Proceedings of 8th European Assembly on telework (Telework2001)

70what, then, has changed?Any analysis must be rooted in an understanding that we still inhabit a material world in whichconsumption <strong>of</strong> raw materials is still growing, manufacturing is still increasing at global level,economic development in the developing world produces new jobs in the EU, regional economicdifferences persist, the workforce remains differentiated with many low-skilled jobs producingand delivering ‘real’ goods and services and a substantial proportion - usually a majority - <strong>of</strong> thepopulation in any given place will be economically dependent on activities which do not involveonly the processing <strong>of</strong> information but the processing or delivery <strong>of</strong> physical goods or services inreal time and real space. consumption <strong>of</strong> raw materials still growing – an so are the traffic jams!The majority <strong>of</strong> the workforce will be anchored to particular, unduplicable physical locations.It is, however, one <strong>of</strong> the great ironies <strong>of</strong> our time that they will not necessarily be doing so inthe places from which they originate. The globalisation processes which have produced the newinternational division <strong>of</strong> information processing work have also coincided with major migrations <strong>of</strong>people around the world. Increasingly we find that the jobs with the most intensive requirement forphysical co-presence are also those most likely to be carried out by migrants. Examples <strong>of</strong> theseinclude domestic or industrial cleaners, child-care workers, low-skilled assembly workers, janitorsand security guards, labourers on construction sites, sex workers and service workers in hotels andfast-food chains.I have emphasised the persistence <strong>of</strong> this ‘rooted’ employment because it is so <strong>of</strong>ten renderedinvisible in discussions about the information society. However it must not be assumed that allwork will take this form. A substantial proportion <strong>of</strong> employment, perhaps as much as 30% in themost developed economies, already or potentially involves the processing <strong>of</strong> digitised informationand is therefore capable <strong>of</strong> being relocated to any spot where the right infrastructure is to be foundin combination with a workforce with the requisite skills and abilities.We are therefore confronted with an entirely new situation: the combination <strong>of</strong> telecommunicationsand computing (telematics) is bringing about real changes in who does what work, where, whenand how and that there are new choices open to both employers and workers in the organisation<strong>of</strong> work in time and space.the EMERGENCE Projectthe project’s aimsThe EMERGENCE Project was set up, with funding from the <strong>European</strong> Commission’s InformationSociety Technologies (IST) Programme to:• Measure the extent <strong>of</strong> eWork• Identify the forms and characteristics <strong>of</strong> eWork• Identify favoured locations for each eActivity• Find reasons for the choice <strong>of</strong> location or supplier• Explore the dynamics <strong>of</strong> relocation• Investigate the employment implications• Identify the constraints and facilitators• Identify indicators for future modelling and tracking• Inform regional development strategies