Johan Alfonsson
I am an associate senior lecturer at Halmstad University and affiliated with the Department of Sociology and Work Science at the University of Gothenburg, where I received my PhD in sociology.
My research focuses mainly on work, class and precarious employment, including class theory, the conditions of the working class and alienation. I have written about on-call work and the growth of insecure employment in Sweden, about low-wage jobs and wage inequality in the Nordic model, and about how split shifts affect staff in elderly care.
Latest publication
Since the 2007–2008 financial crisis, it has often been claimed that the middle class is being proletarianised, so that its conditions are becoming more like those of the working class. In this article I define class through value domination and market power and test the claim in Sweden: middle-class wages have pulled away from working-class wages and middle-class autonomy has not declined, so class distinctions have in fact intensified.
Books
- Vad hände med arbetarklassen? Om svek, makt och ojämlikhet i Sverige [What Happened to the Working Class? On Betrayal, Power and Inequality in Sweden] (Arkiv förlag, 2025). On how the economic, political and social power of the working class has been eroded since the 1990s.
- Det otrygga arbetslivet i Sverige: Dess framväxt och konsekvenser [Precarious Working Life in Sweden: Its Emergence and Consequences] (Studentlitteratur, 2022).
- Alienation och arbete: Unga behovsanställdas villkor i den flexibla kapitalismen [Alienation and Work: The Conditions of Young On-Call Workers in Flexible Capitalism] (Arkiv förlag, 2020).
My research projects are described under Research. Full lists are under Articles, Books, Book Chapters and Other Academic Writing, and op-eds and essays under Popular Writing.