Precarious work

In this piece, I critically reflect upon some of the claims made about precariousness and the end of salarisation in the context of an informational society. The main source and target of critique will be one of the most notable early renderings of the topic, that of Manuel Castells, with additional material from the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. The account will conclude, following Paolo Virno’s negative rendition of Marx’s thesis of the general intellect, that precariousness does not herald the end of salarization and the traditional capital-labour relation, but rather its reinforcement through flexibilization and informationalization. Rumours of the demise of the wage relation are suggested to be exaggerations, with the latter as strong as ever, diversifying and expanding into new forms and areas of life. The characteristics of contemporary capitalism that Castells summarizes in the ‘end of salarization’ thesis do not mark the disintegration of the capital-labour relation, but rather its renewal and fortification. Despite the potential presented by precariousness for a recalibration of the capital-labour relation, it exists today in the service of salarization rather than anything otherwise.

"L’articolo si concentra sul caso degli psicologi italiani con l’obiettivo di esaminare come il periodo di stage è collegato alla precarietà. In questo specifico contesto la formazione non retribuita gode infatti di una forte legittimità in quanto imposta dalla legge e rappresenta uno dei presupposti per intraprendere la professione. L’articolo indaga l’istituzionalizzazione della formazione non retribuita e le sue conseguenze per lo sviluppo del profilo professionale degli psicoterapeuti. Si esaminano inoltre le conseguenze che questa istituzionalizzazione produce per la professione, sottolineando come siano del tutto assenti sia incentivi top-down che bottom-up per il cambiamento. Gli psicologi precari trovano molto difficile esercitare voice o coalizzarsi per l’azione politica. Il datore di lavoro dispone quindi di forza lavoro gratuita senza assumersi alcuna responsabilità per quanto riguarda le loro condizioni di lavoro o di sviluppo di carriera. L’articolo si conclude contribuendo al più ampio dibattito sul nesso formazione-precarietà sottolineando come il divario tra lavoro e formazione sia un momento cruciale dell’analisi e al contempo si mostri con confini sempre più confusi e meno precisi.

The article focuses on the case of Italian psychologists in order to examine how internship is connected to precarity. In this case, unpaid training enjoys strong legitimacy as it is imposed by the law and represents the prerequisite for the profession. The article investigates the institutionalization of unpaid training and its consequences for the development of the psychologists’ professional profile. It also examines the consequences of this institutionalization for the profession, arguing that both top-down and bottom-up incentives for change are absent. Precarious psychologists find it very difficult to exert voice or ally for political action, whereas employers enjoy free labor force while carrying no responsibility for their working conditions or career development. The article concludes by contributing to the wider debate on training-precarity nexus, which is crucial as the divide between work and training is more and more blurred."

"Contemporary work increasingly presents itself as an immeasurable endeavour. The social and subjective spaces in which it is practiced are no longer easily circumscribed, and the conceptual categories that traditionally described its relationship with value now appear practically unusable. In particular, workers in the ‘creative industries’ are paradigmatic subjects of the ‘work fragmentation’ process of the post-Fordist era. Cutting across divisions between life and work, employment and unemployment, the performing arts are in many ways a laboratory of job flexibility, where innovative contractual arrangements and professional trajectories have been developed.

In this article, we have mapped the multiple forms that work has taken in the last two decades in Italy. The empirical data is derived from a combined method that utilizes both quantitative surveys and in-depth interviews with artists, technicians and organizers working in the fields of theatre, music, dance and video making. A central feature of the new regulative conditions, and therefore the experiences of these professionals, is the new relationship with time and, more specifically, the ‘loss of measurability’ of hired labour. The aim is to provide a multilayered analysis of the interactions between the socio-economic conditions, career pathways and cultural aspects, i.e. the expectations, reputation, self-perception and social recognition of these jobs. Accordingly, these work patterns are studied as self-employment strategies based on the diversification of activities and expertise, and at the same time, attempts to devise new spatial and temporal configurations of labour, epitomized by the hybrid condition of the ‘salaried employer’.

