Occupational Health in a New World of Work

This handbook explores the shifting landscapes of work, focusing on how new and non-standard forms of employment-such as digital platform work, freelancing, remote work, and zero-hour contracts-are reshaping occupational health and safety (OHS) research and intervention. It provides a comprehensive overview of research on employment models evolving at the 'margins of the labour market', which challenge traditional ideas of a 'job' and 'working hours', and which create new conditions for workers' health and well-being. It covers research on ongoing changes in work organization, including place-independent arrangements (from hybrid to fully remote), time-independent schedules (24/7 flexibility, blurred work-life boundaries), and new management practices. 
The handbook reviews research on emerging health risks, the interaction of traditional and new work-related hazards, and the social distribution of related risks and benefits. With a focus on hyper-flexible work environments and the role of technology, this resource provides essential insights for students, researchers, professionals and policymakers aiming to understand the impact on worker health and safety of (new) work and employment phenomena at the margins of the labour market.

List of contents

Introduction.- Job quality at the outer skirts of the labour market: conceptual and empirical challenges.- Precarious employment as a unifying concept to make sense of labour market de-standardisation and flexibilisation.- Precarious work: a global perspective.- Pathways of precariousness: Explaining the detrimental consequences of precarious work from a psychological perspective.- Explaining Individual Experiences of Precarious Work Through Ideology, Subjectification, Social Norms, and Social Capital: A Critical Psychological Perspective.- Resilience of OHS law and regulations in a hyperflexible labour relations.- Occupational health and global production networks: A view from the global south.- Transitioning into Platform Work & Abiding by the Informal: Insights from the Global South.- Measuring the multi-dimensional constructs of Employment Quality and Precarious Employment for Population Health: Current Practices across Nations and Future Opportunities.- Challenges in research and field work methods in hyper-flexible work environments.- Making sense of risk and exposure in hyper-flexible work environments.- Using Photovoice Methods to Illustrate Occupational Health and Safety Risks in Flexible Work.- Precarious employment and OHS from a life course perspective.- From Margins to Mainstream? OHS Challenges in the solo self-employed workforce.- Own account work in the global south.- Digital platform work and OHS challenges.- Unpaid Labour, Precarious Work and Implications for Job Quality.- The road to dignity: Addressing financial insecurity and its effects on workers.- Hybrid work and mental health: pinched between real autonomy and false liberty.- Working where you live: Ergonomics, work (re)design, and health.- Occupational Health and Social Protection of Online Workers in Southeast Asia: Exploring Policies, Initiatives and Challenges.- Pressures, Disorganization, and Regulatory Gaps: Understanding Adverse OSH Outcomes in Algorithmically Managed Workplaces.- Violating and Reclaiming Boundaries in Precarious Employment and Algorithmic Management.- Workers health in an era of polarised labour markets.- Precarious Employment: An Intersectional Analysis Exploring Axes of Power and Inequity.- Migrant Women and In-Home Care Work: Gender Perspectives on Precarious Work, Health, and the Body in Canada.- Precarious employment, precarious transitions and emotional health inequalities among young people.- Job Quality Among Precariously Employed Older Workers.- Swinging at the Boundary: The Resilience of Employment-Family Patterns, Health Implications, and Coping Strategies.- Occupational Health Science for the Informal Economy -.- AI and digital transformations in the economy as they relate to the future of work and the health safety and well-being of workers.- From Research to Impact Improving Health by Supporting Policy for Improved Employment Quality.- Precarious Work and Mental Health. Research and Policy.- Real Utopias: Visions for healthy and sustainable organizations.- Visions for healthy and sustainable economies: the economy for the Common Good.- Living Wages: A scaffolding for healthy global supply chains?.- Mandatory corporate social responsibility: ESRS, a way forward for OHS.
Introduction.- Job quality at the outer skirts of the labour market: conceptual and empirical challenges.- Precarious employment as a unifying concept to make sense of labour market de-standardisation and flexibilisation.- Precarious work: a global perspective.- Pathways of precariousness: Explaining the detrimental consequences of precarious work from a psychological perspective.- Explaining Individual Experiences of Precarious Work Through Ideology, Subjectification, Social Norms, and Social Capital: A Critical Psychological Perspective.- Resilience of OHS law and regulations in a hyperflexible labour relations.- Occupational health and global production networks: A view from the global sout

About the author

Christophe Vanroelen


Vrije Universiteit Brussel


Department of Sociology


Ixelles


Belgium


 


Lisa Seubert


Universität Innsbruck


Department of Psychology


Innsbruck


Austria


 


Theo Bodin


Karolinska Institutet


Unit of Occupational Medicine


Stockholm


Sweden

Summary

This handbook explores the shifting landscapes of work, focusing on how new and non-standard forms of employment—such as digital platform work, freelancing, remote work, and zero-hour contracts—are reshaping occupational health and safety (OHS) research and intervention. It provides a comprehensive overview of research on employment models evolving at the ‘margins of the labour market’, which challenge traditional ideas of a 'job' and 'working hours', and which create new conditions for workers’ health and well-being. It covers research on ongoing changes in work organization, including place-independent arrangements (from hybrid to fully remote), time-independent schedules (24/7 flexibility, blurred work-life boundaries), and new management practices. 
The handbook reviews research on emerging health risks, the interaction of traditional and new work-related hazards, and the social distribution of related risks and benefits. With a focus on hyper-flexible work environments and the role of technology, this resource provides essential insights for students, researchers, professionals and policymakers aiming to understand the impact on worker health and safety of (new) work and employment phenomena at the margins of the labour market.

Product details

• Assisted by: Theo Bodin (Editor), Lisa Seubert (Editor), Christophe Vanroelen (Editor)
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 03.05.2027
• EAN: 9783032148667
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3214866-7
• Illustrations: Approx. 600 p.
• Series: Handbook Series in Occupational Health Sciences
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine > Non-clinical medicine; Arbeits-, Wirtschafts- und Organisationspsychologie, Personalmanagement, HRM, Soziologie: Arbeit und Beruf, home office, self-employment, Occupational health, Employee Health and Wellbeing, Sociology of Work, Occupational Health Psychology, Health inequalities, labour relations, precarious employment, online workforce, employment quality, temporary workers