Flexibilisation through working from home? A look at the history of telecommuting in (West) Germany and France.

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Heike Weber
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 573365024

The project, Flexibilisation through working from home? The History of Teleworking in (West) Germany and France, examines homeworking around 1900 and teleworking from the 1970s onwards as flexible labour. The first aim of the project (in form of a doctoral thesis) is to analyse the discourses, negotiations and implementation of teleworking in (West) Germany and France. The concept of ‘Tele(heim)arbeit’ or ‘télétravail’ emerged over five decades ago and has since been associated with the late modern individual's emancipatory promises of freedom, as well as fears of the complete dissolution of work boundaries. Even when the technical basis was widely available around 2000, teleworking remained in a niche. It was only during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic that many office workers found themselves working from home overnight. This sub-project therefore uses teleworking as a probe to learn more about the processes, debates, and negotiations triggered by the flexibilisation and digitalisation of work and production from the late 20th century onwards. As a ‘different’ form of work that diverged from the ‘normal’ working conditions of the post-war era, teleworking has impacted fundamental social and cultural norms and values surrounding work, life, and social interaction, including conventions of reproductive labour. The national comparison allows us to better understand such socio-cultural dimensions by highlighting nation-specific differences and similarities. Alongside the traditional historical analysis of sources and literature, oral history is employed to give a voice to actors involved in technology development, politics, companies as well as to teleworkers, including groups that are hardly represented in the sources. Secondly, the teleworking study will be carried out in conjunction with an analysis of homeworking around 1900, conducted by the applicant. Even though considered ‘backward’, decentralised production by outsourcing to homeworkers was an important pillar of the production of early mass consumer goods. This is demonstrated in detail for the case of the textile sector in the Bergisch region and the ready-to-wear industry in Berlin. The two studies complement each other due to their shared focus on how the flexibilisation of labour and production relates to questions of technology, the organisation of production and work, and gender and intersectionality. This shared framework of analysis enables us to achieve our third aim of examining and understanding (tele)working from home in the longue durée. By utilising the epistemic potential of the ‘different’ of homeworking, we will contrast the traditional narratives of modern 'industrial', 'office' and 'normal' work with the fluid work biographies of homeworkers, who predominantly belong to marginalised groups in the labour market, such as women.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants