Can You Take It with You? Mobility, ICTs and Work-Life Balance
Tracy L.M. Kennedy, Barry Wellman and Julie Amoroso
Pp. 191-210 in Mobile Communication: Dimensions of Social Policy, edited by James Katz. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2011.
Article Abstract
Our focus is on a common form of work mobility - working at home: over-time, part-time and full-time.
It is part of the reconfiguration of work from being bound up in closely-supervised, physically compact groups to being networked - where
people are individually responsible for their own production. Our Connected Lives data shows that most home-work is part-time or over-time,
rather than full-time. There are important differences in the work and domestic practices of these three types of work.
Full-timers have blurrier boundaries between work and domestic life. They frequently use ICTs to connect with their partners during the day.
By contrast, over-timers, who bring their work home at night, more rigidly segregate their work and domestic lives.