By Joram Groen, Ilaha Abasli (PhD Researcher, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam), Ellen Loots (Associate Professor, Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam), Lija Groenewoud van Vliet (Co-founder and creative director , IN4ART)
Repair is skilled, professional work that strengthens local communities, yet it is often overlooked in circular economy policies and discussions. This blog highlights key insights from the project ‘Valuing "Repair" in Just Labour Transitions in the Rijnmond Region’, which centres the voices of repair workers and examines how their labour can be fairly recognised in the circular transition. This research is essential for policymakers, researchers, and anyone interested in equitable and sustainable labour practises in the circular economy.
Repair's disappearance and circular comeback
As In4Art highlights in their essay, an historical perspective on repair and guilds provides crucial insight into the processes that led to the gradual disappearance of repair labour from both markets and urban streetscapes. Historically, repair constituted an important and socially valued occupation that was organised through guilds and similar self-organised structures and was protected by municipal authorities. In an economy of scarcity, repair costs remained competitive with replacement prices, and the option to extend product lifespans offered clear advantages. In this context, both citizens and municipal authorities in the Netherlands valued the repair sector socially as well as economically.
However, this landscape transformed dramatically. As industrial manufacturing capacity expanded, global trade intensified and socio-economic capacities and cultural attitudes shifted. In turn, repairability and repair work became less desirable and secondary to purchasing new goods. As mentioned in In4art's essay, this shift gradually led to the dissolution of repairer guilds, the disappearance of specialised repair education, the decline of repair occupations, and the slow dismantling of protective legislation for repairers.
In the past decade, repair has experienced a reappearance through popularised circular economy policies (Losa et al., 2025) and discourses (Friant et al., 2020), which have positioned repair as one of the mechanisms for achieving material circularity. While European Union circular economy policies increasingly emphasise repair as a central sustainability strategy, a critical gap persists in both policy discourse and academic research: the perspectives and labour conditions of repairers working in urban streetscapes remain largely understudied. Funded by the Convergence Resilient Delta Initiative and conducted in Rotterdam, our recent research addresses this academic and policy gap by centring repair workers' voices and examining how repairers themselves envision and co-design fair practice frameworks for their labour within the circular economy transition across urban neighbourhoods.
Invisibility of Repair Labour
Recent policy initiatives, including the municipal support for emerging repair cafés across the Netherlands (Postma, 2024) and the European Union's Right to Repair directive adopted in 2024, represent significant regulatory steps in repair infrastructure. These measures mandate extended warranties for repaired products, require manufacturers to provide spare parts at reasonable prices, and encourage design practices that enable repairability. Furthermore, these policy frameworks treat repair primarily as a technical intervention by focusing on peer-to-peer learning and DIY skill-building for customers. However, such policies overlook one crucial aspect: repair is a professional occupation that should be recognised as skilled labour characterised by specialised knowledge and embedded community practises. Similarly, in the academic literature, Pansera et al. (2024) argue in their analysis of environmental justice that existing policies that fail to address repairers' needs and labour value may contribute to social and economic inequalities during sustainability transitions. Llorente et al. (2020) further document that, despite being labour-intensive, repair work remains among the most underpaid, undervalued, and informally regulated forms of circular labour in the European Union.
Our research responds to these concerns through action-orientated empirical inquiry that centres repairers' experiences and perspectives on just transitions, and our analytical approach prioritises their lived experiences and visions for fair practice frameworks. To capture the diversity and complexity of repair work, we employed a comparative case study methodology across two contrasting Rotterdam neighbourhoods: Zwaanhals and Stadsdriehoek, which represent higher-income, gentrified areas of the city, and Tussendijken, which represents a lower-income district.
Our fieldwork in Rotterdam revealed the absence of a singular, cohesive 'repair sector’. The majority of repairers have lost any collective sense of occupational identity or solidarity as repairers. At best, they identify with material-specific sub-sectors – such as clothing repair or electronics repair – as unifying professional categories. Rather than perceiving one another as colleagues within a shared trade, repairers predominantly view each other as competitors, a dynamic driven by the precarious economic conditions and survival strategies that characterise traditional repair work.
