Doctoral Researchers 2nd Cohort

In progress

In progress

This doctoral project investigates the transnational governance of labour in commercial content moderation, a largely invisible yet globally significant sector of digital platform work. Recent labour disputes, such as the four-day strike of TikTok employees in Berlin in September 2025, highlight precarious working conditions and the contested nature of labour regulation in this domain. Content moderation constitutes a substantial part of digital value creation for major social media platforms but is frequently outsourced to subcontractors in low-wage countries, creating differential regulatory environments and exposing workers to psychological strains. The project aims to map the network of national and transnational interest groups, including trade unions, NGOs and movement organisations, that engage with labour governance in content moderation. It investigates how these actors interact, generate power and influence labour standards across borders. Guided by relational approaches the study seeks to elucidate how social interactions shape structure and regulation of cross-border labour markets. Methodologically, the research adopts a comparative qualitative case study design, examining sites in a European high-wage country and a low-wage country in the Global South. Exploratory field mapping, expert interviews and qualitative data analysis will identify actor relations, modes of interaction and institutional effects. The project contributes to the research of cross-border labour markets by making visible the actors and processes that shape labour regulation.

K. Hauck, “Künstlich schlau? Was KI für die kulturelle Bildung bedeutet,” kju Magazin der LAG Kinder- und Jugendkultur Hamburg, no. 72, Hamburg, pp. 16–17, 2023.

Europe’s demographic ageing has intensified demand for skilled labour, particularly in healthcare, while India’s expanding educated workforce positions it as a major supplier of talent. Over the years, several policy tools at origin, destination, and joint initiatives, such as talent partnerships and bilateral agreements, have sought to align labour demand with migrant aspirations. Despite their growing prominence, little is known about how such mobility agreements function in practice, particularly at the intersection of governance infrastructures and migrant decision-making. Parallelly, there has been significant growth in non-government pathways through private players, who are yet another understudied key component of the transnational institutions shaping labour migration in countries like India. The proposed PhD project investigates the India–Germany migration corridor, comparing government-to-government (G2G) pathways such as Triple Win with private recruitment routes. Using actor-based process tracing within a mixed-methods design, the study will trace causal mechanisms linking macro frameworks (laws, agreements), meso infrastructures (public agencies, recruiters, training institutions), and micro-level outcomes (migrant choices, costs, risks, job quality). The research aims to advance migration systems and governance theory by unpacking infrastructures of migration. The study will collect data, including surveys and interviews with migrants and stakeholders in India and Germany.

TBA

Engineers see their profession as intrinsically transnational in line with the global nature of the demand for their services. Yet in the EU common market their mobility remains restricted due to unharmonized regimes of recognition of professional qualifications in engineering and nationally anchored regimes of professional regulation. This project examines how intra-EU labor markets for engineers function under these conditions by asking: which actors, mechanisms, and institutions constitute and coordinate this market (including the role of EU-level bodies such as Engineers Europe); how national recognition regimes and other regulatory forms interact with these arrangements; and how this configuration shapes cross-border mobility patterns among European engineers.

Theoretically, the project draws on recent work in the economic sociology of labor markets and integrates it with Fligstein’s markets-as-fields approach to specify the institutional architecture and social ordering of these markets. Empirically, a 3–4-country comparative study is planned, combining analysis of EU law and documents produced by professional bodies and institutions, supplemented by interviews with experts and engineers with transnational career experience. The contribution is a market-sociological account of professional labor markets beyond methodological nationalism, explaining how regulation constitutes market order and how mobility is coordinated despite fragmentation.

Beyer, M., M. Koppel, and U. Hagedorn. Forthcoming. “Finanzbildung in einer digitalen Welt: Perspektiven auf Fachlichkeit, Digitalität und sozialwissenschaftliche Anbindung.” In Digitalisierung wirtschaftsdidaktisch reflektiert, edited by A. Pitsoulis, A. Bonfig, J.-M. Geiger, and A. Lange-Pitsoulis. Wochen­schau Verlag.

