Remote work and im/mobilities through the life-course

The Covid-19 global lockdown has encouraged a rapid shift towards remote work, and home-based working has become a sudden necessity for many. The wake of the outbreak has seen an increased social acceptance of delocalized working practices, both for workers and companies, leading to new configurations of the interplay between work and mobility. This panel aims to explore the possibilities and challenges emerging at the interplay between remote work and mobility, with the purpose to highlight the significance of the life-course. The panel asks how the interplay between remote work and mobility unfolds at different turning points of life and in the making of trajectories. Remote work is not a new phenomenon, nor its relation to mobility. Some groups, like the ‘digital nomads’, were exploiting the benefits of location-independent work to lead a mobile life long before the pandemic. The implementation of remote work on a global scale, however, has allowed more people to experiment location-independence and imagine working from “anywhere”. It has triggered opportunities to repopulate rural areas, return home for migrants and rethink life projects and routines, introducing mobility practices alternative to commuting, such as running or cycling. How do different temporalities and momentous transitions in the life-course affect the decision to move or stay put, thanks or despite the possibility to work remotely? How do gender, kinship ties and the construction of trajectories shape individuals’ decision of im/mobility in the case of remote work?

Abstract The Covid-19 global lockdown has encouraged a rapid shift towards remote work, and home-based working has become a sudden necessity for many. The wake of the outbreak has seen an increased social acceptance of delocalized working practices, both for workers and companies, leading to new configurations of the interplay between work and mobility. Remote work is not a new phenomenon, nor its relation to mobility. Some groups, like the ‘digital nomads’, were already exploiting the benefits of location-independent work to lead a mobile life before the pandemic. The implementation of new remote-working policies on a global scale has laid out new scenarios, allowing more people to experiment location-independence and imagine working from “anywhere”. The diffusion of remote work has triggered opportunities to repopulate rural areas, return home for migrants and rethink life projects and routines, introducing mobility practices alternative to commuting, such as running or cycling. This panel aims to explore the possibilities and challenges emerging at the interplay between remote work and mobility, with the purpose to highlight the significance of the life-course. The panel asks how the interplay between remote work and mobility unfolds in the passage through different stages of personal and professional life. The life-course is an interesting aspect of anthropological inquiry, especially for research focusing on specific phases of life (e.g., adulthood, ageing), life transitions (e.g., migration, marriage, death) and their socio-cultural meanings. We need to analyse, however, how people practice remote work in relation to spatial im/mobilities from a life-course perspective. In the face of the new uncertainties imposed by the pandemic both on work and mobility, we aim to draw attention to the different stages and transitions of life as well as people’s capacity and creativity to act upon time and the future. We invite presentations that focus on different forms of remote work (e.g. ITC professionals, academics, digital nomads) and mobilities (e.g. migration, tourism, sport mobilities) and explore the different opportunities and challenges emerging at the interplay between remote work and im/mobility in the life-course. How do different temporalities and momentous transitions affect the decision to move or stay put, thanks or despite the possibility to work remotely? How do gender, kinship ties and the construction of career and life trajectories shape individuals’ decision of im/mobility in the case of remote work?

Convenors: Flavia Cangià and Fabiola Mancinelli

Submission guidelines are at https://iuaes2022.spb.ru/userfiles/files/docs/guides/guide_papers.pdf

To submit, go to: https://iuaes2022.spb.ru/apply/paper/ where you will need to complete your details and indicate the name of the panel for which you have chosen to submit your paper proposal/abstract. You will also need to register, although conference fees are not immediately payable.