Precarious work: Economic, sociological and political perspectives

Abstract

This article brings together labour relations, sociological and political perspectives on precarious employment in Australia, identifying local contexts of insecurity and setting them within the economics of regional supply chains involving the use of migrant labour. In developing the concept of precarious work-societies, it argues that precarity is a source of individual and social vulnerability and distress, affecting family, housing and communal security. The concept of depoliticisation is used to describe the processes of displacement, whereby the social consequences of precarious work come to be seen as beyond the reach of agency. Using evidence from social attitudes surveys, we explore links between the resulting sense of political marginalisation and hostility to immigrants. Re-politicisation strategies will need to lay bare the common basis of shared experiences of insecurity and explore ways of integrating precarious workers into new community and global alliances.

Living with uncertain work

“…For example, 52 per cent of casual workers, compared with 36 per cent of those in permanent jobs and 35 per cent of those in fixed‐term jobs, said that they had no autonomy over their hours of work. These findings echo Wilson and Ebert's () examination of casual workers in Australia. Their analysis of the 2005 Australian Survey of Social Attitude demonstrated that most workers in casual jobs were not free to determine their hours of work and almost half were unable to decide how their work was organised (compared with one‐fifth of workers in non‐casual jobs).…”

Rock Stars and Bad Apples: Moral Economies of Alternative Food Networks and Precarious Farm Work Regimes

“…Compared with migrants, farm interns are less constrained as far as entering freely into an internship, asserting their workplace interests on an individual basis and leaving a position. Nonetheless, as demonstrated in this study, un(der)paid farming internships exemplify how an employment relationship can be deeply embedded in a community of ethically driven sustainable food initiatives while simultaneously exhibiting what Wilson and Ebert (:267) describe as “a peculiarly asymmetrical distribution of power and information between employers, employment agencies and workers”. Table provides a comparison between migrants and interns on the basis of six key indicators of precariousness, using existing definitions of precarious employment (Morgan et al ; Vosko ).…”

Hyper-individualized recruitment: Rural-urban labour migration and precarious construction work in Bangladesh

“…In spite of these critiques, there is consensus among scholars that new forms of flexibilities Migration, Mobility & Displacement, Summer, 2016 have been introduced under neoliberalism and the absence of labour protection is the key insecurity that workers have been experiencing. Contemporary scholarly evidence from Arnold and Bongiovi (2013), Cross (2010), Kalleberg (2009Kalleberg ( , 2011Kalleberg ( , 2012, Kalleberg and Hewison (2013), Lee (2015), Neve (2014), Ofreneo (2010), Ross (2008Ross ( , 2009) and Wilson and Ebert (2013) confirms that labour flexibility has become the central feature of the current world of work shaped by neoliberal developments. While labour protection encompasses a wide range of securities, such as upward occupational mobility, safe work environments, income guarantees and the right to a collective voice, much of the labour insecurities emanate from lack of commitment from principal employers.…”