Individual in the Labour Market reading and research group

Annual Report Oct 2009-Sept 2010.

One of the most active groups in the SSRG is the Individual in the Labour Market reading and research Group (ILMrg) directed by Dr Brendan Burchell. The ILMrg has been meeting regularly since 2001and has an active programme of meetings and social gatherings for teaching staff, post-docs and graduate students.Thanks to generous sponsorship from the Cambridge Journal of Economics we can cover costs of entertainment and travel for guest speakers, and provide services like business cards for members. Although still primarily a Sociology-based group, we also have members from Geography, Economics, Social Psychology, Politics and Management. The group had fortnightly meetings during term-time.In addition to our regular reading-based meetings, in 2009-10 we also had:

  • A film night (Fear and Trembling – a comparison of European and Japanese workplace norms)
  • A seminar by Debbie Enever (Liberal Democrat Policy Officer) on the interface between social scientists and policy makers
  • A seminar by a member, Thorsten Jelinek, just before submitting his PhD
  • Punting down the Cam by starlight

Many members have successfully concluded their time at Cambridge and moved on in the past year.Some MPhil students have progressed to PhDs places at Cambridge or elsewhere, others have found employment in occupations from the police force to university researchers.Ex-PhD students have successfully found employment in university research, university lecturing, the media, commercial research and City banking.

Several active members of the ILM group have finished their MPhils and PhDs.Yen-Chun Chen was awarded distinction and has been granted a Gates scholarship to continue with her PhD.Sunny Lu and Nurjk Agloni also finished the sociology MPhil and are returning to Taiwan and Chile respectively, but both are hoping to be able to return to Cambridge to start a PhD at some time in the future.Lisa Siegele finished the Psychology MPhil as a visiting student and has returned to Germany.Ben Hardy was successful in his PhD viva, and fortunately for us remains in Cambridge as a research associate at the Judge.Karenjit Clare has also been awarded her PhD and spent this academic year as a temporary lecturer in Economic Geography, but leaves Cambridge now to take up a prized Junior Research Fellowship at Oxford.

We were enormously pleased for Bob Blackburn who was awarded an Honorary Professor at Stirling University in recognition of his lifetime contribution to sociology.Such awards are rare, but totally deserved in Bob’s case.Bob was also appointed to the ESRC College, more congratulations.

Agnieszka (aka Aga) Piasna has a successful first year in her PhD (also with the backing of a prestigious Gates Scholarship), had a book review published, gave two conference papers and in her spare time gave birth to a baby girl, Julia, in June.Julia is making great progress, but not yet able to speak as many languages as her mother!

Our family award for 2009-10 goes to Dr Thorsten Jelinek and Dr Hui Wang who not only both successfully completed their PhDs but also produced Zurie in May, a younger sister for Angelina.

Girts Racko was awarded his PhD two years ago now, and joins the growing ranks of member of this group who have gone on to get research jobs at Cambridge – Girts is currently a research associate in the Judge Business School.

Fabio Bolzonaro took 6 months away from his PhD studies at Cambridge to take up a visiting studentship at Berkeley, following in the footsteps of Achim Edelmann who received a similar award in 2008-9.Alvaro Figueredo is also crossing the ‘pond’ to an American university – MIT – to work on a programme “Science, Technology and Society”.

Julia Gumy was one of the founding organisers of the PPSIS graduate poster exhibition 'Visualising Social Sciences' in October 2009.This event was fantastically successful in two ways: It gave 16 PhD students experience in preparing and presenting posters (the standard was far higher than the poster sessions in a conference I attended recently!) and it also familiarised PPSIS PhD students with each others’ research.

We were also pleased to be able to welcome two academic visitors to the group this year, Jinglu Yang from China and Holger Lubbe on placement from Germany.

Now that this group has been going for 9½ years, there are dozens of ex-members who have left Cambridge for all parts of the globe and doing a variety of different jobs, but still keeping in touch with their supervisors and contemporaries. The Work Employment and Society conference in Brighton in September provided an excellent opportunity for current and alumni members to meet. We have just instigated an alumni status for members of the ILM who have either gained their PhDs or left Cambridge to pursue their studies or career. This group currently has over 30 founding members linked by a ucam website, LinkedIn and a Google groups mailing list (Thanks to Dr Ines Wichert for initiating this group). We are currently considering ways in which to facilitate links, where useful, between current and alumni members.

