Under the leadership of Ass.-Prof. Dr. Juliane Schiel (Department of Social and Economic History), the University of Vienna applied for a COST Action and, over the next 4 years, will be coordinating a European network on bondage and coercion in labor relations. The successful COST Action "Worlds of Related Coercions in Work" (WORCK) stems from an initiative of the "Free/Unfree Labour" working group of the "European Labour History Network". Since 2013, the group members including historians, anthropologists, sociologists and philologists from all over Europe have been discussing approaches and methods for investigating dependent labor relations in an epoch-and-space transcending perspective. The goal is a reconceptualization of the history of work transgressing the modern-western analytical categories of "productive/unproductive", "free/unfree", "capitalistic/pre-capitalistic". Through the inclusion of slavery, serfdom and forced labor research, it will merge with the new social history.The COST Action offers this Initiative completely new opportunities to deepen existing observations through personal and thematic expansion. Furthermore, research and discussions on the topic will become more visible to science and society through events and publications.

Through regular meetings, a common digital infrastructure and an over-arching publication strategy the WORCK COST Action will study and discuss dependence and coercion in 4 closely linked working groups:

• Working group 1: "Grammars of Dependency"
• Working group 2: "Sites and Fields of Coercion"
• Working group 3: "(Im)Mobilisations of the Workforce"
• Working group 4: "Intersecting Marginalities"

 
The COST Action is open to researchers and institutions across Europe and the entire world working on bondage and coercion regardless their academic level. Special attention is paid to the integration of actors from Eastern Europe and the Global South.

For further information and contact details: https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA18205/#tabs|Name:overview