Convenors
- Elena Baglioni, Queen Mary University of London;
- Liam Campling, Queen Mary University of London;
- Lucas Cifuentes, The University of Manchester;
- Felipe Irarrazaval, Universidad Mayor;
- Diego Velásquez, Universidad Central
Climate change and the accompanying energy transition represent profound socio-ecological transformations. Ongoing global environmental changes and the uneven shift from fossil fuels to renewable energies are fundamentally reconfiguring the exploitative relationship among capital, labour and nature. In this context, the labour process, as an integral element of the metabolization of nature and energy circulation (Bouzarovski, 2022), is undergoing rapid and destabilizing transformations. On one hand, climate and biodiversity changes relentless alter economic and environmental landscapes, forcing labour regimes across various sectors to confront unprecedented challenges and upheavals, changing the terms of work (Coe, 2021; Parsons & Natarajan, 2021). On the other hand, the shift towards renewable energy and low-carbon practices demands the massive production of ‘green’ technologies to ease the transition, alongside the extensive extraction of critical or strategic minerals to manufacture those technologies (Blondeel et al., 2021). This new conjuncture heralds shifts in labour regimes, both in new commodity frontiers and in reconfiguration of existing ones in more traditional sectors (Feltrin & Julio Medel, 2023), Concurrently, there are pressures to downplay labor conditions and ecological conflicts in light of the climate crisis and national security concerns (Riofrancos, 2023).
In this landscape, workers and unions have been actively disputing the configuration of labour regimes, and thus, producing distinctive labour geographies (Herod, 1997). This has been more noticeable in coal and other energy industries, where workers have built political agendas on energy democracy and just transition to dispute mainstream discourses and agendas about climate crisis and energy transition raised by international institutions and global corporations (Felli, 2014; Montesano et al., 2023; Stevis, 2018). Organizations such as Trade Unions for Energy Democracy not only reveal how workers’ associational power is re-scaled under the energy transition but also the significant role that workers might play in shaping its governance (Bell, 2020). There are a variety of experiences of workers' organizations concerned with environmental issues (Räthzel, Stevis & Uzzell, 2021), and a shared and active concern that energy transitions must actively incorporate social justice, and that labour agency must assure that no worker is left behind while addressing these crises (Bell, 2020; Dupuis et al., 2024).
Against this background, this session aims to delve into the effects of climate and biodiversity change on existing labour regimes, and those underpinning those sectors undergoing rapid transformation under the energy transition. It reflects on the different and unique challenges characterising labour processes and labour regimes within natural resource industries, old and new green frontiers (Campling and Baglioni 2017; Boyd & Prudham, 2017; Kaup, 2014). Additionally, It explores the agency of workers in challenging old and new forms of labour control, labour management and exploitation in energy transitions. Labour regimes have been conceptualised "as the core of networked, scalar systems of economic integration and production. At its core, a labour regime signals the combination of social relations and institutions that bind capital and labour in a form of antagonistic relative stability in particular times and places" (Baglioni et al., 2022; 1). In this regard, the socio-ecological basis of the climate crisis and the energy transitions offer fertile ground to engage with contributions that incorporate the sphere of ecology to unpack the metabolism between human and extra-human nature, noting particularly how the biophysical properties of nature shape labour relations (Baglioni, 2024; Bakker, 2012).
Among the possible research topics, we are particularly – not exclusively – interested in:
- Actually-existing climate and biodiversity change in reconfiguring labour regimes
- Labor regimes of critical or strategic economic sectors for the energy transitions, such as critical minerals or renewable energies
- Worker and union actions regarding just transition and environmental issues
- Labor regimes of ‘green’ jobs
- Adaptation politics to climate change in the workplace
- Actions of workers from the global South in the face of socio-ecological transformations
References
Baglioni, E. (2024). Some reflections on the capitalist labour process, nature and social reproduction. Sociologia del Lavoro, 167, 9–32. https://doi.org/10.3280/SL2023-167001
Baglioni, E., Campling, L., Mezzadri, A., Miyamura, S., Pattenden, J., & Selwyn, B. (2022). Exploitation and labour regimes: Production, circulation, social reproduction, ecology. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2b6z898.9
Bakker, K. (2012). The “Matter of Nature” in Economic Geography. En T. J. Barnes, J. Peck, & E. Sheppard (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography (pp. 104–117). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118384497.ch6/summary
Barca, S. (2019). Labour and the ecological crisis: The eco-modernist dilemma in western Marxism(s) (1970s-2000s). Geoforum, 98, 226–235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.07.011
Bell, K. (2020). Working-Class Environmentalism: An Agenda for a Just and Fair Transition to Sustainability. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29519-6
Blondeel, M., Bradshaw, M. J., Bridge, G., & Kuzemko, C. (2021). The geopolitics of energy system transformation: A review. Geography Compass, 15(7), e12580. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12580
Bouzarovski, S. (2022). Energy and labour: Thinking across the continuum. Progress in Human Geography, 03091325211051478. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325211051478
Boyd W and Prudham S (2017) On the themed collection, ‘‘The formal and real subsumption of nature’’. Society & Natural Resources 30(7): 877–884.
Coe, N. M. (2021). Afterword: Towards a political ecology of labour? Area, 53(3), 450–453. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12727
Dupuis, M., Greer, I., Kirsch, A., Lechowski, G., Park, D., & Zimmermann, T. (2024). A Just Transition for Auto Workers? Negotiating the Electric Vehicle Transition in Germany and North America. ILR Review, 00197939241250001. https://doi.org/10.1177/00197939241250001
Felli, R. (2014). An alternative socio-ecological strategy? International trade unions’ engagement with climate change. Review of International Political Economy, 21(2), 372–398. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2012.761642
Feltrin, L., & Julio Medel, G. (2023). Noxious deindustrialisation and extractivism: Quintero-Puchuncaví in the international division of labour and noxiousness. New Political Economy, 0(0), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2023.2236944
Herod, A. (1997). From a Geography of Labor to a Labor Geography: Labor’s Spatial Fix and theGeography of Capitalism. Antipode, 29(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8330.00033
Huber, M. T. (2022). Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet.
Kaup, B. (2014). Divergent Paths of Counter-Neoliberalization: Materiality and the Labor Process in Bolivia's Natural Resource Sectors. Environment and Planning A 46 (8) 1836-1851 https://doi.org/10.1068/a130194p
Montesano, F. S., Biermann, F., Kalfagianni, A., & Vijge, M. J. (2023). Greening labour? The role of the SDGs in fostering sustainability integration within trade unions. Globalizations, 0(0), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2023.2234174
Parsons, L., & Natarajan, N. (2021). Geographies of labour in a changing climate. Area, 53(3), 406–412. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12737
Räthzel, N., Stevis, D., & Uzzell, D. (Eds.). (2021). The Palgrave handbook of environmental labour studies. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Riofrancos, T. (2023). The security–sustainability nexus: Lithium onshoring in the Global North. Global Environmental Politics, 23(1), 20-41.
Stevis, D. (2018). US labour unions and green transitions: Depth, breadth, and worker agency. Globalizations, 15(4), 454–469. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2018.1454681