ABSTRACT Contemporary debates on the world of work have long centred on the precariousness of the global workforce, and situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic have only brought into sharper focus the issues facing those who seek employment. Globally, the characteristics of insecure work pervade economic and social settings creating a weakened fabric of labour. Those weak threads are further unravelled by the concurrent rise of technology and digitalisation, changing both the jobs and how they are performed. As different countries have adopted variant practices at different speeds, each society has undergone its own revolution, bringing to the fore crucial cultural, economic, and political questions. While labour patterns are situated in, and thus contingent on, the countervailing responses to those questions, broader thematic lessons can be learned from each society. This themed issue thus brings together papers from several countries and sectors, from exploring the impact of the financial crisis on job security in Germany and US, to the potential impact of the 4th Industrial Revolution in South Africa, these papers circumnavigate the world. Yet despite the heterogeneity of the labour markets, the papers all shine light on the potential precariousness of the workforce and, crucially, the workforce’s response to them.

中文翻译：

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改变世界，改变工作

摘要关于劳动世界的当代辩论长期以来一直以全球劳动力的不稳定为中心，而诸如COVID-19大流行这样的情况仅使人们更加关注寻求工作的人所面临的问题。在全球范围内，不安全工作的特征普遍存在于经济和社会环境中，从而削弱了劳动力结构。随着技术和数字化的同时兴起，这些薄弱环节被进一步消除，从而改变了工作及其执行方式。由于不同的国家以不同的速度采用了不同的做法，每个社会都经历了自己的革命，从而提出了至关重要的文化，经济和政治问题。虽然劳动模式位于对这些问题的反补贴反应中，并因此而定，可以从每个社会中学到更广泛的主题课程。因此，这个主题问题汇集了来自多个国家和部门的论文，从探讨金融危机对德国和美国就业保障的影响，到南非第四次工业革命的潜在影响，这些论文都在世界范围内传播。尽管劳动力市场存在异质性，但所有论文都对劳动力的潜在不稳定以及至关重要的是，劳动力对他们的反应给予了启示。