Issues Of Precarity Research Articles

Branch life: negotiating national and local activism in UCU

Two members of the King&'s College London branch of the University College Union (UCU) discuss the union's long-running national dispute over the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), as well as more local disputes they have been involved with at the College level. Their actions over conditions within King's - including on equalities issues, specifically child care issues, London weighting and institutional democracy - illustrate how a branch can link up local disputes with national disputes, making them more concrete and specific, and seeking to create an institution that has a local form of democracy running through it. They also discuss how union debate and action has expanded during the period of the dispute: the union, both nationally and locally, has taken up issues of precarity and casualisation; pay gaps and structural inequalities; workloads; and questions of decolonisation. At King's, the union are negotiating for free childcare support for all staff, available on the same basis for everyone, as part of a wider collective agreement with the college on all issues of pay and conditions of employment. They have also sought to democratise the Council - the decision-making body of the College - partly through drawing attention to the increasing number of corporate figures who sit on the Council, including its chair, Lord Geidt. As well as increasing involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a radicalising of the branch's activities on imperialism, including calling attention to the role of the college in imperialism, and demands to demilitarise both the USS and the university itself.

Across the Pacific: the strategic citizenship of Chinese musicians

ABSTRACT Since the 1990s, the world has seen an incredible surge of Chinese performers in Western classical music. Unknown to most outside of Chinese musical networks, these musicians often began their training as young children, learning from parents who lost musical ambitions during the Cultural Revolution and who hoped to realise them through their only child. However, as children rapidly developed musical skills and entered conservatories, other career paths became eliminated. Drawing from anthropologist Aihwa Ong’s work on ‘flexible citizenship’ and ethnographic fieldwork in Mainland China, Canada, and the United States, I theorise the ‘strategic citizenship’ of these students and their families. I do so to argue that the strong presence of Chinese instrumentalists in Western classical music has resulted from a desire, even a desperation, amongst many families to negotiate intergenerational traumas and acquire socio-economic stability in the neoliberal age. In this process, transnational Chinese musicians must also contend with issues of precarity and Orientalisms abroad.

Review: Contemporary Political Cinema, by Matthew Holtmeier

Review: <i>Contemporary Political Cinema</i>, by Matthew Holtmeier

COVID-19, precarity and loneliness.

In this paper I discuss Jungian psychological work of the trauma and loss experienced in reaction to COVID‐19 with a man who represents a clinical composite. The issues of precarity, a concept used by the philosopher Judith Butler, are combined with the notions of lack and absence of French psychoanalyst André Green. The psychological and societal situation of precarity aroused the man’s childhood issues that were long repressed. The loneliness, isolation and death from COVID‐19 mirrored his personal and the collective responses to the disaster from this global pandemic. He felt on the edge of collapse as what he knew of his world crashed and he found himself unable to cope. The subsequent Jungian work taking place through the virtual computer screen was taxing and restorative simultaneously for both analyst and analysand.

Musical careers in constant crises

COVID-19 has caused an unprecedented crisis for performing musicians globally. But how are these new circumstances perceived by musicians in localities that have gone through multiple crises in the recent past? This article unfolds as a dialogue between two academics and two musicians from Greece and Iran, touching on issues of precarity, creativity, capitalism, state support and control, and radical ideas for a post-Covid cultural economy. Reflecting on conditions of economic crisis (Greece) and sanctions and military tensions (Iran), we argue that a return to ‘normalcy’ post-Covid is neither feasible nor desired by most musicians outside of institutional elites. By examining the experiences of musicians in the periphery of global markets and artistic circulation, we enrich the analysis of these unprecedented circumstances, but also find well-established coping strategies and seeds of resistance.

Ethical responsibilities of tenured academics supervising non-tenured researchers in times of neoliberalism and precarity

ABSTRACT Neoliberal reform of the university sector has resulted in increasing numbers of academics employed on casual or fixed-term contracts. While there is an emergent body of literature on issues of precarity in the academy, relatively little attention has been paid to the roles and responsibilities of those tenured academics who employ and manage non-tenured researchers. The work involved in hiring and managing a contract researcher is rarely acknowledged or supported, and managers receive little to no training. In this paper, we draw on Dorothy Smith’s feminist sociological approach to analyse interviews with 22 non-tenured researchers to examine how managerial relationships shape the employment experiences of those working precariously. We argue that tenured academics have ethical responsibilities to provide a working environment that is fair, supports the ongoing development and wellbeing of non-tenured staff, and challenges dominant discourses of precarious academics as ‘other’.

