Precarious Labour Research Articles

Precarious labour and social reproduction in Bolivian immigrant sweatshops in São Paulo, Brazil

This paper analyses labour and social reproduction conditions in Bolivian immigrant garment industry sweatshops in São Paulo, Brazil. The analysis contributes to an understanding of the ways in which precarious labour is articulated with a simultaneous precarization of social reproduction. Working conditions in Bolivian immigrant sweatshops include 14-hour or longer workdays, piece-work, low wages and unsafe working environments. Based on the life stories of three Bolivian women migrants in São Paulo, I spotlight the gender-based arrangements of paid work and reproduction upon which the sweatshops are predicated and further detail the reproductive conditions within these sweatshops, which tend to be uncomfortable, unsafe and unhealthy for workers as well as owners. These arrangements blur the dividing lines between the home and the workplace, as well as the distinctions between paid labour and social reproduction. Through this empirical work, I argue that social reproduction can make labour more precarious in contexts such as this one. I further contend that the crisis of social reproduction in peripheric countries extends beyond the retreat of the welfare state, rather constituting a generalized precarization of reproductive conditions that both supports and is supported by extremely precarized labour.

The empire strikes back: the financialization of rental housing – a new frontier of accumulation and precarity

ABSTRACT The financialization of rental housing, driven by post-GFC financial contexts, sees assets concentrated in the hands of corporate landlords aided by technological innovations and state support. Foreclosures and evictions, especially in GFC-affected areas, enable corporate acquisition of property at bargain rates, followed by eviction strategies to increase turnover and rental prices, bypassing regulations. This upward distribution of value is supported by growing labor precarity, intertwined with rising rental prices globally. Labor market precarity, linked to stagnant wages, exacerbates housing precarity, creating new forms of accumulation by dispossession. The hypothesis suggests a convergence in “regulated deregulation,” blending formality and informality through financial processes, digital mechanisms, and public policies. Renting becomes a bridging mechanism, transforming housing into a service, managing time and income generation, with potential scalability through digital mechanisms. This marks a departure from historical constraints, potentially establishing unprecedented connections between informality and finance.

Reflecting on cultural labour in the time of AI

With generative AI disrupting human monopoly of creativity, there is an urgent need to freshly rearticulate cultural labour as a marker of human creativity. I suggest we critically revisit the existing perspectives of cultural labour in cultural policy discussion (unproductive, creative and precarious labour) to reflect on their limitations and implications for our understanding of AI’s challenges. Based on this, I argue that we should expand the discussion of precarious labour to elaborate the emerging ‘creative precarity’. In particular, I will explore its key dimensions – the increasing uncertainty in terms of cultural workers’ creative roles, rights and identity, and audience responses – and their policy implications. At the core of potential policy response to and our research into creative precarity, there are fundamental questions of how we redefine cultural work in the time of AI, what new meanings we can attach to cultural labour, what constitutes the human-ness in human creativity and why it crucially matters.

Educators' invisible labour: A systematic review

AbstractThe hidden or overlooked nature of many of educators' professional activities complicates the already difficult task of supporting educators' labour—in both K‐12 and higher education settings. These efforts can be understood as types of invisible labour. Following PRISMA standards, we conducted a systematic literature review to answer a single research question: How have scholars framed educators' professional activities in terms of invisible labour? This systematic review searched 10 educational databases and identified 16 peer‐reviewed journal articles spanning 2011–2021. From thematic analysis of these studies, we developed a model of five types of invisibility that intersect and mask educators' professional efforts: background, care, precarious, identity and remote labour. The review also showed several overall themes related to educators' invisible labour, which we discuss in connection to the literature: effort is often semivisible, invisibility is subjective, effort by marginalised educators is often overlooked, labour in unexpected places often means effort is overlooked, and there are layers of factors masking effort. We then discuss implications for practice, starting with five invisible labour questions to prompt reflection, then how to apply invisible labour as an improvement lens for identifying needs, allocating resources, analysing jobs and tasks, and evaluating performance.

Home-bound precarity: home violence on return Indonesian migrant domestic workers

ABSTRACT Migration for work is often an unending journey. Many Indonesian women spend years as domestic workers overseas before they return home, and there is often no definitive answer as to when they should return, and whether such a return is ‘final’. Migration scholars have long critiqued neoliberal capitalism and the global job market for subjecting workers to uncertainty and precarity. Yet, few have explored the precarity faced by return migrant women at home. Drawing on the results of our field interviews conducted on return workers in East Java and workers in Hong Kong, we develop the concept of ‘home-bound precarity’ to examine the financial and moral violence imposed on migrant women. We argue that ‘home-bound precarity’ is one of the root causes of migrant workers’ protracted precarity. The research opens a rich vein of inquiry into return migration and sheds new light on the understanding of labor precarity.

