28-30/01/2026 in Halle (Saale)
Annual Workshop of the Working Group Labour Geography
The struggle for legal recognition, labour rights and the intersection with regulatory regimes plays a key role in the advancement of workers’ interests. After decades of neoliberal reform, such struggles currently intensify as labour movements worldwide are coming under pressure from authoritarian political projects. Processes such as the fragmentation of labour, forms of algorithmic management and widespread strategies of union busting or attacks on the right to strike have reshaped – and are reshaping – the conditions of work even across highly institutionalized workplace regimes. Beyond this traditional arena of wage labour, the ongoing crises of social reproduction are further aggravated by attacks on public spending, welfare regimes and protections such as regulation on the length of the work day.
Labour geography – with its characteristic focus on labour agency and the production of space – sheds light on these changing uneven geographies of work under capitalism. By engaging with forms of domination in workplace regimes and beyond as well as interrelations between dimensions of social inequality, the social metabolism with nature on the one hand and conditions of work and organizing on the other, labour geographic research contributes to analyses of the current conjuncture. However, the relationship between labour, law and space is less often reflected explicitly in recent debates in labour geography.
Hence, we dedicate our next annual workshop in Halle (Saale) to these questions and cordially invite all members and other interested researchers for participation. Our workshop aims at fostering exchange and networking among researchers from German-speaking countries who deal with questions around work, the agency of workers as well as social conditions and forms of collective organizing from a geographical perspective.
Contributions
At the workshop, we welcome contributions to our main theme “Labour, Law & Space” but also encourage contributions beyond this focus. As part of our ongoing reflections on practical dimensions of organizing and labour struggles, we will focus on the concept of organizing and its diffusion from workplace organizing into the practices of social movements and political parties.
We cordially invite all interested to actively participate in shaping the program. Possible formats are:
- Presentation of a research project (approx. 15 min. presentation / 15 min. discussion),
- Proposal of a classic or current text from the field of Labour Geography for joint discussion,
- Discussion of an own paper or draft chapter in a peer feedback session.
Contributions on research projects at any stage of work and from scholars at all career stages are welcome. Abstracts for text discussions should include brief information on the text, the motives for the selection and the planned discussion questions.
Please submit your abstract (max. 500 words) by 31 of October 2025 via the online application form (see below).
Practical Matters
The workshop starts on 29th of January at 10:00 h and ends on 30th of January at 16:00 h. There will a welcome dinner in the evening of the 28th January. The main working language of the meeting will be English. However, individual contributions or sessions may be submitted in German. Our location at the MLU offers a parent-child room, which can be used with a caregiver of the child. Unfortunately, we cannot provide childcare.
There will be a participation fee of 20 Euro upon registration. The call for registration for participants who are not handing in contributions will open in November.
For questions about the conference or the rooms, please contact Yannick Ecker (yannick.ecker (at) geo.uni-halle.de).
We look forward to a lively participation!
Your local orga-group: Boris Michel, Yannick Ecker
and orga-support team: Mariana Gomes, Tanja Potezica, Pedro José Salguero González, Janika Kuge, Michaela Doutch, Oliver Pye, Stephan Liebscher
Registration form:
https://ak-labourgeography.de/en/2025/07/11/annual-workshop-of-the-working-group-labour-geography/