The conceptual foundation of labour rights is undergoing a profound crisis, as the very categories through which the employment relationship has been theorised appear increasingly inadequate to describe the accelerating metamorphoses of labour.1 Political and normative architectures that once sought to balance power within the workplace now struggle to account for the rise of malaise as well as precarious employment, the fragmentation of career trajectories and the dissolution of stable labour relations. The classical understanding of labour as a sphere governed by contractual equilibrium and legal safeguards no longer corresponds to contemporary workplaces, where hierarchies remain entrenched but in ever more elusive and dispersed forms.