These processes displace market and production arrangements that are long-standing, thus generating loss that is intensely felt by those workers, businesses, and consumers whose livelihoods depend on (or who otherwise value) the displaced arrangements.

To visualize the “losers” of economic transformation, consider small shops in the face of digital commerce; automotive workers confronted with robotization and industrial decline; web-developers whose jobs may be displaced by ever-more sophisticated AI tools; fisheries or farmers facing biodiversity loss.

As loss intensifies, deciding which categories of losers deserve assistance and which forms his assistance should take becomes more urgent. While, across EU and national law, many legal interventions can be identified – dating back to different periods, and across policy areas – that protect individuals in the face of rapid change, there is a poverty of vision and concepts to describe what loss in economic transformation really entails, and how law should respond.

The project closes this gap by providing a comprehensive mapping of legal interventions that can govern loss, either by preventing its emergence, or softening its consequences. It also maps the various social desiderata served by the governance of loss, the regulatory techniques employed, and how they are implemented and work on the ground. Normatively, the project provides a yet uncharted articulation of arguments as to why loss may need to be governed. Methodologically, the project combines political and social theory, doctrinal legal analysis, and socio-legal research: theory-building is supported by empirical findings derived from the study of how loss is governed in three economic sectors affected by transformations: agriculture and fisheries; the automotive industry; consumer services.

The governance of loss functions as an open-ended normative concept, prefiguring a new policy paradigm whereby losers’ demands cease to work as regressive forces feeding inaction or backlash and are translated into legal arrangements that support more progressive and inclusive economic transformations.

ERC Starting Grant (101222882)