Franco Bonomi Bezzo is the holder of the Worlds of labour – LEST / Iméra Chair. His research project at Iméra, the Institute for Advanced Study of Aix-Marseille University will first explore how perceptions of paid work are evolving in contemporary societies around the world. Second, the project will delve into an in-depth analysis of six distinct policy trials conducted in four diverse contexts: the United Kingdom, France, Austria, and South Africa. By closely examining these real-world trials, the research aims to understand the dynamics of how such policies influence individuals’ and communities’ attitudes towards paid work. Lastly, building upon the insights gained from these specific case studies, the project will develop a complexity theory of work, to offer a novel perspectives and comprehensive insights into the interplay between work, society, and individuals.
To learn more, view his resident page by clicking here
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0:10 I'm Franco Bonomi-Bezzo. I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Milan, working on the European funded project DESPO, which is about the process of denuclearization that occurred in Europe and in the US. And you're analyzing the individual and contextual determinants and the political consequences of this phenomenon. I've been trained as an economist at the University of Exxon during my PhD. And then I switched more towards the interplay between sociology, political science, and economics. So I did a first postdoc at INED, the French National Institute of Demography in Paris.
0:41 And I remained affiliated to INED up to now. And I'm working with some colleagues there on a variety of projects. Last year, I spent five months visiting the Southern Africa Labor and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. And I'm still working with some colleagues on certain projects on income, work dynamics, and inequality in South Africa. The title of the project I'm working on here at the Imerat is the devolution of attitudes towards paid work in contemporary societies across global north and global south.
1:11 We all know that paid work has been the cornerstone of societies and welfare state since the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution and even perhaps before then. Nowadays, the centrality of paid work for individual well-being seems to diminish in a sense that the industrialization, the devolution of the labour market towards more precarious jobs and the phenomenon of gig employment seems to actually reduce the ability of paid work to provide income and sustenance to families. However, the significance and the meaning of paid work for social recognition and social
1:47 status doesn't seem to diminish. So I want to investigate this paradox under a comparative perspective comparing four different countries, South Africa, UK, Austria and France, and a variety of policy interventions in these countries. Overall, as a researcher, my aim is to advance both academic and social knowledge through a combination of various disciplines and various methodologies from different disciplines. So for this project, for example, I'm taking on from sociology, political science, economics and psychology too, to mix a variety of approaches to understand in a very
2:20 nuanced way what is the role associated to paid work, both from the individuals and from the community, but also from also considered the individual embedded in the community they live in. So we'll use both quantitative analysis and qualitative interviews, especially biographical interviews and focus groups, to actually investigate how the role of paid work is evolving and how this affects communities at large. As chairholder of the last CNRS-HIMERA Chair Awards of Labour, Le Monde du Travail, I'm very happy to be here because it is a fantastic place to carry on this project.
2:52 Actually, I couldn't imagine any other place like that because on the one hand, the utopian approach of the chair and the IMERA but also on the other hand, the deep knowledge on work-related issues at Lest. So during this five months, I will try to partner with colleagues at Lest and thanks to their knowledge, to get introduced to the French context and especially, I will try to test my methodology and develop it in the context of Jouk, which is a town close to Marseille and I will run interviews both with people involved in the policy interventions
3:22 and with people not involved in the policy interventions to understand both perspectives.
