded experience, this discussion aims to foster dialogue on more equitable and sustainable futures for work and care.
Simona Durisova is a co-founder of IG24 – Initiative for Justice in Live-in Care in Austria, an association supporting migrant live-in carers through counselling and advocacy for improved working conditions. In her master’s thesis she examined the labour and social disadvantages faced by live-in carers and the role of placement agencies. She was involved in several projects and contributed to studies on the well-being and needs of live-in carers, as well as to analyses of legislation enabling regulated employment in the field.
Dr hab. Adam Mrozowicki is theHead of the Department of the Sociology of Work and Economic Sociology at the Institute of Sociology, University of Wrocław. His research interests include the sociology of work, critical labour studies, comparative industrial relations, class analysis, and biographical research. His current research focuses on precarity, public services (particularly healthcare) and logistics in times of polycrisis.
SEZONIERI isa coalition of the PRO-GE trade union and agricultural workers' activists. SEZONIERI collaborates with non-governmental organizations that advocate for the rights of harvest workers.The organization represents the interests of agricultural workers, aiming to prevent the exploitation of farm workers, improve their working conditions, and, if necessary, enforce their rights through the courts and with public authorities/administrative bodies.
Agata Zysiak, Ph.D., is a historical sociologist working as a researcher at RECET, and as an adjunct at the Institute of Sociology, University of Łódź in Poland. Her latest book, “Limiting Privilege: Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland” (2023), examines first-generation students’ struggles with reluctant academia. Her research focuses on social mobility, modernization dreams, and state socialism. At RECET, she works on narratives of industrial collapse and the concept of socialist citizenship.
FREE ENTRY! No registration needed!
