How can trends towards inequality in the labour market be counteracted and what role can actors and institutions play?
Joint IWPLMS and IREC-conferences | 16 – 18 September 2026 | Oslo, Norway
Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research hosts the joint IWPLMS and IREC-conferences in 2026.
Inequality is on the rise. What are the factors driving these inequalities and the segmentation of labour markets? How can these trends be counteracted and what role can social partners and the state play in this process? Can new groups of workers on the margins of the labour market benefit from existing labour market institutions, or must we instead look for alternative approaches to address the growing dualization of the labour market?
These questions form the overarching theme of the conference.
These questions will form the overarching theme of the conference.
- Scientific committee: Richard Hyman, Jill Rubery, Barbara Bechter, Sonja Bekker, Karen Jaehrling and Guglielmo Meardi
- Organising committee at Fafo: Kristin Alsos, Johanne Stenseth Huseby, Kristine Nergaard, Sigurd M. N. Oppegaard, Sondre Thorbjørnsen, Sissel C. Trygstad, and Anne Mette Ødegård
- Contact: Kristin Alsos
- IWPLMS (International Working Party on Labour Market Segmentation) is dedicated to understanding the processes shaping inequality and segmentation in labour markets, through a multi-disciplinary, dynamic and comparative institutional theoretical perspective.
- IREC (Industrial Relations in Europe Conference) was created in 1992 as a network of those researching into industrial relations in Europe.
Call for papers
Submission Instructions
Authors are invited to submit an abstract of max. 400 words outlining research questions, theoretical contribution, data/methods, and key findings (or expected findings). Accepted contributions will be organised into thematic sessions.
Please indicate the stream that you are submitting your paper to. If none of the streams fit your submission, please indicate 'open stream'.
- Upload your abstract here: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/80781/submitter
- Submission Deadlines: 1 April 2026
- Notification of Acceptance: 20 April 2026
Stream 1: The inclusivity of social dialogue and new challenges
Non-standard work has long been central to debates on labour market segmentation and inequality. Yet, many workers remain only weakly covered by traditional industrial relations institutions and established channels of social dialogue. This exclusion may stem from legal definitions of employment status, limits on representational rights, gaps in bargaining structures, and uneven organisational priorities and capacities among social partners. New divisions of labour are making solidarity harder to construct, and strategies may have to be adopted to counteract this.
This stream examines how worker voice, representation, and social dialogue are being reconfigured in labour markets shaped by platform intermediation, fissured workplaces, subcontracting, temporary agency work, and dependent self-employment. We invite contributions that analyse and discuss the barriers non-standard workers face in accessing representation and collective regulation, as well as the strategies and institutional innovations that seek to overcome these barriers.
Stream 2: The role of industrial relations in the new world of work
Across Europe, industrial relations and social dialogue have returned to the center of policy debates. After decades in which multi-employer bargaining and associated collective institutions were often described as being in long-term decline, recent developments, like the Directive on adequate minimum wage, have refocused attention on the capacity of collective actors and institutions to confront widening inequalities, labour market fragmentation, and new forms of risk and insecurity.
Increased emphasis on the need for securing minimum standards may also mean a reconfiguration of the role for states in shaping labour markets.
This stream welcomes contributions that critically examine how actors, industrial relations institutions and social dialogue can confront inequality—within and across countries, sectors, firms, and groups of workers—and how collective institutions are being reshaped in a changing political economy.
Stream 3: Job quality, working conditions and labour market mobility in a changing world of work
Labour market mobility, job quality and social protection are key to understanding inequalities and transformations in contemporary labour markets. Recent developments, such as digitalisation, AI, globalisation and green transitions, are providing employers with new opportunities to reshape job structures, working conditions and access to rights. Combined with persistent wage and income disparities, these trends drive mobility and contribute to segmentation and dualization.
This stream invites papers examining how these transformative dynamics affect workers, working conditions, labour markets and regulatory frameworks, as well as how these tendencies are shaped and conditioned by institutional arrangements.