Making Sense of Change: Emotive-Cognitive Reframing of Young People in Post-crisis Spain

This article explores how people interpret deep transformations, how they integrate them into their everyday meaning-making and what role emotion work plays therein. To do so, the article draws on the experiences of young people (n=68) in post-crisis Spain and their narratives of change. In the wake of the severe economic crisis of 2008, many of them had lost their jobs as well as their future prospects. They experienced a mismatch between their expectations of their (working) life and the actual opportunities on the precarious labour market. Disappointed expectations and crumbling future prospects made it necessary for them to search for explanations and coping strategies. The article proposes the concept of emotive-cognitive reframing to capture the ways in which the young people adapted their emotions, ideas and expectations and the different forms and directions this could take. It shows that emotive-cognitive reframing was a complex and embodied process of emotional and cognitive work in which existing patterns of explanation were questioned and partly replaced by new ones. If these explanations were individualistic in nature, people considered their emotions and how they dealt with them to be a personal matter. In this case, emotion work was more about appeasing and suppressing emotions rather than channelling them into action. If the explanations were systemic, though, emotion work consisted primarily of turning emotions inside out and redirecting them from the individual towards external actors and structural conditions laying the seeds for collective mobilisation.

Shifting Shadows of Uncertainty: The Utilitarian Migration and Intersectional Risks Among Moroccan Women Agricultural Workers in Spain During COVID-19

This article examines the shift of uncertainty and risk to Moroccan female agricultural workers in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically under the GECCO program. It argues that Spain’s agricultural policies enforce a precarious labor environment for these women, trading their well-being for global market competitiveness. The study delves into recruitment, working, and living conditions, utilizing theories of intersectionality, risk, migratory utilitarianism, and coloniality of power to highlight how the pandemic amplifies risks along existing lines of inequality, altering patterns of gendered mobility and immobility. The paper concludes with a call for a profound reassessment of the European agricultural labor model towards fairness and justice. It pushes for a paradigm shift in migration studies to a critical decolonial view that honors the lived experiences of marginalized migrants. This perspective is essential for dismantling oppressive structures and broadening our understanding of migrant experiences.

Precarious Work and Housing for Michigan Farmworkers During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

ABSTRACT Objectives Farmworkers in Michigan face precarious and exploitative labor conditions that affect their access to affordable, fair, and quality housing, which are key social determinants of health. We sought to assess the health, working conditions, and housing access, affordability, and quality of farmworkers living in and outside of employer-provided housing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods We conducted a mixed methods cross-sectional study in collaboration with community partners from the Michigan Farmworker Project and the Michigan Department of Civil Rights. We assessed housing, labor conditions, and general health through in-depth phone interviews with seasonal, migrant, and H-2A farmworkers (n = 63) during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021) in Michigan. Descriptive analyses of these data included comparisons by type of farmworker and type of housing (employer-provided or other). Results The majority of farmworkers interviewed were women and seasonal farmworkers and spoke primarily Spanish. A significant share of farmworker participants reported living in poverty (38.3%) and had low or very low food security (27.0%). Nearly half of farmworkers (47.6%) rated their health as “fair” or “poor” during the year prior to the interview, and more than a third reported 3 or more chronic conditions (39.6%) and lack of health insurance coverage (38.7%). Among the 43 workers tested, 25.6% reported testing positive for COVID-19. Farmworkers reported experiences of objectification and dehumanization. Three-quarters of workers reported feeling that they were treated as less than human by supervisors and one-third reported verbal abuse. Farmworkers also experienced challenges exacerbated by their social vulnerability that impeded them from finding affordable, quality housing. Regarding housing quality, the majority of workers (80.6%) reported one or more environmental hazards around their residence, and about a third reported not having air conditioning (33.%) and lacking a functioning washing machine (33.9%). Concerns about the quality of drinking water accessible to workers and exposure to chemicals were shared by participants. Conclusion This study adds valuable knowledge to the understanding of the systemic barriers to housing and work conditions for female and male seasonal, migrant, and H-2A farmworkers in Michigan. Shortcomings in the regulatory and policy environment result in precarious housing and work conditions, including exploitative labor practices. These conditions negate equality, fairness, and health equity, important tenants for public health.

Public cultural institutions in Mexico and precarisation of creative labour

The Mexican state has been an active agent in the construction of cultural institutions and infrastructure for more than a century. But the symbolic and political currency of the cultural sector is not reflected in stable conditions for creative workers who exist precariously. In this article, we explore a manifestation of the simultaneous state of prominence and precarity in procurement regimes implemented by federal government agencies before the Covid-19 crisis, and support programmes from the federal and local government of Mexico City to employ creative workers during the early phases of the pandemic. We examine the content and arguments of these programmes to highlight how cultural policies and institutional structures developed by the government are a continuation, and even a deepening, of the already precarious work opportunities in the cultural sector. Through policy analysis and qualitative interviews, we contrast the officially stated goals of government institutions with the lived experiences of creative workers.

