Precarious Labour Research Articles

Analyzing the Limitations of Agency and Rights in Migrant Women's Empowerment

Migrant women constitute a substantial and heterogeneous cohort within the worldwide populace. Individuals depart from their nations of birth in pursuit of enhanced prospects, frequently encountering distinctive obstacles and susceptibilities during the course of their migratory expedition. The abstract notion of a "migrant woman" encompasses the range of experiences, rights, and challenges encountered by this heterogeneous cohort of women. The analysis explores the structural determinants that influence the process of migration among individuals, including economic inequalities, gender expectations, and governmental regulations pertaining to migration. Additionally, it draws attention to the various overlapping forms of discrimination that people experience and which depend on things like gender, race, socioeconomic status, and immigration status. Migrant women actively participate in various industries, encompassing both low-skilled and informal labour, domestic service, healthcare, and agricultural sectors. The labour and contributions of individuals have far-reaching global implications, exerting influence on the economies of both the countries from which they originate and the countries where they are received. Nevertheless, these individuals frequently encounter economic exploitation, precarious labour circumstances, and restricted availability of rights and social safeguards. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the abstract notion of migrant women, it is imperative to acknowledge the wide range of experiences they encounter and the ways in which their identities intersect. Addressing the systemic issues and inequalities faced by individuals requires a collective effort of global cooperation, collaboration, and dialogue. This article aims to shed light on the empowerment of migrant women and the insufficiency of agencies and rights in achieving this goal.

Nonmaterial Overelaboration: Gender, Casting, and Camouflaged Labor in Pat Rocco's Promotional Travelogue

Abstract Pat Rocco's ONE Adventure, a promotional film for a gay men's nonprofit's tourism subsidiary, documented early 1970s US-Europe homophile coalitions but also incorporated softcore sequences for commercial appeal to a gay male market. Yet Rocco's disavowal of pornography generally — and specifically in the case of ONE Adventure — elides the precarious labor that undergirded his films’ productions. This article proposes that gay media history needs to critically confront nonmaterial overelaboration — the covering over of the material conditions of media production — in media products, their paratexts, and historiography itself. It is necessary for gay media history to take up feminist production history methods to interrogate this elision of labor enacted by cultural history approaches to Pat Rocco's filmmaking. More broadly, the article's concept of nonmaterial overelaboration provides a critical avenue for focalizing labor in other areas of media history.

The Michigan Farmworker Project: A Community-Based Participatory Approach to Research on Precarious Employment and Labor Exploitation of Farmworkers

Precarious employment is an important social determinant of health inequities. Through in-depth qualitative interviews ( n = 35), we examine precarious employment and labor exploitation, their potential impact on the working environment, and, ultimately, the health of farmworkers. We present results from the community-based participatory Michigan Farmworker Project. Our analysis identified dimensions of precarious employment and labor exploitation that involved lacking access to fundamental labor and social rights—including dehumanization—discriminatory occupational practices, and insufficient access to health care and social benefits. Policy reform is needed to address precarious employment and labor exploitation among farmworkers due to their potential long-lasting health effects.

Trajectories of Unpaid Labour and the Probability of Employment Precarity and Labour Force Detachment Among Prime Working-Age Australian Women

Worldwide, women are over-represented in precarious and insecure employment arrangements. Importantly, the high unpaid labour demands women experience over the life course compromise paid labour force participation for women. This study explores the way different trajectories of time spent in unpaid labour throughout women’s prime working and child-rearing years (from baseline age of 25–35 yrs to 42–52 yrs) are associated with indicators of precarious employment and labour force detachment later in life. We applied group-based trajectory modelling to 17 waves (2002–2018) of data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey to identify trajectories in unpaid labour. We then examined associations between these estimated trajectories and employment outcomes in wave 19 (2019). Our study shows that chronic exposure to high amounts of unpaid labour over prime working-age years (compared to lower exposure levels) increases women’s probability of precarious employment and labour force detachment later in prime working life. This provides evidence that ongoing inequity in the division of unpaid labour has considerable long-term implications for gender inequality in the paid labour force, and underscores the importance of urgently addressing how men and women share and prioritise time across both paid and unpaid labour domains.

