Changing world, changing work

Contemporary debates on the world of work have long centred on the precariousness of the global workforce, and situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic have only brought into sharper focus the issues facing those who seek employment. Globally, the characteristics of insecure work pervade economic and social settings creating a weakened fabric of labour. Those weak threads are further unravelled by the concurrent rise of technology and digitalisation, changing both the jobs and how they are performed. As different countries have adopted variant practices at different speeds, each society has undergone its own revolution, bringing to the fore crucial cultural, economic, and political questions. While labour patterns are situated in, and thus contingent on, the countervailing responses to those questions, broader thematic lessons can be learned from each society. This themed issue thus brings together papers from several countries and sectors, from exploring the impact of the financial crisis on job security in Germany and US, to the potential impact of the 4th Industrial Revolution in South Africa, these papers circumnavigate the world. Yet despite the heterogeneity of the labour markets, the papers all shine light on the potential precariousness of the workforce and, crucially, the workforce’s response to them.