Organizing the precarious: Autonomous work, real democracy and ecological precarity

Abstract

In 2008, just as the movement of the precarious seemed to be winning one political battle after the next, the fight against precarization suddenly dwindled. The cycle of struggles of the precarious that began in 2000 had seemingly come to an end. Ironically this was also the moment that precarity as a concept became widely known in popular opinion, media commentary and academia. This paper focuses on the movement of the precarious from its inception in the early 2000s to its decline in 2008 and its reappearance in response to the economic crisis through the widespread mobilizations for “real democracy” between 2008 and 2014. Drawing from our experience as participants in the movement of the precarious, and theoretical discussions that have shaped the politics of the movement, the paper adopts a retrospective approach to investigate the metamorphoses of a consciousness of precarity and of the underlying organizing practices that lead to its demise and subsequent incarnations. It reconstructs precarity as theory in action that lives through the organizational ontologies of the movement of the precarious.

Stepping Stone or Trap? Contextualising Precarity as a Sector and Age Phenomenon in the Greek Labour Market

“…Sector-wise, however, as it has already been pointed out in the theoretical discussion in this article, significant part of the theoretical contributions belongs to the Italian autonomy tradition, where the emphasis is—sometimes exclusively—put on the ‘immaterial labour’ living and performing mostly in the cultural/creative industries (Gill & Pratt, 2008). Finally, significant nuances have been produced by researchers and scholars who insist on the organizational and political aspects of growing precarization within or even beyond existing forms of labour representativity (Graham & Papadopoulos, 2021; Milkman & Ott, 2014; Waterman et al, 2012).…”

Less talk, more action

“…Indeed, action research has already been levied against issues such as precarity (e.g. Courtois and O'Keefe 2015;Graham and Papadopoulos 2021;O'Keefe and Courtois 2019) to (re)politicise and (re)democratise higher education outside of traditional activism and advocacy. However, the approach should not be considered an 'off the shelf' methodology which can be applied to any context in the same way and produce the same results.…”

Social Diversity and Precarious Organizations: An intersectional feminist perspective

“…At a time marked by a confluence of intersecting global challenges presented by economic inequality, a growing climate crisis, an escalating number of war zones, and an ever-expanding movement of stateless and vulnerable people, the prevalence of precarious organizations has become increasingly pronounced (Cappelli & Keller, 2013; Garcia-Lorenzo, Sell-Trujillo, & Donnelly, 2022; Graham & Papadopoulos, 2023; Greer, Samaluk, & Umney, 2019). A range of related terminologies has tended to be subsumed in the concept of ‘precarious organization’, including atypical, irregular or non-standard work, homeworking, contracting-in, contracting-out and outworking, dependent self-employment, and working in the gig economy (Hewison, 2016; see also Arnold & Bongiovi, 2013, p. 289).…”