The COLLECTITUDE project implemented a two-year work plan, developed at a civil society organisation (A3S) through a participatory and multi-method approach. After the in-depth review of the literature, the project's methodology was based on qualitative research, through semi-structured interviews, document analysis and digital ethnography due to the need to adapt to the pandemic context. This was combined with the analysis of secondary extensive studies and datasets, allowing to build linkages beyond the specificities of the cases and processes analysed in depth.
As results, the project actively contributes to new theoretical, analytical and empirical approaches to work and precarity, framing it as a multi-dimensional and relational process, which is constitutive of capitalism.
The theoretical framework maps major lines of thought on precarity studies, unveils common normative slants and contributes to the critical questioning of the status of work, in its different forms (productive or reproductive, formal or informal, paid or unpaid, market or socially oriented), in contemporary capitalist societies.
The project developed a relational analytical framework for advancing the study of precarity within different forms of work and economic practices, which identifies four interdependent levels of analysis – macro; meso/ organisational; micro; and prospective – along with key dimensions inside each level.
The comparative analysis of the arts and construction sectors in Portugal shows that precarity is contingent on governmental options and global capitalism dynamics, with structuring impacts at the organizational level and on employment relations. The Covid-19 pandemic further allowed to observe how different sectors were impacted unevenly, exposing the structural precarity of some and triggering new processes of labour organizing.
The project also developed a typology of work collectives that have emerged in the last decades, which reveal different constraints, challenges and strategies of survival: on the one hand, they present transformative proposals; on the other, they are also subject to processes of precarity and commodification, reinforcing the status quo.
The project advances new avenues for rethinking current research and policy approaches to work and social protection in contemporary societies, contributing to the development of more transformative and imaginative ways of rethinking people's work, livelihoods and economic practices.
COLLECTITUDE has developed measures for exploitation and dissemination of the results to different target audiences, expanding the impact of the action, namely: the scientific community (scientific papers, conferences); workers organisations and other stakeholders (workshops, webpage, book chapters, report to stakeholders, networking and collective reflection); policymakers (cross-sectoral events, policy briefs).
The exploitation of results continues after the project ends, through the consolidation of an action-research group at the intersection of precarity and SSE studies and the development of new projects that build on COLLECTITUDE (notably a new observatory in the field of work inclusion).