Precarity revisited: Exploring camming work in Brazil and experiences of precarity in platform-based (erotic) content production

The article addresses labour precarity in platform-based cultural production from the perspective of Brazilian camming work, examining it through cammers’ perceptions and experiences. Precarity has been a framework for assessing work conditions in platformised cultural industries. This framework stems from a normative standpoint of standard work and employment, which neither represents labour markets nor marginalised cultural labour in the majority world. This article tackles precarity from marginalised Global South cultural producers’ perspectives. Drawing on 15 in-depth interviews with cisgender female cammers, I show that local work and employment realities, and the positionality of platforms within them, are critical to cammers’ sense-making of labour precarity. For the cammers, the parameters for evaluating quality and precarity are unstable and adjusted according to their position within and outside platform economies. Conclusions suggest that precarity is situated and derives its meaning from a complex articulation of workers’ experiences and positions across various economies.

Socio‐Legal Production of the Tourist‐Seasonal Labourer for the Finnish Berry Industry

The article investigates the phenomenon of precarious labour within the Finnish wild berry industry, focusing on the socio‐legal dimensions that enable short‐term “just‐in‐time” migration, primarily from Thailand, for the berry season. Since the initial 2005 recruitment of Thai citizens to engage in forest berry picking for the Finnish berry industry, the industry has become heavily reliant on migrant labour. At the same time, the pickers’ situation exemplifies a case of unregulated labour, as pickers are categorised as a group outside of labour laws in Finland. By asking how this “non‐work”—berry picking without labour rights—has repeatedly been justified on a policy level, the article provides a case study that unpacks the creation of a racialised migrant labour force through a statecraft of differential inclusion, in an arrangement regarded to advance rural economies. Empirically, the article draws on an analysis of policy documents through which a particular kind of temporary migration corridor is administered.

What is ‘freelance feminism’?

This article introduces the concept of ‘freelance feminism’: a term we use to highlight how a combination of casualised precarious labour and platformised entrepreneurialism constitute a key terrain through which contemporary feminist work is enacted. The article proposes that this term can be a way to understand new formations and constellations of activity which are being shaped in the intersections between precarity, feminism and entrepreneurialism. How, in what ways, and with what consequences are feminist activism and platformised entrepreneurialism becoming entwined? How are new forms of self-promotion, self-branding and precarity shaping feminist cultures? Are entrepreneurial projects more broadly taking on feminist forms and, if so, how can we understand their politics? To explore these issues, the article examines in turn (1) neoliberal, short-term, precarious labour in the cultural industries and its exacerbation during the pandemic, (2) contemporary entrepreneurial ‘platformisation’ and (3) the increased visibility of feminism in contemporary popular culture. It concludes by introducing the range of articles in the special issue.

Survival Games: Understanding Journalistic and Extra-Journalistic Practices and Pursuits of Small-Town Stringers in South India

ABSTRACT The precarity of journalistic labour has received significant scholarly attention globally, leading to a plethora of studies that attempt to theorise changing journalistic roles, practices, and norms. Whereas precarity in newswork is formulated as the “new normal” in the Global North, the precarious situation of marginal(ised) newsworkers in the Global South has been simply normal. Based on ethnographic research in two small-town formations in South India, this article presents how stringers working in Indian-language newspapers have developed a complex professional identity and shared norms through journalistic and extra-journalistic practices to survive in the field. In doing so, we develop, in a novel way, Bourdieu’s concept of illusio to understand the formation of a professional identity that spans adjacent fields. This paper’s critical engagement with the difficult working lives of stringers and their invisible labour has learnings for analysis of precarity in journalism across the Global North and South.

Industrial Fragmentation, Migration and Live-in Factories in Ahmedabad

This article interrogates live-in factory labour as a distinct feature of informalised industrial structure, an absence of state regulation and an outcome of kinship-based internal migration processes and labour precariousness. It also demonstrates the fallacy of analysing living arrangements of migrant workers as undifferentiated structural artefacts and highlights the underlying social relational dynamics. It argues that suboptimal wages and terms of employment embedded in highly asymmetrical relations between employer and worker mediated through labour contractors and organised on caste, ethnicity and regional lines dictate the persistence of the system of in-factory living of workers. Such a living arrangement represents a distinct configuration of urban employment that allows firms to have greater control over workers’ lives to extract surplus value and determine their relations with the city. Thus, the article posits that migration, informal workplaces and informal labour relations converge together to create certain hyper-precarious occupational niches reserved for workers from particularly marginalised communities. Apart from debt bondage, a phenomenon which has received significant scholarly attention over the years, on-site accommodation is used by employers to keep vulnerable migrant workers in these niches.

