Hybrid areas of labour. Challenging traditional dichotomies to represent work, workers, and working trajectories

This contribution proposes to adopt «hybridity» as a theoretical lens and heuristic tool to analyse and explore ongoing labour transformations. After providing a definition of the concept of hybrid throughout time and disciplines, the focus then shifts more specifically to the processes of hybridisation of labour, with the aim of advancing our understanding of the heterogeneous articulations of hybrid areas of work and employment in both the Global North and South. By paying special attention to workers’ agency and subjective trajectories, the article shows how the concept of hybridity paves the way to question deep-sited dichotomies hitherto used to interpret labour transformations, such as employment/self-employment, standard/non-standard, formal/informal, productive/ reproductive, and paid/unpaid. Finally, the contributions included in this Special Issue on Hybrid areas of labour are introduced. They represent a collection of selected studies focused on the different forms of hybridisation that characterise each specific working experience and condition, in both high and low-skilled sectors, digital and ‘on-site’ work environments, paid and unpaid care and reproductive forms of labour.