The condition of precariousness not only provides insights into a segment of the world of work or of a particular subject group, but is also a standpoint for an overview of the condition of the social on a global scale. Because precariousness is multidimensional and polysemantic, it traverses contemporary society and multiple contexts, from industrial to class, gender, family relations as well as political participation, citizenship and migration.
This book maps the differences and similarities in the ways precariousness and insecurity in employment and beyond unfold and are subjectively experienced in regions and sectors that are confronted with different labour histories, legislations and economic priorities. Establishing a constructive dialogue amongst different global regions and across disciplines, the chapters explore the shift from precariousness to precariat and collective subjects as it is being articulated in the current global crisis. This edited collection aims to continue a process of mapping experiences by means of ethnographies, fieldwork, interviews, content analysis, where the precarious define their condition and explain how they try to withdraw from, cope with or embrace it.
This is valuable reading for students and academics interested in geography, sociology, economics and labour studies.
Table of Contents:
List of contributors
Mapping precariousness: subjectivities and resistance. An introduction
ARIANNA BOVE, ANNALISA MURGIA AND EMILIANA ARMANO
PART I Subjectivities: a cartography of experiences
1 The precariousness of work in postcolonial Africa
FRANCO BARCHIESI
2 The Chinese Dream and the precarity plateau: why industrial workers are looking to entrepreneurship
BRANDON SOMMER
3 Hybrid areas of work in Italy: hypotheses to interpret the
transformations of precariousness and subjectivity
EMILIANA ARMANO AND ANNALISA MURGIA
4 The French Business and Employment Cooperative: an autonomy factory?
MARIE-CHRISTINE BUREAU AND ANTONELLA CORSANI
5 Against precarity, against employability
IVOR SOUTHWOOD
6 The ‘academic career’ in the era of flexploitation
GEORGE MORGAN AND JULIAN WOOD
7 Coping with uncertainty: precarious workers of the Greek media sector
MANOS SPYRIDAKIS
8 Stories of precarious lives
JOANNE RICHARDSON
9 Precarious Japan 122
STEFFI RICHTER
PART II Resistance: social movements against precariousness
10 The two endings of the precarious movement
DIMITRIS PAPADOPOULOS
11 The precariat for itself: Euro May Day and precarious workers’ movements
ALEX FOTI
12 Fake it until you make it: prefigurative practices and the extrospection of precarity
VALERIA GRAZIANO
13 ‘Precariedad everywhere?!’ Rethinking precarity and emigration in Spain
MARIBEL CASAS-CORTÉS AND SEBASTIAN COBARRUBIAS
PART III Conceptual outlooks
14 Working for nothing: the latest high-growth sector?
ANDREW ROSS
15 Labour, (in-)dependence, care: Conceptualizing the precarious
ISABELL LOREY
16 Encoding the law of the household and the standardisation of uncertainty
ANGELA MITROPOULOS
Index
About the Author :
Emiliana Armano has a PhD in Labour Studies at the Department of Social and Political Sciences in the State University of Milan, Italy.
Arianna Bove is a Lecturer in Politics and Ethics at the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London, UK.
Annalisa Murgia is Associate Professor in Human Resources Management, Leeds University Business School, UK.
Review :
"It is against such expansive theoretical terrain that Armano, Bove and Murgia’s edited volume sets out to trace the contours and expand on current conceptualisations. Suitably subtitled Subjectivities and Resistance: An Introduction, the volume considers the structural context of precarious work, yet goes beyond and engages with the grainy, casual and colloquial body of precarious narratives that emerge from the grass-roots and are in danger of being overlooked. The book is divided into three parts, investigating the precarious experience on three different levels and from three different standpoints."
Constantine Manolchev, University of Exeter Business School, UK, Work, employment and society Journal
"Angela Mitropoulos’s final, summary chapter is particularly noteworthy as it connects the precarity of labour market structures with the precariousness of existence in a mosaic of markets, state policy, labour valorisation and regulative order. It restates the continued scope for individual resistance in the face of precarious odds, reminding that the volume is equally concerned with past trends, and the direction of future travel."The British Sociological Association Journal
