From the shop floor to the kitchen table: the shifting centre of precarious workers’ politics in South Africa

Abstract

This article argues that, as wage work has become more precarious, the importance of the household in the livelihood strategies of precarious South African workers has increased. The shifting importance of the household in relation to the workplace in the economic lives of workers has implications for the political strategies that these workers adopt. The article draws on data from a national household survey combined with insights from the author's fieldwork across rural and urban sites in South Africa. It contributes to the growing literature on the politics of precarious work in the global South.