In these cases, precariousness emerges as a generative terrain of ambivalent subjectivities. On the one hand, the workforce is spontaneously mobilized and autonomously organized by the realization of desires, expression and self-fulfilment, beyond mere economic rewards. On the other, the labour itself becomes increasingly intertwined with ones life, as well as becoming immeasurable. Time loses its function as a unit of measure for compensation (i.e. as in work for a flat rate). This situation frequently leads to the spread of labour into other spheres of life and the risk of self-exploitation. To conclude, the new experiences of union organization and social movements, manifesting in the occupations of theatres, are examined as spaces where differing, and even opposing, solidarity and ‘class composition’ practices within the new creative labour(s) are experimented."

For my presentation, I intend to theoretically integrate homeless and marginalized workers into a broader Marxist analysis that takes into account the emerging trends in precarious labour and housing instability.  My project builds linkages with two themes taken up by the conference; namely, how do contemporary class structures across the globe require us to conceptualize the modern working class and, furthermore, how can contemporary Marxist theory conceptualize the notion of subjectivity in our analysis of neoliberal capitalism and its impact on this class?  Marx’s historical materialist theory discursively alienates the lumpenproletariat as not only an unproductive workforce but as a social group incapable of contributing to a substantive class revolution.  However, the contemporary labour market, especially in Canada, the United States, and Britain, is increasingly precarious in that workers, either housed or homeless, are denied a basic standard of living due to overall poor working conditions, specifically brought about by diminished remuneration and security.  Much research has shown that the homeless, or those experiencing housing instability, in fact participate in the precarious workforce at an increasing rate.  The trend in homeless workers calls for theorists to consider how this population speaks to economic restructuring, globalization, and welfare state erosion.  Homeless workers living on the margins represent the gaps and silences in how Marxist theory includes those employed in non-standard employment, thereby demonstrating the limits of the liberal welfare state in conjunction with the entrenchment of exploitative capitalist class relations.  I argue that precarious labour and housing instability engender a historically unique subjectivity that, on the one hand, illustrates the implicit social consequences of neoliberal capitalism.  On the other hand, a Marxist approach in addressing the material conditions of homeless workers suggests novel ways of conceptualizing the modern working class as the basis for theorizing productive strategies to foster class solidarity.     

My paper explores the institutional relationships between welfare states, the market, and families as a means of conceptualizing the structural determinants to homelessness. Specifically, my paper discusses how homeless working families in the Greater Toronto Area point to a neoliberalization of social policy mechanisms aimed at deregulation and responsibilization, which are rooted in transformations in Canada’s political economy. For my dissertation, I intend to conduct ethnographic research with working homeless families as they seek out strategies to continue practicing social reproduction without stable housing. My goal for this paper is to establish a theoretical foundation to link the lived experiences of homeless families to broader trends in economic restructuring, chiefly the interlocking processes that include the devolution of affordable housing policy to municipal governments and the increase of precarious labour.  I largely draw from O’Connor, Orloff, and Shaver’s work on how state policy and market forces recast social rights for women, men, and families. I then apply this framework to analyze the current demographic trends in family homelessness and the labour market in the Greater Toronto Area. I argue that homelessness, although a temporary situation results from neoliberalized social policy that entrenched responsibilization down to families set adrift in an increasingly deregulated labour market.  I conclude by discussing how coupling social rights with market participation reconfigure the notion of full citizenship in Canadian society.

A key term in discussions on the nature of cultural work is the concept of ‘autonomy’, or ‘relative autonomy’, according to which cultural workers are capable of realizing themselves in the processes of work. This article wishes to problematize this idea by examining the quotidian reality of cultural workers in the field of contemporary art in Greece during the current economic crisis. The analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on how the positive characteristics of cultural work are inscribed in workers’ experiences through their participation in ReMap, a contemporary art event that takes places biannually in Athens and is tightly interwoven with processes of gentrification. I argue that relative autonomy is neither a given nor a state where the cultural worker linearly progresses. Within the context of the larger cultural and economic implications of neoliberalism and its crisis, it is rather an ideal they are striving for, often through highly alienating conditions, in a field dominated by competition, voluntarism, low salaries, precarity and absence of collective bargaining.

