Graduate Seminar Series 2026/27 - Session 3
Third Seminar
Gendered Labour, Time and Social Reproduction
February 17, 2027
Click on this link to join the seminar on Feb 17 at 15:00 (GMT).
Telma Marisa Ojeda Velez
University of Iceland
Perpetuating Harm: Institutional Complicity and the Experiences of Foreign Women in Icelandic Academia
Nordic higher education institutions publicly commit to equality and inclusion, yet internationalization has reshaped academic labour markets, leaving foreign women exposed to precarious contracts and limited institutional protection. This paper examines how foreign women in Icelandic academia experience employment-based violence (EBV) as personal violence enabled and sustained by structural conditions. European research shows such violence is widespread and structurally embedded. In Iceland, research has examined workplace harassment and feminist activism in academia, yet has largely excluded non-Icelandic speakers. The study employs a longitudinal qualitative design, drawing on narrative interviews with seven foreign women working in Icelandic academia (2022–2023), with five returning for follow-up interviews in 2025, analysed using inductive thematic analysis. As a foreign woman working in Icelandic academia, I share participants' subject position, and this proximity has informed reflexivity throughout the study. The analysis draws on structural violence theory and an account of institutional complaint, showing how unaddressed complaints sustain structural violence beneath a facade of equality commitments. Findings reveal that personal and structural violence are intertwined and feed on each other, neither existing without the other: individual acts are enabled by structural conditions such as precarious contracts and absent redress, while their repeated, unaddressed occurrence entrenches structural harm. Institutions consistently fail to intervene, normalising violence and undermining equality commitments, calling for accountability beyond performative frameworks.
Laia Nualart Moratalla
Autonomous University of Barcelona
The Ambivalent Role of Reproductive Work Among Unemployed Young Women: Effects on Sociability, Social Networks and the Labour-Market Re-entry
Unemployment has long been recognised as generating consequences that extend beyond the loss of income, including increased social isolation and the disruption of everyday social relations (Jahoda et al., 1933/1971; Gallie et al., 2003; Gallie and Paugam, 2004). Although these relational consequences are unevenly distributed across social groups, little attention has been paid to how they are shaped by intersecting inequalities. This paper argues that this gap stems from unemployment research being largely modelled on the experiences of adult men and from an employment-centred understanding of work that overlooks other types of work, such as reproductive work. Drawing on situated intersectionality (Yuval-Davis, 2015) and feminist approaches to work, particularly the Total Social Organisation of Labour (Glucksmann, 1995), the paper examines how reproductive work shapes the relational consequences of unemployment. Based on 32 biographical interviews with unemployed young mothers in Barcelona, Spain, the findings reveal an ambivalent role of reproductive work. While intensive reproductive work restructures sociability around family, neighbourhood and childcare spaces, creating new forms of social support and access to employment-related information, it also weakens employment-related ties and can constrain labour market re-entry through caring responsibilities. The paper challenges employment-centred understandings of unemployment and highlights the value of bringing situated intersectionality into dialogue with feminist approaches to work.
Mariami Ochkhikidze
Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg
Invisible Reproduction Across Borders: the Emotional and Cultural Labour of Georgian Migrant Women in Care Work
The globalisation of the market economy has increased demand for migrant women from developing countries to fill low-paid care and service jobs in wealthier societies, contributing to the feminisation of migration. Georgian migrant women are part of this global trend; however, they not only organise care responsibilities across borders but also navigate strong cultural expectations around motherhood, caregiving, and family responsibility. Therefore, this research examines how Georgian migrant women’s experiences of emotional and cultural labour reveal invisible forms of social reproduction that sustain families across borders. The study draws on feminist social reproduction theory, Hochschild’s conceptualisation of emotional labour, and Bourdieu’s concepts of capital and habitus. It is based on six semi-structured expert interviews with Georgian migrant women employed primarily in care-related occupations in Europe and Turkey. Using qualitative content analysis, the study combines deductive categories derived from theory with inductively generated themes emerging from the interviews. The findings show that migration does not remove women’s reproductive responsibilities but transforms them across borders. Women continue to perform emotional, cultural, and economic labour through emotional restraint, maintaining family relationships, transmitting values, and supporting their families financially. Cultural reproduction extends beyond traditions and rituals to include dispositions such as sacrifice, resilience, and devotion, which are crucial to Georgian motherhood and womanhood. The thesis contributes to research on migration and social reproduction by highlighting the emotional and cultural dimensions of transnational labour and how these forms of labour remain largely invisible and undervalued.
Sladjana Jeremic
University of Belgrade
The intensification of Time through Emotional Labor in Women's Remote Work
This conference paper explores how different forms of emotional labor contribute to time intensification for women, using the example of women’s remote work in the European semi-periphery of Serbia. Benjamin Snyder’s contention that time density and intensity are more appropriate concepts for measuring time flow in contemporary capitalism than quantity is examined in relation to different aspects of women’s lives, such as domestic and virtual paid work. Analysis of interviews with 25 millennial women from Serbia, along with the researcher’s autoethnographic reflection on her own experience of remote work, indicates that time intensification is connected to the emotional effort women employ while juggling different activities throughout their workday. This emotional effort manifests in the pronounced perfectionism, conscientiousness, and care for others associated with the role of a 'good' girl, which, as part of the gendered emotional response to growing social insecurity, becomes reinforced and exploited by capital.