Conference - Labour in East and Southeast Europe: Institutions and Practices Between Formality and Informality

Conference venue: Regensburg, Germany
Period: June 26-28, 2014

Work is one of the most essential aspects of life – both from the viewpoint of individuals and the society as a whole. It is a social practice where life-courses intersect with power hierarchies, ideologies, institutional regulations, and economic forces. The impact of formal and informal institutions on the functioning of labour markets is well documented and varies considerably across time and space.

East and Southeast Europe is characterized by frequent political and economic transformations that resulted, among other things, in the fragility of institutions and a high degree of informality. These phenomena are also relevant for the build-up of trust and social capital that in turn are among the key factors for the understanding of labour relations and labour market outcomes. Hence, labour is a central realm in which the shifting boundaries between the formal and the informal, between the official and unofficial take effect.

The three-days international conference ‘Labour in East and Southeast Europe’ will bring together scholars both from humanities and social sciences to discuss the above-mentioned issues.

Conveners: Ksenia Gatskova, Stefano Petrungaro

Thursday, 26.06.2014
18.00: Opening panel
Greetings from IOS and the Graduate School (Ulf Brunnbauer, Jürgen Jerger)
Introductory Remarks (Ksenija Gatskova, Stefano Petrungaro)
Keynote lectures:
Donald Filtzer (University of East London): “The Shop Floor Vanishes: The Absence of Workers in Recent Soviet History”
Hartmut Lehmann (University of Bologna, IZA Bonn and DIW Berlin): “Informal employment in transition economies”

Reception

Friday, 27. 06.2014
09.00-11.00 Panel 1: Informal Employment (Chair: Hartmut Lehmann)
Aleksey Y. Oshchepkov: “Does the Minimum Wage Raise Informal Employment?”
Georgios A. Panos: “Informal origin, firm performance and conduct in the Balkans”
Anne White: “Informality and the local labour market: applying a livelihood strategy approach to small-town Poland”

11.00-11.30: Coffee break

11.30-13.00 Panel 2: Education & Skills (Chair: Jürgen Jerger)
Astghik Mavisakalyan: “The Labor Market Return to Academic Fraud”
Dragos Radu: “Informal Networks and the Value of Foreign Education in a Transition Economy”

13.00-14.00: Lunch break

14.00-16.00 Panel 3: Migration & Informal Networks (Chair: Barbara Dietz)
Walter Daugsch: “Informal aspects of Labour Internationalism: South-Slav Workers Societies abroad and Labour organisations in South Eastern Europe until 1914”
Ira N. Gang: “Migration and the Informal Sector”
Artjoms Ivlevs: “Emigration, unemployment and informal work: household-level evidence for six transition economies”

16.00-16.30: Coffee break

16.30-18.30 Panel 4: Discourses & Representations (Chair: Ulf Brunnbauer)
Rudolf Kučera: “Rationed Fatigue. Work, Body and Effectiveness in Austria-Hungary 1914-1918”
Alexandra Szőke: “Working out the meaning of value – (Un)employment and workfare in rural Hungary”
Rory Archer: “Representations of inequality and precarity in Yugoslav workplaces in the 1980s”

Saturday, 28.06.2014
09.00-11.00: Panel 5: Labor market outcomes (Chair: Ekaterina Selezneva)
Tatiana Karabchuk: “Subjective Well-Being and Type of Contract in Europe: is there any Effect of Labor Legislation Institutions”
Dushko Josheski: “Democracy, Government policy and Labor market outcomes in CEE Countries: Pooled Time Series Cross-Section Analysis”
Zdeněk Nebřenský: “Allocation of Work and Job Placements under Socialist Dictatorship between Central Planning and Informal Networks, 1956-1968”

11.00-11.30: Coffee break

11.30-13.30: Panel 6: Inequalities & Non-Work (Chair: Sabine Rutar)
Ulrike Schult: “Industrial Workers and the Strive to take part in the ‘Good Life’ in Yugoslav Socialism”
Chiara Bonfiglioli: “Representations of work and non-work in de-industrialised cities: The case of textile workers in post-Yugoslav states”
Vassilis Monastiriotis: “Determinants of non-standard employment and paths to informality in Serbia: ‘coping’ versus ‘sorting’”

13.30-14.30: Lunch break

14.30-16.30: Panel 7: Social Capital & Trust/Distrust (Chair: Donald Filtzer)
Jan Fidrmuc: “How Persistent is Social Capital?”
László Kürti: “Production of trust and labor relations in late-socialist Hungary”
Tamas Bezsenyi: “Informal relations among the workers of the Csepel Car Factory in the 1960s and 1970s”

16.30: Concluding Remarks (Ulf Brunnbauer/Jürgen Jerger)

Stefano Petrungaro
Landshuter Str. 4, 93047, Regensburg
email: petrungaro@ios-regensburg.de