Precarity: causes, effects and consequences of insecure working and living conditions in a multicultural, rural area of northern Italy (South Tyrol)

The research project deals with the current issue of precarity, its mechanisms, risks, effects, coping strategies as well as coping competences and addresses the impact of work-based insecurities, rising social inequalities within and across nations, with a specific regional focus on South Tyrol - a multicultural, rural area in northern Italy, bordering with Austria. Finally, it is important to identify possible innovative solutions for the labour market, Human Resources strategies and social policies. The concept of work will be related to all securitized fundamental rights, their socialization context, the global change of values and the social change in the welfare state. The recent transformation from discourses on inequality and poverty towards social exclusion and inclusion indicates a conceptual shift in the societal management of social inequalities. The global financial crisis has highlighted the connectedness between corporate and household risk behaviour and management, and their socially inequitable effects. The interdisciplinary view enables a focus on multiple insecurities and how they interact to produceprecarious work relations, in reference to working conditions and the experience of social exclusion, the links between de-regulation, liberalization and the individualization of employment risks, but also the development of interest representation and social organizations for supporting labour market outsiders. The paper describes the current process of defining the research design, preliminary reflections for the case study and shows first outcomes of the project.

Choreographic practice and pedagogy as embodied ideological critique of the labour for knowledge

ABSTRACT Choreographic practice still competes for the same level of value as language-based study in higher education and therefore choreographic practice and pedagogy can be a means through which to address issues of precarity for dance and dance studies in the university economy today. This article addresses this problem by sharing a UK-based extra-curricular choreographic research project exploring academic labour in a university library. The project uses a practice research framework to explore the idea of embodied ideological critique as a critical choreographic lens to view the library as a site of labour for knowledge. The method of site-specific choreography is used to replicate activities observed in the library and explore what activities at the site suggest about what the academy implicitly values as knowledge. The article advocates for ways to engage students to explore and question the changing landscape of higher education in terms of the historical, social and political values of knowledge in the academy and how this changing landscape impacts on dance in university contexts. Post-project reflections further advocate for the potential for small acts of resistance to increasing pressures of austerity, neoliberalism and corporatisation on university activities with choreographic pedagogy.

Uber Drivers are ‘Workers’ – The Expanding Scope of the ‘Worker’ Concept in the UK's Gig Economy

This chapter evaluates the importance of judicial decisions, most notably the London Uber case, in awarding intermediate ‘worker’ status to self-employed on-demand gig workers. The chapter addresses complex issues of precarity that remain even when workers have some modicum of employment protection. It assesses the impact of the gig economy on the UK’s vibrant but precarious labour market, identifying problematic issues such as sham self-employment, pay, working hours, tax and social security. Analysis of the Uber case builds on the tribunals’ broad protective approach to the law on worker status and availability for work. It draws insight from the parallel case before the EU Court of Justice on the regulatory powers of municipalities over Uber. It concludes by comparing the protective common law approach in Uber, and subsequent cases, with proposals for legislative solutions that may reverse this trend and offers suggestions for solutions that embed the courts’ purposive approach.

Precarity as a common foundation for `Networks of Subsistence’

