Logistics at work. An ethnographic study of young men at work in the logistics sector

How do goods stay in circulation? How do you keep products on the shelves and packages ordered online arrive at your doorstep? Global capitalism relies on the work done in warehouses and transport, and the management of production chains is a key tool for value creation. However, how goods are moved and who moves them remains unexplored and there are little research on experiences of work in this sector. This project studies the logistics sector from the perspectives of young men.

The research project explores three themes:

• How are goods kept in motion? Is value in logistics work created by physical ability, efficient automation or management?
• How do automation and increasing technological control affect working practices?
• How do young men working in the sector reconcile the personal demands of post-Fordist economy with more traditional expectations of work as a sign of respectability?

The project will provide information on the young people’s orientations to work and working conditions and its findings will also help to understand exclusion from work. The project will also provide information on the transformation of work and the automation of the service sector.

The project is funded by the Research Council of Finland

Previous activities

Seminar: Housing, Resources and intersecting inequalities

Date: June 4^th, 202
Time: 9.30– 14.15
Place: Swedish School of Social Sciences, room 234 (Snellmaninkatu 12), University of Helsinki

Seminar program

9.30-10.30 Keynote lecture: The Role of Housing Wealth in Young Adults’ Imagined Futures: Investor Subjectivities in the Minskian Household, Senior lecturer Julia Cook, University of Newcastle, Australia
10.30-11.30 Presentations I
11.30-12.45 Lunch
12.45–14.15 Presentations II

Seminar abstract: Housing, resources and intersecting inequalities

While segregation has long been an important perspective in understanding urban inequalities, questions around real estate and property markets as drivers of inequality have emerged recently as a topic of vivid discussion. Housing and homes are key to understanding for example belonging and identities, young people’s transition to adulthood as well as migrant integration, but scholars also argue that the ability to buy (or not buy) assets, such as property, has become a key element in shaping class formation and inequality in the Global North, particularly in the context of property inflation in urban centers (Adkins et el. 2020). Property markets are intertwined with urban planning as well as individual and family wealth, and new divisions are emerging between owners and renters, generations, urban centers and peripheries, and migrants and natives. This one-day seminar explores issues of housing, resources and intersecting inequalities. We invite presentations exploring the role of housing and property assets for individuals, families and groups and how these intertwine with the generational reproduction of class. The papers can also explore young people’s transitions and futures related to moving/staying, housing and residence and how place shapes possible and imagined futures. The presentations can also explore processes of urban segregation from different angles.

Abstract for the keynote lecture

The Role of Housing Wealth in Young Adults’ Imagined Futures: Investor Subjectivities in the Minskian Household

Scholarly interest in assets has grown over recent years, with housing receiving particular attention. At the same time a related body of work has focussed on intergenerational financial assistance with home ownership, considering how proximity to assets may lead to direct assistance with purchasing property. In this presentation I draw on longitudinal interviews conducted with 80 donors and recipients of family financial assistance with first home ownership in order to consider the role of assets (specifically property) in the imagined futures of the recipients, focusing particularly on ambitions to own investment properties. I argue that the provision and receipt of financial assistance of this type is underpinned by shared investor subjectivities. I then consider how these investor subjectivities may lead to specific orientations to property investment in the recipients’ imagined futures, finding that many of them aim to use property wealth to meet some of the costs of social reproduction in ways that recreate the gender dynamics that they experienced during their own childhoods. I ultimately draw together these claims to contend that the Minskian household is perhaps best thought of as a kinship network, and to identify some of the empirical features of these networks.

Keynote Speaker

Dr Julia Cook is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her most recent research addresses the role of family financial assistance in young adults’ pathways into home ownership and young adults’ navigation of credit, debt and financial assistance. She is a current Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow (2022–2025), a chief investigator on the current phase of the Life Patterns longitudinal research program (2021–2026), a recent Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) Top 5 scholar, and co-editor-in-chief of Journal of Applied Youth Studies.

Presentations

Session I 10.30-11.30

1 Maturing through migrant tenancy: The translocal and intergenerational labour of student renting
Olga Tkach, The Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism (CEREN), Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki

2 Young People and Changing Family Relations in the Processes of Moving Out of Childhood Hom
Anni Nyyssölä and Tarja Tolonen, University of Helsinki 

Session II 12.45-14.15

3 Social cohesion as a competitive asset for the city of Helsinki? 
Hanna Yrjänä, University of Helsinki

4 Migration, Housing Diversity and Variations of Property Mind: A Comparative Approach in Helsinki Metropolitan Area
Haoxuan Sa & Jani Vuolteenaho, University of Helsinki

4 At Home or Not? A Qualitative Analysis of Housing After Homelessness
Riikka Perälä, Krista Kosonen, Saija Turunen & Elisabetta Leni, Y-Säätiö

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Seminar organisers

The seminar is organized by Academy Research Fellow project “Logistics at work. Young men moving goods in warehouse and transportation services”, The Finnish Youth Research Society, the project “Young people’s future dreams and transitions  –  belonging to communities and society” at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki and Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies (Urbaria).

Start year:

2020

End year:

2025

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