Koppel, M. 2025. “Global Citizenship Education and ELT? A Survey of Pre-Service English Teachers’ Views.” PFLB – PraxisForschungLehrer*innenBildung 7 (2): 118–144. https://doi.org/10.11576/pflb-7856

This project explores how migration infrastructures shape the value of cosmopolitan capital among Vietnamese students in English-taught programs (ETPs) in Japan. Since the 2000s, Japan has promoted ETPs as part of its internationalization strategy, attracting many international students, including Vietnamese, now the third largest group. Yet, research shows that ETP graduates often face constraints in the Japanese labor market, where Japanese language proficiency and culturally specific skills are emphasized. This paradox raises questions about how the cosmopolitan promise of English-based education is mediated in a non-Anglophone context like Japan. Drawing on the concepts of cosmopolitan capital and migration infrastructure, the study examines how migration infrastructures, such as government policies, universities, study abroad agencies, companies and alumni networks mediate the acquisition, negotiation, and transformation of cosmopolitan capital among Vietnamese students in ETPs. It explores what forms of cosmopolitan capital are emphasized or devalued, and how Vietnamese students navigate these conditions during and after their studies. Using institutional analysis and in-depth interviews with students, alumni and study abroad agencies, the study contributes to research on international student mobility and cross-border mobility, showing how the value of cosmopolitan capital is mediated and stratified through infrastructural arrangements, shaping graduates’ career outcomes and future mobility.

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In progress

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This project explores citizenship as a gradually changing labor market institution in the context of cross-border labor markets. It examines the relationship between the „traditionally national“ civil, political and social elements of citizenship with the concept of EU Citizenship. EU Citizenship should be understood as a distinct form of citizenship, primarily based on civil freedom rights. As different scholars have pointed out, there has been a shift in the basis of citizenship rights alongside European Integration, generating, in Quack and Djelics terms, an „international mosaics of national and transnational regulation“. The here proposed study aims to investigate these institutional dynamics through studying the labor of EU-2-migrants in Duisburg’s low wage logistics sector, specifically in Marxloh and Hochfeld. For this, Quack and Djelic’s theory of gradual institutional change is used to analyze how transnational and national institutions become intertwined each other and how especially the institutions of social and industrial citizenship are being dismantled and reused. The research endeavor adopts Institutional Ethnography as its methodology to integrate findings on different levels of social reality into one bigger picture.

TBA

The corporation is among the most powerful institutions in contemporary society. In recent decades, the corporation has undergone a structural transformation toward the digital platform model, which operates by connecting users and service providers through digital infrastructures. However, the platform corporation not only mediates transactions but also reconfigures work relations and everyday work through data collection, algorithmic control, and digital surveillance.

Previous research shows that migrant workers are significantly overrepresented in platform-mediated work in Germany, particularly in the food-delivery sector. This research project therefore investigates how the multinational platform corporation shapes work relations as an institution and how migrant workers experience these dynamics in the German food-delivery sector.

The study focuses on the case of Lieferando, the dominant food-delivery company in Germany, which relies heavily on migrant workers,  and explores the motivations of such workers to enter food-delivery work, their migration trajectories, and how they perceive their working conditions, autonomy, and the broader power structures between themselves and the corporation. Methodologically, the study relies on semi-structured interviews with migrant riders who work for Lieferando in Germany. The expected contribution is to link migrant workers’ lived experiences to the broader sociological study of the corporation and its transformation toward the platform model.

Weidemann, Davis, and Michael Palocz-Andresen. “The Climate Policy of the EU.” The World Financial Review, July 1, 2023. https://worldfinancialreview.com/the-climate-policy-of-the-eu/

In progress

TBA

Migration within the European Union (EU) represents one of the most dynamic dimensions of European integration. While freedom of movement is a cornerstone of the EU, its effects on labor markets remain contested. My dissertation seeks to investigate how intra-EU migration has shaped national and transnational labor markets, and how institutional and policy frameworks have influenced the distribution of workforce and wages across the EU.

The project will combine European and comparative perspectives. By situating EU migration within a historical trajectory of integration, it will explore the long-term consequences of the EU’s development in policies, institutions and major events on labor markets. Furthermore, it will place European experiences in dialogue with migration histories from the United States, in order to identify broader mechanisms that link labor mobility with policies.

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This research examines South–South mobility by analyzing how young Chinese expatriates in  Africa experience cross-border labour markets. Treating states, firms, and intermediaries as market-makers, it investigates how institutions and infrastructures shape individual life courses, including careers, family strategies, and identity, and how individuals in turn negotiate and reshape these arrangements in everyday practice.

Methodologically, the study employs a qualitative research design combining longitudinal life-history interviews, participant observation in Chinese corporate compounds and project sites, and digital ethnography of online platforms.

By focusing on Chinese professionals working in Africa, this research aims to address an important gap in the literature and provide a systematic account of South–South expatriate labour mobility.

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