Confini produttivi e confini lavorativi. La multidimensionalità dell’outsourcing nel capitalismo contemporaneo

This article analyses the multidimensional and interrelated impacts of outsourcing on labour. Outsourcing has experienced a strong diffusion in the last decades, spreading across various areas, firms and sectors. Its ability to adapt to different social and regulatory situations has made it one of the main instruments of production restructuring, leading some researchers to consider it a paradigmatic form of the organisation of contemporary capitalism. Although much of the emphasis in the sociological literature on the implications of outsourcing has been placed upon the transformation of employment regimes, the worsening of working conditions and challenges to workers' representation, we find that other dimensions of labour relations are also generally impacted, including the labour process, wage determination, workplace politics and the social composition of the workforce. By reviewing and combining some strands of literature, we argue that the paradigmatic character of outsourcing, in addition to its great widespread at the global level, must be found in its ability to trigger multiple and chained processes of transformation that deeply modify the employment relationship.