Many other graduate students and post-doc researchers made a start to their publishing careers with articles, book reviews and conference papers, here’s a list of some of them:

Journal articles

Racko, G. (2010). On the Normative Consequences of Economic Rationality: A Case Study of a Swedish Economics School in Latvia. European Sociological Review 2010; doi: 10.1093/esr/jcq040.

Book reviews

By Fabio Bolzonaro

Strangleman T and Warren, T (2008) "Work and Society: Sociological Approaches, Themes and Methods." Oxford: Routledge in Work, Employment and Society 23:4 (Dec.2009)

Fletcher, B and Gaspin, F (2008) "Solidarity Divided: The Crisis In Organized Labour and a New Path Toward Social Justice" Chicester: John Wiley and Sons Ltd in Work, Employment and Society 24:1 (Jan. 2010)

Book Review Essay

Esping-Andersen, G. (2009) "The Incomplete Revolution: Adapting to Women's New Roles" Cambridge: Polity Press Sumer, S. (2009) "European Gender Regimes and Policies: Comparative Perspectives" Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Vosko, L.F., MacDonald, M. and Campbell, I. (eds) (2009) "Gender and the Contours of Precarious Employment" Basingstoke: Routledge Title of the review "The uncertain destiny of an incomplete revolution", in Work, Employment and Society 24:3 (Sept. 2010)

By Aga Piasna

Martin-Matthews, A. and Phillips, JE (eds) Aging and Caring at the Intersection of Work and Home Life: Blurring the Boundaries, Work, Employment & Society, (2009) 23(4): 807 - 808.

By Lisa Siegele

David G. Collings and Geoffrey Wood (eds) Human Resource Management: A

Critical ApproachBasingstoke: Routledge, 2009. Work, Employment & Society, in press.

By Claudia Catacchio

Mark Deuze, Media Work: Digital Media and Society Series Cambridge: Polity Press,2007. Work, Employment & Society March 2010 24: 173-174.

Conference papers and posters

Blackburn, R.M., Racko, G., and Jarman, J. (2009). Gender segregation in employment. Presentation at the Multi-disciplinary Gender Research Seminar, University of Cambridge, October 26, 2009.

Bolzonaro, F. (2010) "Social Justice in a Limited State: The Role of these Ideas in the Catholic Mobilization for the Welfare State" ISA World Congress, July,Göteborg

Bolzonaro, F. (2010) "The Difficult Reform of the Italian Labour Market since the late 1990s" Work, Employment & Society Conference September Brighton.

Demey, D. H. (2009). The impact of education on the transition to parenthood in Belgium and the United Kingdom. Paper presented at the XXVI IUSSP International Population Conference (27 September to 2 October 2009). Marrakech.

Demey, D. H. (2010). Are there gender-specific effects of education on the transition to parenthood? An analysis of Belgian and British panel data. Presentation given at the XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology (11 to 17 July). Gothenburg.

Demey, D. H. (2010). Are there gender-specific effects of education on the transition to parenthood? An analysis of Belgian and British panel data. Paper presented at the European Population Conference (1 to 4 September 2010). Vienna.

Demey, D. H. (2010). Cross-national differences in the effect of women’s socio-economic status on the timing of first births. Poster presented at the Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies Conference (22 to 24 September). Cambridge: Clare College.

Gumy, J.M. (2009). Personal debt problems and the transition to poverty. A longitudinal Analysis Comparing Britain, Germany and Luxembourg. Poster presented at the PPSIS graduate poster exhibition (12 October). Cambridge.

Piasna, A. (2010). Changing images of retirement in an ageing society: The case study of three communication campaigns from Poland. The 5th International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. Cambridge, UK, August 2-5, 2010.

Piasna, A. (2010). Social dialogue on retirement in Poland: The language of flexicurity? The 11th Annual Graduate Conference "Observing, promoting and resisting social change". LSE, London, May 21-22, 2010.

Racko, G. (2009). Overcoming barriers in knowledge exchange between research and practice. Eastern Region Public Health Observatory Conference, November 13, 2009, Stansted, England.

Racko, G., Barrett, M., Oborn, E., Hinings, C.R. (2010). Institutional work as a relational practice: A case study of a North American healthcare organization. The 2nd International Conference on Institutions and Work. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, June 17-19, 2010.

Siegele, L. (2010) Values asModerators between Job Insecurity and Happiness'.The 11th Annual Graduate Conference "Observing, promoting and resisting social change". LSE, London, May 21-22, 2010.

Siegele, L & Burchell, B.(2010) 'Social Consequences of European Employment Policies:How Flexicurity Moderates the Relationship of Job Insecurity and Life

Satisfaction'. Work, Employment & Society Conference September Brighton.