Our ethnographic observations also reveal certain differences in repair practices across neighbourhoods. In the higher-income district, repair practices implement innovative business models in combination with professionalised aesthetics. The Phone Lab, for instance, is aesthetically appealing and offers customers complementary refreshments, transparent workshop visibility, and clearly communicated pricing structures. The businesses in higher income neighborhoods operate within economic environments where the clientele can sustain prices that reflect the neighbourhood's upgraded commercial landscape and aspirational identity. Repairers in these settings usually receive employer-provided training and have more confidence regarding their occupational futures than traditional repairers.
This landscape contrasts with the practices in the lower-income neighbourhood. In Tussendijken, repairers articulated considerably less certainty about their professional future and the overall future of the repair sector. Multiple phone repair operators disclosed ongoing struggles to maintain business viability. Furthermore, traditional repair shops in this district function predominantly as micro-enterprises, often single-person operations registered as ZZP (self-employed contractors), and they have limited capacity for training new generations of interns, extending customer engagement or pursuing marketing investments.
Despite these spatial disparities, the two areas share important similarities. While business innovation appeared more prevalent in the higher-income district, repairers in the lower-income area also demonstrate subtle adaptation. For instance, one repairer had initiated a practice whereby young customers opened their online-purchased clothing packages in-store; when the clothing required adjustment, the repairer immediately provided alteration services. Similarly, a shoemaker had independently adopted skills in repairing leather bags and sneakers. These practises underline the fundamentally professional character of repair work, with repairers continuously developing specialised knowledge and adapting their craft to evolving market demands.
Beyond their technical expertise, repairers across both neighbourhoods cater to broader social fabric functions that extend beyond purely economic transactions. Repair shops operate as social spaces where neighbours mingle, informal technological assistance is exchanged, and the communal function is reinforced through everyday interactions. However, these non-economic dimensions of repair work remain largely absent from policy discourse.
The Fair Repair Practice Framework: Three Pillars
Through a collaborative analysis with repair workers, we co-created and validated a Fair Repair Practice Framework comprising three interconnected pillars that address the material, labour, and societal dimensions of repair work.
Fair Product Cycle addresses the material aspects of repair and focuses on repairability, including spare parts accessibility, repair feasibility, required skills, and enabling legislation. Alongside these key components, several challenges were highlighted by the repairers: escalating spare parts costs (reported across multiple interviews as having increased substantially over five years), availability constraints (particularly for specialized components requiring international shipping), and technology barriers (equipment that smaller operations cannot afford or spatially accommodate).
Fair Work addresses repair's viability as a profession, lifelong learning, fair pricing strategies, sustainable business models, and job satisfaction. A critical finding concerns declining craft education: specialised programmes such as shoemaking have disappeared entirely from Dutch vocational curricula and persist only as isolated electives. Repairers reported that high-quality craftwork requires years of practice, yet formal educational pathways are vanishing. Moreover, pricing pressures differ markedly by neighbourhood: while repairers in gentrified areas can charge premium rates, those in traditional neighbourhoods must keep prices low despite equivalent skill levels. Business models also remain predominantly micro-scale, though franchised ventures like the Phone Lab demonstrate alternative organisational possibilities. Job satisfaction emerged as closely linked to recognition: repairers expressed pride when customers and society acknowledged their skilled craftsmanship.
Fair Repair Culture addresses repair's diverse, community-embedded nature, repairers’ sustainability awareness, and respect for various repair identities across neighbourhoods and cultural contexts. Some repairers, particularly in modern establishments, articulated that circularity is central to their professional identity and is a source of pride, while traditional repairers primarily focused more pragmatically on extending product functionality without explicitly framing their profession as part of the circular economy.
Centering Repair Labour in Just Transitions
Centring labour in a circular transition discourse is critical for several reasons. This focus acknowledges repair as skilled professional work rather than merely a technical fix; validates the diverse experiences, knowledge traditions, and practises of repairers whose work already constitutes circularity in action; and prevents the erasure of these ‘already circular’ practices from Rotterdam's streetscapes and beyond. For circular economy transitions to be genuinely equitable, policymakers should recognise these practices within both established and emerging repair practices.
The Fair Repair Practice Framework we have developed offers both academic researchers and policymakers an analytical tool for moving beyond narrow conceptualizations of repair in circular transitions. While repair cafés demonstrate the social dimensions of repair culture, a comprehensive approach to repair in the circular economy should extend beyond volunteer-based models to also encompass professional repair labor. Therefore, we propose that policymakers support repair ecosystems more broadly, recognizing both grassroots repair initiatives and the professional repair sector as complementary rather than competing approaches.
