A Decade of Studying Guest Workers Through the Projects of the Serbian Ethnological and Anthropological Society

This review paper provides an overview of the ten-year long anthropological research on the cultural identity of guest workers and their descendants as part of the projects implemented by the associates of the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade and the SASA Institute of Ethnography. The projects were supported by the Serbian Ethnological and Anthropological Society and the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. The phenomenon of “temporary workers abroad”, or the so-called guest workers (Gastarbeiter), which emerged in the early 1960s and continued in the decades to come, has long remained beyond the interest of Serbian anthropological and ethnological science. This is why, after having noticed a scientific research gap related to this phenomenon, in 2010 we initiated the anthropological research of the cultural identity of guest workers. Our intention was to take into account different factors of guest-worker identity construction and to look at the processes, discourses and concepts related to this socio-cultural group from different angles. Over time, as we delved deeper into the problem of migrant workers and migration in general, our interests, and consequently our research, expanded to other topics in addition to cultural identity. In that context, this review paper intends to inform the scientific and professional public about the findings of research on migrants working temporarily abroad and their descendants, and to highlight some of the most important topics that we focused on in this research, while being aware that the phenomenon of migrants and migration is so diverse that it is impossible to include or investigate all its elements that make it so complex.

Community and National Provisions for Temporary Work Agencies. Trends in the Evolution of Temporary Work Agencies and Temporary Workers

The temporary work agent is an important player in the EU labor market from the perspective of labor flexibility. The evolution of the national legal framework on the regulation of the establishment and operation of the temporary work agent in accordance with the European provisions - Directive 2008/104 / EC - is an important issue to consider in this article because the national legal frameworks had to be adapted after 2008 in accordance with the Community law, in order to ensure the protection of temporary workers. Last but not least, the trends on the European labor market are also interesting from the point of view of the employment degree based on the services of temporary work agents. This paper aims to analyze the evolution of the Romanian legal provisions regarding temporary work agencies since the entry into force of the 2003 Labor Code to present day, emphasizing on the debate regarding the licensing, registration and the withdrawal of license procedure for a temporary work agent in our country. At the end of the article, we will present the number of temporary work agencies licensed in Romania, but also the percentage of employees recruited through temporary work agents in EU countries during the period 2011-2020, in order to highlight the degree of use of this type of workforce.

Haken conference interpreters in Japan: Exploring status through the sociology of work and of professions

This article investigates the professional status of conference interpreters in Japan, by focusing on interpreters employed as haken, that is, dispatched temporary workers. Combining the perspectives of interpreting studies and the sociology of work, it addresses both internal and external factors upholding interpreters’ status: expertise, autonomy, and authority, on one hand, and social and market dynamics, on the other hand. It provides a thick empirical analysis of status-related factors by drawing on fieldwork data in Japan, including 46 interviews with interpreters and 7 interviews with agency managers. The findings show that internal and external factors intertwine in limiting or upholding interpreters’ status recognition. Despite their expertise and qualifications, conference interpreters in Japan have limited control over their work, because of clients’ expectations of subordination. Furthermore, the monopoly of agencies in the Japanese market constrains their professional visibility. Last but not least, interpreters’ employment as temporary workers and the disproportionate feminisation of the category contribute to societal perceptions of interpreting as an insecure and unrewarding occupation. The findings bear practical implications for the advocacy of interpreters’ status and its betterment in Japan.

Digital assemblages, information infrastructures, and mobile knowledge work

We theorize mobile knowledge workers’ uses of digital and material resources in support of their working practices. We do so to advance current conceptualizations of both “information infrastructures” and “digital assemblages” as elements of contemporary knowledge work. We focus on mobile knowledge workers as they are (increasingly) self-employed (e.g., as freelancers, entrepreneurs, temporary workers, and contractors), competing for work, and collaborating with others: one likely future of work that we can study empirically. To pursue their work, mobile knowledge workers draw together collections of commodity digital technologies or digital assemblages (e.g., laptops, phones, public WiFi, cloud storage, and apps), relying on a reservoir of knowledge about new and emergent means to navigate this professional terrain. We find that digital assemblages are created and repurposed by workers in their infrastructuring practices and in response to mobility demands and technological environments. In their constitution, they are generative to both collaborative and organizational goals. Building from this, we theorize that digital assemblages, as individuated forms of information infrastructure, sustain stability and internal cohesion even as they allow for openness and generativity.

The Effect of Employing Temporary Workers on Efficiency: Evidence From a Meta-Frontier Analysis

This study examines the impact of employing temporary workers on technical efficiency (TE) by employing stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and meta-frontier analysis (MFA). These two statistical methods yield slightly different, yet empirically meaningful, results. SFA—the more conventional methodology for conducting efficiency analysis—confirms that firms with temporary workers show a somewhat lower level of TE; while MFA, which allows a comparison of TE across groups with heterogeneous technologies, reveals that firms hiring temporary workers are technologically less efficient and have a more pronounced relative gap in efficiency. With the application of MFA, it was observed that firms hiring only temporary workers come farther to the meta-frontier than their counterparts.