The Arbeitskreis (AK) Labour Geography is a space for researchers working in German academia on relations of labour and space. In order to anchor perspectives, concepts and research approaches of ‚Labour Geography‘ more firmly in German-speaking geography, we have created this platform in 2020 for networking geographers and scholars from related disciplines. Together we want to discuss concepts, theories and methods of Labour Geography and develop them further against the background of current socio-economic transformation processes.
Our work focuses on themes such as:
- Organizing Processes: How do workers construct their own agency in diverse areas of production? Which strategies of organizing and forms of organization do they resort to?
- Gender relations & social reproduction: How can we bring together the everyday actions of workers with feminist perspectives? How can we spatially relate structure and (labor) agency to production and social reproduction?
- Digitalization: How does digitalization change the organization of work and the agency of workers in selected sectors? How can workers actively shape technological change in work?
- The role of the state, regulation and governance: What role do the state and state regulation play in the formation of workers’ power? What connections can be observed between the assertion of interests and spatially diverse forms of industrial relations?
- Value chains: How do workers construct their own levels of agency within the global spatial and social division of labor? What possibilities and strategies of networked action do workers pursue within such contexts?
- Social relations of nature: What contribution can a spatially sensitive labor- and worker-centered perspective make to questions of social relations of nature?
- Methodological questions: What challenges arise for the emancipatory design of research relations in view of the socio-structural, cultural and geographical inequality between workers and scientists?
As a working group we meet once a year – usually in the second week in February. This annual meeting is our main space for working together and exchanging ideas. It is also there that we elect our speakers and annual meeting organizing team for the following year. The speakers maintain this website, our mailing list and coordinate with the organizing team in advance of the annual meeting. However, the AK is a place for self-organization and welcomes initiatives from its members.
The current speakers are:
- Barbara Orth
- Stephan Liebscher
- Christiane Meyer-Habighorst
- and Yannick Ecker
Formally, the AK is a subdivision of the German „Deutschen Gesellschaft für Geographie“ (DGfG). Our meetings are conducted bilingually (English/German). There is no membership fee.