International tourism is now the predominant industry driving growth in many small island developing states (SIDS). Governments of small islands in the Indian Ocean, Caribbean and Pacific have seemingly put most of their eggs into one development basket – the all-inclusive holiday in a luxury hotel, resort or cruise ship. While this industry generates employment, foreign direct investment, and income for island governments and the private sector, it also brings with it dependencies which are borne from the transnational ownership of these all-inclusive accommodations, the risks from exogenous factors – many of which are tied to the wider security of the global system – as well as the domestic economies in the source markets in Europe and North America. We reflect upon these dependencies and risks through a case study of the Seychelles based on fieldwork research conducted in 2012. Our findings highlight that the international tourism industry in the Seychelles – even in a situation of high or growing demand – creates structurally driven precarity for tourism workers who are predominantly low paid, low-skilled, and increasingly recruited from overseas. These findings provide new evidence that contributes to the growing research into tourism in IPE. Our findings highlight the precarious condition of labour in this fast growing service sector of the world economy and in so doing also adds much needed empirical insights from the South to recent debates about an emerging precariat in contemporary capitalism.

"Located at the intersection of an attempt to experiment a discourse analytical approach to the study of trade unions and a curiosity about the identities of maritime unions, this study comparatively investigates the discursive identity constructions of three seafaring trade unions of distinct characters in India, which is one of the most important maritime manpower supply countries.

Discourse analysis, consisting mainly of analysing documentary materials and interview discoursal data, demonstrates that the three unions through their respective discursive practices construct drastically different organisational identities. Union A, the most established union with the longest history, constructs itself with a sense of superiority, by asserting its ‘only-ness’, ‘highness’ and seemingly sidelining its own ordinary members; Union B, the overtly Marxist union, is found to indeed construct itself along Marxist lines through the deployment of radical discourses that are critical of capital and government but sympathetic with labour; and Union C, the union exclusively for maritime officers, positions itself as an elite union above the other two ratings’ unions mainly through constructing the image of elite officers. The ideology and discourse of neoliberalism is found to transcend the identity schemas of Union A and C, and this is countered by the Marxism/anti-neoliberalismof Union B.

However, despite the divergence at the discursive level, through examining the actual practices of the three unions , significantly the disciplining of members for organisational survivals, it is found that there is in fact a practical convergence which seems to render the discursive identity constructions insignificant. Yet, instead of adopting a realist dismissal of discursivity, through identifying the ways even fundamental and transcending practicalities are ‘deeply pigmented’ by identity discourses, the thesis concludes that the relationship between discursivity and practice is deeply interlocking and constitutively imbricated; in other words, discourse permeates and percolates both the ideational and practical aspects of organisations so deeply that it is neither extricable nor compartmentalisable."

""Scientists and students, professional and manual workers, occupiers and those who remain at home; people with stable employment and those without, everyone who is studying or has been confronted with the concept of the precariat has probably heard about professor Guy Standing. The theorist who  launched this new social category talks about changes that have occurred in the labour market, about the meaning of public protests and the main challenges which precarians will have to face. He also explains his conviction that precarians are able To become a significant political force in the future. When? “the sooner the better,” he answers.
""

""The discovery of the precarious position of the majority of middle classes (...) And indeed the increasing popularity of the notion of precariat were the consequences of sobering-up, dashing of hopes,” claims prof. Zygmunt Bauman. He explains and describes the process and the road we travelled from an industrial society to the point where we find ourselves now, in the state of “liquid modernity.” This conversation tries to answer the questions whether we have lost the sense of social security and why we have stopped caring about the well-being of the human community. And finally, are we – as a society – really “moving towards the apocalypse?”


""