Finally, as the In4Art essay articulates, a contemporary repair society should intuitively recognise that ‘objects embody not merely materials and functionality, but accumulated wisdom, skilled labour, and cultural memory’. A grassroots revival of guilds and unions for repairers could offer a pathway forward – one that preserves specialised knowledge, centres repair labour and worker agency and creates spaces that enable collective capability-building and strategic thinking rooted in repair practice for a more just and sustainable future.
This blog is part of the research project ‘Valuing “Repair” in Just Labour Transitions in the Rijnmond Region’, which received funding from Convergence's Resilient Delta Initiative. The project was conducted between September 2024 and July 2025. For those interested in further engagement with this research, the complete report is available here, and a recording from the LDE Circular Talk on 5 November 2025 can be accessed here. In4Art’s essay on the 30-minute repair society can be found on their website.
Acknowledgement of Contributors: Peter Knorringa (Professor, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam & Academic Director of the International Centre for Frugal Innovation); Karlheinz Samenjo (TU Delft, Design for Sustainability and Circular Economy Group); Solange Hai (Case Writer, Case Development Centre, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam) and Rodolfo Groenewoud van Vliet (Co-founder and creative director, IN4ART)
About the Authors:
Joram Groen is a researcher specializing in just transitions, urban development, and the social dimensions of sustainability. He completed a Master's in Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, with a focus on political and social philosophy, and holds a Research Master's degree in International Development Studies from the same institution. His recent work as Junior Research Assistant at Erasmus University Rotterdam examined labor practices in the circular economy, specifically how repair work functions as vital community infrastructure. 
Ilaha Abasli is a PhD researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, specializing in circular economy, political ecology, and environmental justice. Her research critically examines the intersection of socio-economic processes and material flows within circular economy interventions, with particular emphasis on environmental justice concerns.
Her recent work includes the development of the Fair Repair Practice Framework, which explores labor conditions and community impacts of repair practices across Rotterdam neighborhoods. This research demonstrates commitment to centering questions of equity and justice within sustainability transitions. Her work challenges conventional circular economy narratives by foregrounding the experiences of workers, communities, and marginalized groups often overlooked in policy frameworks. 
Ellen Loots is an Associate Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, her ambition lies in the harmonious integration of two vital themes: entrepreneurship and creativity. Through her work in education, research, and professional engagements, she aspires to intertwine these elements while upholding the values of sustainability and community.
By fostering innovation and collaboration, she aims to empower individuals and organizations to explore new frontiers and make meaningful contributions to both society and the environment, through their activities in the arts and cultural and creative sectors.
Lija Groenewoud van Vliet is the co-founder and creative director of In4Art. She dedicates her time to scouting talent, guiding curiosity and creating space for the kind of experimentation that drives responsible innovation. She developed the Art-Driven Innovation method to help organisations incorporate ideas from art into socially responsible innovation.
Furthermore, she acts as a co-producer and creative director in the experiments and co-productions of In4Art and is the In4Art lead in the EU S+T+ARTS Project Hungry EcoCities. She co-initiated E-missions.nl and strives for the uptake of Digital Etiquette's. Together with her husband she wrote in Dutch the book 'Co-existing with AI' exploring six different AI species (published Nov. 2025).
References
Friant, M. C., Vermeulen, W. J. V., & Salomone, R. (2020). A typology of circular economy discourses: Navigating the diverse visions of a contested paradigm. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 161, 104917. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.104917
Lechner, G., Wagner, M. J., Diaz Tena, A., Fleck, C., & Reimann, M. (2021). Exploring a regional repair network with a public funding scheme for customer repairs: The 'GRAZ repariert'-case. Journal of Cleaner Production, 288, 125588. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.125588
Pansera, M., Barca, S., Martinez Alvarez, B., Leonardi, E., D'Alisa, G., Meira, T., & Guillibert, P. (2024). Toward a just circular economy: Conceptualizing environmental labor and gender justice in circularity studies. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 20(1), 2338592. https://doi.org/10.1080/15487733.2024.2338592
Postma, M. (2024). Repair Cafe Jaarverslag 2023 [Annual report]. Stichting Repair Café International.