The principal aim of the project is the organization of the international conference “I work, therefore I am (European)” by bringing together academics, stakeholders, politicians and intellectuals from different European countries. The central topic will be labour, considered from both a juridical-political and a humanistic perspective.
The key points are:
1.LABOUR SHAPES EUROPEAN IDENTITY. In contemporary Europe, labour occupies a central position in human existence: it is the principal criterion of reciprocal recognition and of universal mobilization. Labour is more than a mere economic relationship: it is an identitarian process.
2. LABOUR AT THE CORE OF THE ECONOMIC EUROPEAN GOVERNANCE. Labour is an apparatus for the governance of a collectivity that creates a plurality of relational dimensions (capabilities, status, social patterns) through which the fulfillment of the individual takes shape. Labour policies are central in the constitution of the European subject through common economic values. The background idea is that Europe has faced traumatic changes in the working conditions of individuals: we refer to phenomena like the de-industrialization, the enlargement and extension of markets, the increasing number of exchanges on the web (and in virtual realities) and the acceleration of the cyclical crises of capitalism. Migratory fluxes, ethnic diversity and marriage patterns are altering the stratification of professional life. The result is a polarization of work throughout the EU: a sticky floor of precarious work, a hollowed out middle, and an increasingly polarized top, a form of total mobilization.