SESSION I. Are we all going to end up self-employed?
Self-employment, which accounts for almost 15% of total employment in the EU, makes a considerable contribution to the EU’s economy in terms of entrepreneurship and job creation. But it also carries a degree of risk and vulnerability for the individual, both in the short and long run. Countries like Italy, Greece and Spain have the highest rates of self-employment in Europe.
Is there evidence of an increase of such labour market arrangements in recent years? Are careers becoming shorter? Are they driven by technology or by institutional factors? Is the tradition of "one job over a lifetime" really over? In this session, speakers will shed light on the drivers behind the recent growth in self-employment and the policy consequences that need to be addressed as a result.
SESSION II. Crowdsourcing and contests: A new digital working class
Crowdsourcing is a quick and cheap option for outsourcing, but it is more than that. The definition of crowdsourcing can be quite broad, encompassing phenomena such as Wikipedia, where virtually anyone can contribute to the construction of the popular online encyclopaedia. Here we restrict the concept of crowdsourcing to focus on paid labour, which allows for specific tasks to be assigned — from the creation of a web programme code, a translation or data collection — to a worker in an unspecified location. In this session we aim to understand the labour implications of these phenomena, both for workers in this new sector and for the users of traditional markets.
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