Precarity: A Genealogy of a Concept

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Precarity A Genealogy of a Concept

• Maribel Casas-Cortes Sebastian Cobarrubias
• Post-Doctoral Fellows
• Geography Department, UNC-CH

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Prewhat?

• Precarity gt to pray, to plead
• Precarious literally means unsure, uncertain,
  difficult, delicate.
• Instead of the neutral sounding flexible labor,
  
• precarity has a critical connotation referring to
  living and working conditions without guarantees.

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Precariedad Précarité Precarietá

• It is a term of everyday usage in a number of
  European countries, where it refers to the
  widespread condition of temporary, flexible,
  contingent, casual, intermittent work, brought
  about by the neoliberal labor market reforms that
  have strengthened the right to manage and the
  bargaining power of employers since the late
  1970s.

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Precarity is a general term to describe how large
parts of the population are being subjected to
flexible exploitation or flexploitation (low pay,
high blackmailability, intermittent income,
etc.), and existential precariousness (high risk
of social exclusion because of low incomes,
welfare cuts, high cost of living, etc.)

• The condition of precarity is said to affect all
  of service sector labor in
• a narrow sense, and the whole of society in a
  wider sense, but particularly youth,
• women, and immigrants

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Precarity analysis politics

• Critical analysis of current trends in the new
  economy,
• Political rethinking of heterogenous class
  formations.
• Precarity is used both as an analytical tool and
  as a strategic point of departure to produce
  political subjectivities and re-invent different
  alliances and ways of struggle.
• Precarity is a political proposition more than
  a sociological category
• MayDay organizer

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Conceptual developments

1. Worsening of Labor Conditions
2. Qualitative Transformations of Labor
3. Labor and Migration
4. Vulnerability in Everyday Life

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Cartography of the conceptual development of
precarity European precarity struggles

• Loss of labor rightsQualitative transformations
  of laborLabor and MigrationVulnerability in
  Everyday life

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Loss of labor rightsQualitative transformations
of laborLabor and MigrationVulnerability in
Everyday life

• The use of the term precarity emerged as response
  to the legalization of temporal, part-time and
  training contracts. The generalization of these
  atypical types of contracts were associated with
  an unstable labor
• relationship, normally a lower salary and
  lessened protections against firing.
• Precarity means increasing loss of labor rights
  historically won by historical workers movements
  in certain European countries. Including
  quantitative transformations in labor conditions
  and labor contracts such as
• from full-time to part-time, from permanent job
  to temp job, from full labor protections to less
  acquisitive power, less security measures, easier
  layoffs or less unemployment benefits.
• This loss includes other welfare protections such
  as health insurance.

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worksite based struggles against
flexplotationgeneral strikes, anti-privatization,
interns unemployed movements

• Defensive struggle to prevent the erosion of
  labor conditions and welfare rights
• New demands of free services

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Loss of labor rightsQualitative shifts of
laborLabor and MigrationEveryday vulnerability

• While the first bubble focuses on precarity as
  insecurity, as a quantitative deviation that
  workers should fight to correct back this second
  round of responses looks at precarious labor as
  qualitatively different, with distinct
  characteristics, that will make it spread as a
  general tendency beyond workspaces. This
  conceptual wave advanced two new qualities of
  labor 1) intermittency and 2) immateriality.

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1. intermittency Temporary work as permanent
condition

• 2. immaterial labor Growing use of
  communicative, affective and intellectual skills
  during production

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Loss of labor rightsQualitative shifts of
laborLabor and MigrationVulnerability in
Everyday Life

• Special vulnerability of undocumented workers
• The becoming migrant of labor mobility as
  fundamental trait of all laborers

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Loss of labor rightsQualitative shifts of
laborLabor and MigrationVulnerability in
Everyday Life

• A general tendency that affects the overall
  everyday existence (questions of care, body,
  city, etc...)

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Towards a Precarious Workers Day

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• CHAPTER 6. PRECARITY TOWARDS A GENEALOGY OF A
  CONCEPT I. Precarity as Loss of Labor
  Rights a. The arrival of garbage
  contracts b. Legalizing Temporary Job
  Agencies c. The decline of traditional union
  organizing d. Efforts by current grassroots
  unionism e. Spanish Labor Reforms and the
  European Economic Policies d. Flexibilization
  and the European UnionExtension 1 Welfare as
  social wageExtension 2 Utopias of no-work
  Los Lunes al SolRe-appropriation of services
  and goods II. Precarity as qualitative
  transformation of labor a. From mall consumer
  to chain worker b. From McDonalds Strikes to
  MayDay Parades c. From San Precario to
  Bio-sindicalism d. Intermittent work as
  current labor paradigm e. Precarity as
  Immaterial Labor f. Struggles of the
  Cognitariat Extension 1 Free Culture Copy
  Left Copy Left Licenses Copy Left and
  Immaterial LaborFighting for the New
  CommonsActors in DisputeTowards a Hacking
  PragmaticsThe Politization of SharingFree
  Culture logic in Global Justice
  Movements Extension 2 Updating Demands
  FlexicurityCommonfareBasic Income

III. The Intermingling of Precarity Migration
Intro Call for Madrid MayDay 2008 by
PD Migrant and Autochthonous workers unite! The
Becoming-Migrant of Labor Speaking from the
Border the Biopolitics of Precarity Militant
Cartographies of the Border Extension 1
Freedom of Movement IV. Precarity as Uncertain
Lives Spaces of Reproduction Feminization of
Labor Precarization of Life Precarity
Care Precarity and Body Precarity and the City
Metropolitan Cartographies Extension 1
Reorganization of Care Work V. Archipelago of
Cross-Crossing Bubbles New Social Rights
Intro Precarity as a Platform of new social
demands A Conference on, by and for
Precari_at_s? The Archipelago of Criss-Crossing
Knitters Social Rights Offices and Agencies for
Precarious Affairs Towards Social Movements
Institutions Parenthesis for
Theoretical/Methodological Speculations Bubblin
g as Method Social Movements as Meaning
Makers Possible shortcomings of the
concept Precarity travels to the USA
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Precarity in Asia?

• M

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Call for Mayday 2008 in Tokyo