El texto crea un análisis teórico que contrasta la literatura relevante sobre temas de precariedad, reproducción social y Commoning, o prácticas sociales de comunización. El propósito del texto es plantear así cómo métodos alternativos de organización creativo social que intentan dar respuesta a la precariedad actual deberían incorporar lo que las economistas feministas Maria Mies y Veronika Benholdt-Thomsen han denominado como `perspectiva de subsistencia’ (1999). Al centrar el estudio en el colectivo de arquitectos españoles Recetas Urbanas y, más concretamente, en su papel en la configuración de la red Arquitecturas Colectivas, el texto propone cómo una `perspectiva de subsistencia’ podría beneficiarse de lo que se ha referido aquí como una `red de subsistencia’. En conjunto, este texto representa una primera aproximación de futuros análisis teóricos sobre las posibilidades de estructuras organizacionales descentralizadas basadas en los Comunes a través de una perspectiva feminista marxista del trabajo reproductivo y las relaciones cotidianas. The paper builds a theoretical analyses contrasting relevant literature around issues of precarity, social reproduction and practices of Commoning. By doing so, the paper raises how alternative methods of creative-social organization responding to precarity should incorporate what feminist economists’ Maria Mies and Veronika Benholdt-Thomsen has coined as `subsistence perspective’ (1999). By drawing on Spanish architect collective Recetas Urbanas (Urban Prescriptions) and, more concretely, their role in the network Arquitecturas Colectivas (Collective Architecture), the paper proposes how a `subsistence perspective’ could beneficiate from, what will be addressed as, a `network of subsistence’. Taken together this text represents a first approximation on future theoretical analyses around the possibilities of decentralized organizational structures based on the Commons through a Marxist Feminist perspective of reproductive work and everyday relations.

Social workers: a new precariat? Precarity conditions of mental health social workers working in the non-profit sector in Greece

ABSTRACTTraditionally, in western countries, the social work profession primarily has come into contact with issues of precarity through the lives of service users. This paper introduces precarity in the social work scholarly literature as a feature of social workers’ professional and personal lives. It draws from the findings of a qualitative small study of mental health social workers working in the non-profit sector in Greece. The findings reflect a picture of social workers experiencing precarious conditions as they have become part of the growing phenomenon of the working poor, surviving by loans, experiencing housing insecurity, reproductive insecurity, fuel poverty and unable to pay for their commuting expenses to and from work. Furthermore, the paper maintains that the expansion of the conditions of precarity to university-educated professionals, such as social workers, needs to be understood within an International Political Economy (IPE) perspective in order neoliberal capitalism which brings rising levels of inequalities to become a focus of intervention.

Creative precarity? Young fashion designers as entrepreneurs in Russia

ABSTRACTThis article explores the careers of young fashion designers as entrepreneurs in Russia. It discusses entrepreneurial experiences and labour practices of fashion designers in the context of precarity: that is, the structural conditions characterized by a lack of social, economic and emotional security caused by a shift of responsibilities for the labour market from the state to the citizens. The article takes the perspective of designers’ agency and answers the question of how young fashion entrepreneurs deal with such structural conditions using state support, community support, organizational practices and emotional management. The article also focuses on creative labour in the broader context of the circumstances of a creative class in an authoritarian state. We argue that in today’s Russia, the discourse on the creative class is perhaps more important than the discourse on precarity, since belonging to the creative class is a source of political identity for fashion designers. The issue of precarity, then, can become a further basis for solidarity and political action. The research draws from 21 in-depth interviews with fashion designers and experts conducted in the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk between 2015 and 2016.

Geographies of production III

In this final report I offer a review of recent work in labour geography (broadly defined), a blossoming and increasingly mature subfield of economic geography. The review covers three areas: theoretical work on the nature and constitution of labour agency; research into issues of precarity, migration and intermediation in contemporary labour markets; and studies on the geographical strategies employed by the union movement. The report concludes that theorizing worker agency effectively is central to the further development of labour geography.

‘Precari su Marte’: An Experiment in Activism against Precarity

This article discusses how the issue of precarity has developed into a new catalyst for activism in Italy and demonstrates how this activism is linked to changes in the employment and capitalist manufacturing environment of the 1980s and 1990s. It links events in Italy to the activism of the global anti-neoliberal movement and discusses how various activist movements (the independent Marxist tradition, creative activism, social activism, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT), radical feminist activism) are mobilizing around the issue of precarity. This article focuses specifically on the activist network ‘Precari su Marte’ (Precarious on Mars) which has been active in Turin since 2005. It demonstrates how the theoretical and practical evolution of this network has led to various outcomes, including experimenting with creative forms of political practice at MayDay demonstrations and questioning the boundaries of gender.