Speaker: Maud Simonet

Topic: “Free Labor: The New Exploitation

Date: Thursday, February 14, 2019

Time: 4:30pm-6:30pm

Location: CUNY Graduate Center (Room 5200/Political Science Lounge)

Refreshments will be served

Abstract:  What do a volunteer in extra-curricular activities at a school, a welfare recipient cleaning up New York’s parks, or a writer of an online blog have in common? They do thousands of hours of free work to run nonprofits, utilities and businesses.

What do these different “civic” and “digital” forms of free work teach us? Who benefits and who is assigned?

Starting from the great lessons of the feminist analysis of domestic work, and based on several field surveys carried out in France and the United States, Maud Simonet proposes a critical approach to work, based on various forms of unpaid labor. It analyzes these forms of exploitation that develop in the name of love, passion or citizenship,  and which participate in the neoliberalisation of work in the public and private worlds.