More-Than-Human Footprints

This issue of Footprint explores techn-natural spatialities and materialities found across operational landscapes of primary production. To the extent that these landscapes are increasingly automated and digitised, production and circulation practices are becoming more capital intensive and even less labour-intensive. While amplifying the precarity of human labour, this process relies on appropriating the work of more-than-human assemblages of machines, plants, animals and microorganisms. Central to the focus of this issue is understanding the way these processes are grounded in specific architectural and landscape configurations. In this way, we also aim to complement the debates on past issues of Footprint, offering an investigation of the impact of technological transformations beyond the concentrated landscapes of human inhabitation.

Trends in the integration of researchers into the social division of labor

As the functional role of science in the development of the economy expands, specialists of scientific organizations are becoming an increasingly significant subject of the social division of labor. On the basis of open data of official statistics and the results of a nationwide representative study, the authors of the article show that the expansion of the economic role of science workers is accompanied by the transformation of a large part of their intellectual activity into creative engineering for innovative production. At the same time, the labor of the majority of scientists is transforming from exclusive to mass-production, bringing the nature of their living conditions closer to the way of life of workers of mass professions, partly transforming into precarious labor. At the same time, it is shown that the formation of precariat is not a deviation in the classical form of wage labor, but the transformation of the proletariat as a class into precariat, which is also characteristic of scientific workers.

Working in the dream factory: gendering women's film labour under Fascism

AbstractThis article draws on a broad range of under-explored historical sources to document the career trajectories of the women who worked in the Italian film industry between 1930 and 1944. Challenging established histories that normalise male dominance in Italian cinema during and after Mussolini's regime, the article sheds light on women's overlooked contribution to Italy's sound film industry and explores the multilayered, shifting dimension of their precarious and gendered labour. Engaging with key questions raised by historians of Italian Fascism and by feminist research in film and media history, the article delineates intersectional barriers to film employment faced by women in the years of the dictatorship and points to their historical legacy.

Men working through mobile applications in Brazil: Reflections from occupational health

Work through mobile applications emerged as an alternative for many Brazilian men during the economic crisis and rising unemployment. However, these workers operate informally, without a formal employment relationship, leading to labor precariousness and a lack of workers' rights. Using a theoretical-reflexive, this study analyzes the intersection between occupational health, the platformization of work, and the specific challenges faced by male delivery app workers, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reflective categories are divided into two thematic sections: "Labor insertion through mobile applications in Brazil and the algorithmic work model" and "men, health, and motorcycles: occupational health and male behavior in app-based delivery work." The study examines the expansion of this type of work in the Brazilian socio-economic context, the lack of security and labor protection for these workers, as well as the risks faced, particularly during the pandemic, within a male-centric culture.

Crises and the history of science: a materialist rehabilitation

Abstract Over the past four decades, historians of science have come to discard crisis as a guiding heuristic in ‘big-picture’ narratives of scientific change. In this article, we argue that it can be rehabilitated without reintroducing the conceptual drawbacks of earlier historiographies. We suggest that analysing material crises as distinct episodes of knowledge-in-the-making focuses attention on the mangling of science and social order. We distinguish material crises from Kuhnian intellectual crises; the analysis of material crises begins with the interactive dynamics of actor practices and performances, emergent within concrete social orders, rather than from technical breakdowns within isolable theoretical paradigms. Drawing on Reinhart Koselleck's account of crisis, we characterize such events as patterned shifts in the tempo of actor behaviours, which are brought about by real-time processes of realization. In addition to the familiar, contemporary cases of climate change and COVID-19, we sketch out how three historical crises transformed knowledge production in disparate ways: the Ming–Qing transition in late imperial China, crises of labour precarity in seventeenth-century Istanbul and the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa.

Italian women workers and women activists between home and factory: the struggle against labour precarity (1950s–1970s)

AbstractFrom a gender historical perspective, labour precarity constitutes a long-term phenomenon. Women's work represents a privileged observatory to understand how instability and precarity also characterised the cycle of economic and industrial expansion of the 1950s and 1960s. The article compares the conditions of female factory workers with those of home-based workers, a traditionally invisible category of workers, who between the 1960s and 1970s promoted demonstrations and protests with the support of trade unions, women's associations and local institutions. Changes in the subjectivity of women workers and homeworkers, whose demands often came together and gave rise to joint protests, not only became part of broader discussions on the relationship between industrial crisis and precariousness, but also generated discourses on specific forms of work that are now central to debates on flexible/precarious work such as part-time work.