Convenors
Giulia Magnano, University of Bergamo
giulia.magnano@unibg.it
Luca Villaggi, University of Milano
luca.villaggi@unimi.it
European economies are undergoing a twin transition – the joint digitalisation and decarbonisation of production systems – presented at the European level as a win-win response to competitiveness and sustainability challenges. In practice, it is reshaping occupational structures, labour processes, corporate governance models and supply chain arrangements, with outcomes that, while sometimes reinforcing existing hierarchies, remain open and are shaped by the agency, voice and strategic choices of the social actors involved. Although digitalization is often framed as a necessary step towards a net zero carbon economy, the link between the two transitions is far from being linear and uncontested. The war in Ukraine has prompted the EU to scale back Green Deal targets and aims, highlighting the tensions both among EU Member States and among firms, unions and workers’ experiencing the restructuring on the ground (Kovavic et al., 2024). Moreover, digitalization is itself a bearer of ecological damage, which is often externalised to poor and marginalized communities (Benegiamo et al., 2026).
Such contradictory outcomes can be grasped by adopting qualitative approaches (workplace ethnographies, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic observations more broadly) capable of investigating how digital and green innovations manifest themselves, and are shaped by the agency of workers and other social actors, in everyday work arrangements. This session invites ethnographic and qualitative contributions that examine how the twin transition concretely unfolds within workplaces, firms and value chains, and affects how industrial relations actors respond across governance scales. Digitalisation can ease repetitive, hazardous or physically demanding tasks but also reduce autonomy and enable algorithmic control, feeding “neo-Tayloristic” dynamics of labour standardisation, monitoring and quantification of performance (Alternied, 2020). These dynamics extend along entire supply chains and in different sectors: sensors and data platforms reconfigure coordination from the “digital factory” of precision agriculture (Prause, 2025) to logistics and manufacturing, redistributing information and power between large firms, retailers and suppliers (Duncan et al., 2022). Decarbonisation likewise redistributes risks and opportunities unevenly: some workers may benefit from improved health and safety conditions, while others may face redundancies, loss of income and deskilling, especially in unionized fossil-dependent industries (Kalt, 2022). Both processes risk eroding workers’ bargaining power and deepening labour market segmentation.
Union responses to these challenges are heterogeneous. Concerning digitalisation, they span from reactive approaches to more proactive efforts aimed at shaping technological trajectories in the workplace (Pulignano et al., 2023), along with grassroots mobilisations of workers in the emerging digitalised economies (Cini et al., 2022). Concerning ecological transition, the Just Transition perspective has been adopted to overcome the apparent contradiction between defending employment and protecting the environment (Galgóczi, 2020), although its implementation is affected by contextual and organisational factors ranging from affirmative or transformative approaches to opposition to climate and environmental policies (Stevis, Felli, 2015). We particularly welcome papers based on fieldwork inside workplaces, supply chains and union organisations that show how the twin transition is shaped on the shop floor and through the practices of workers, unions and industrial relations actors.
Open questions
Contributions should address the following open questions, although they shouldn’t be restricted to them:
- How are digital and green innovations organised and experienced at the workplace level?
- How does technological and ecological restructuring affect managerial control, workers’ resistance practices and union strategies in the workplace?
- How does the twin transition affect business models and power relations across supply chains?
- How is the digitalisation of production and coordination processes (e.g., sensors, real-time data platforms, algorithmic management systems) reshaping the division of labour, information flows and bargaining power along supply chains?
- How does the social composition of the workforce (in terms of gender, migratory status, age, etc.) affect restructuring processes and responses from industrial relations actors?
- Which strategies do traditional and/or rank-and-file unions deploy across company, sectoral, national or supranational governance scales?
Keywords
twin transition; digitalisation; just transition; labour processes; industrial relations
Sub-disciplines / cross-disciplinary areas
labour sociology; labour anthropology; environmental labour studies; industrial relations; labour process theory
References
Altenried, M. (2020). “The Platform as Factory: Crowdwork and the Hidden Labour behind Artificial Intelligence.” Capital & Class 44 (2): 145-158.
Benegiamo, M., Corrado, A., and Leonardi, E. (2026). “Digitalizzazione e transizione giusta nella produzione agroalimentare. Trasformazioni tecnologiche, lavoro, natura e governance.” Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.
Cini, L., V. Maccarrone, and A. Tassinari (2022). “With or Without U(nions)? Understanding the Diversity of Gig Workers’ Organizing Practices in Italy and the UK.” European Journal of Industrial Relations 28 (3): 341-362.
Duncan, E. (2025). “Data, Digital Agriculture, and Changing Valuations of Labor.” In D. Goldstein (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Galgóczi, B. (2020). “Just Transition on the Ground: Challenges and Opportunities for Social Dialogue.” European Journal of Industrial Relations 26 (4): 367-382.
Kalt, T. (2022). “Agents of Transition or Defenders of the Status Quo? Trade Union Strategies in Green Transitions.” Journal of Industrial Relations 64 (3): 461-484.
Kovacic, Z., C. G. Casañas, L. Argüelles, P. Y. Serrano, R. Ribera-Fumaz, L. Prause, and H. March (2024). “The Twin Green and Digital Transition: High-Level Policy or Science Fiction?” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 7 (6): 2251-2278.
Prause, L. (2025). “The Farm as Digital Factory: Controlling Labour and Nature in Digital Agriculture.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 52 (5): 907-925.
Pulignano, V., M. Hauptmeier, and D. Frans (2023). “Determinants of Union Strategies towards the Twin Digital and Green Transitions in the German and Belgian Automotive Industry.” Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 29 (1): 121-138.
Stevis, D., and R. Felli (2015). “Global Labour Unions and Just Transition to a Green Economy.” International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 15 (1): 29-43.
Convenors’ bio
Giulia Magnano holds a PhD in Agricultural Sciences from the University of Bologna where her doctoral research examined the role of migrant workers in Italy’s organic agri-food supply chain. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Bergamo where she focuses her research on the social effects of digitalisation in the agricultural sector. Her broader research interests lie at the intersection of social reproduction, ecology and labour processes across different stages of the agri-food chain, with particular attention to the strategies migrant workers employ to improve their working and living conditions.
Luca Villaggi, labour sociologist, has earned his PhD in Social Sciences at the University of Padova where he investigated the transformations of labour processes and social citizenship models in the social care industry in Italy and Poland. He is currently a post-doc researcher at the University of Milan, working on a EU-funded project concerning the collective representation of non-standard workers across different industries. His research focuses on labour processes, welfare systems and industrial relations, with a particular interest in Eastern Europe.