Just transition in the factory. Workers' mobilizations and participatory innovation in emergent Italian experiences

Transition to a more sustainable way of living has come to the fore as a no longer deferrable task, as testified by the recent acceleration in political action at European and national level (Next Generation EU/PNRR) and confirmed once more by the 2022 IPCC report on climate change. The key drivers of transition remain however controversial. In ideal-typical terms one can distinguish between a top-down, elite-driven, and a bottom-up, social mobilizations-based, understanding. The former takes for granted the continuity of the industrial model in force, and the related division of labour between public and corporate actors, scientists and technicians, workers and the public of citizens/consumers, assuming the unavoidability of social, especially occupational, costs. The latter is inspired by a “prefigurative” approach, aimed at enacting change at societal level by reorganizing social and socio-material relations in the here and now of everyday life. This often entails alternative ways of doing science, a repurposing of technologies, and in general more horizontal decision-making processes.

The factory seems the preserve of an elite-driven approach to transition, particularly in the key economic sectors led by large industrial groups. However, some cases have been recently emerging in Italy where workers, in cooperation with technical staffs and external professionals, unions and other local/translocal social actors and institutions, try to take over the transition process by elaborating alternatives that point to refashioning at once the relations and the means of production, saving jobs and skills while rethinking the purposes of production. We might talk in this case of a participatory or “co-production” approach, in the sense of a collaborative orientation that breaks with traditional role divisions and of a rethinking of the means, relations and goals of production in terms of reciprocal consistency.

The project will carry out an in-depth study of some of these experiences, in the sectors of energy and automotive production, set in contrast with elite-driven ones belonging to a same sector. This to avoid any prejudicial assumption about the social and/or ecological advantages of upstream vs. downstream transition processes. The method adopted is therefore comparative, and based on a fourfold qualitative technique of inquiry: secondary analysis of media and grey literature, interviews, focus groups and participant observation. Case histories will be constructed and updated also by way of an Actor-network description approach, to capture the role of elements such as technological devices or regulatory frameworks. Theoretically, given the potentially disruptive character of participatory experiences, the concept of “form of life” is applied for the first time in this field, complementing traditional approaches on work, occupations and industrial relations.