The roles of accounting in the racial organization of work

This paper analyzes the links between accounting, race, and labor control from a critical perspective. For this purpose, a decolonial perspective is adopted. In particular, the colonial matrix of power is used to analyze a case of labor precarization in a sugar mill in the geographic valley of the Cauca River in Colombia. The study assumes that the precarization of individuals/peoples in contexts with a colonial legacy is fundamentally associated to classification/hierarchization processes based on race, knowledge, being, and territory (Quijano, 2000; Walsh, 2008; Segato, 2014). This paper contributes to a better understanding of the role of accounting in labor precarization in environments with a colonial legacy, showing that, unlike previous literature has proposed, accounting exercises multiple roles in the same organizational time and space, with these roles not necessarily being subordinated to whether the geopolitical realities of the Global South or the Global North are analyzed. Considering the case analyzed, when accounting wishes to control the labor of salaried and non-racialized people, it predominantly exercises its constitutive and transformative role in order to make labor more efficient-profitable, while at the same time it can exercise a reproductive and representative role by (re)creating over-exploitation mechanisms on non-salaried and racialized people to maintain an unequal-racist-discriminatory social order.

Post-Diversity, Precarious Work for All: Unmaking borders to govern labour in the Amazon warehouse

This paper investigates the (un)making of borders as a form of labour governmentality in one of Amazon’s warehouses in Poland. Guided by a critical theory of borders as a form of labour governmentality under global capitalism, we identify organizational practices through which socio-demographic categories traditionally deployed as principles of organizing work (e.g., gender, age, ability) are unmade: the management of deskilled labour through an algorithmic system, the non-selective hiring of workers, the enforcement of social norms of interpersonal respect and a universal system of casualized employment. Together, these practices constitute workers as undifferentiated, interchangeable and equal labour, let them compete with each other under harshly exploitative conditions, and continuously dispose of the least productive among them, keeping all in structural uncertainty. The study contributes to the critical diversity literature by showing a ‘post-diversity’ governmentality that rests on equality, competition and precarization of labour as a whole, rather than segregation and marginalization through an ‘ideal worker’ norm. This labour governmentality operates by eliciting consent from historically subordinated workers and eliminating the advantage of historically relatively privileged ones. Unmaking borders within labour inside the organization, this governmentality at the same time crucially rests on borders outside it.

An Evaluation of an Integrative Intervention for Work and Mental Health: The WIN Program

The purpose of this study was to describe the development of a new intervention for jobseekers and to assess its efficacy using a naturalistic, pre-post intervention design. In contrast to existing work-based interventions, the Work Intervention Network (WIN) intervention targets multiple intersecting domains through four modules and via six group sessions: deepening and sustaining relationships; fostering social awareness and reducing self-blame; building emotional resilience and self-care; and planning, exploring, and engaging in the job search. To evaluate the intervention, we first recruited a sample of 33 jobseekers to provide feedback on the program. Integrating their feedback into the design of the program, we then recruited a sample of 108 jobseekers who filled out surveys before and after the six-session intervention, which assessed work and mental health functioning across the four domains. Results revealed that participants were highly satisfied with the intervention and reported large increases in social support, belonging, psychological well-being, job search engagement, and work hope as well as decreases in isolation and self-blame. This study provides strong support for the WIN intervention and has implications for how to support jobseekers in an increasingly precarious labor environment.

The spatial division of precarious labour across the European Union regions: A composite index analysis of the 2008/2009 global economic crisis effects and COVID-19 initial implications

The successive crises of the 21st century (2008/2009 global recession, COVID-19) have significantly affected the organisation of work and increased the flexibilisation and precarisation of labour, reflecting the changing needs of capital accumulation. Although employment reorganisation is unevenly distributed across space, the link between labour precarisation and cities or regions has not been studied in depth, with most research efforts focusing on the national scale. This article enriches the emerging literature for composite indices of labour market change by constructing an index of labour precarity at the regional scale. It estimates the very Flexible Contractual Arrangements Composite Index in the NUTS2 regions of the European Union from 2008 to 2020 to provide a comparative analysis of the impact of the global recession of 2008/2009 and the initial implications of COVID-19. The findings highlight a persistent division between peripheral and core regions. High precarity is a persistent feature of less developed regions, although it is also increasing significantly in urbanised, economically advanced regions. As found, the degree of labour precarity of a regional labour market is the complex result of national factors as well as regional characteristics such as specialisation, remoteness, path dependency, and local institutional practises and population dynamics.

Fantasies of Adequacy: Mythologies of Capital in Dark Souls

Dark Souls, FromSoftware's 2011 action-RPG, has become synonymous with extreme difficulty. The game's success and influence despite its ostensibly niche appeal make it an outlier in an era of increasingly accessible gaming. Yet in eschewing accessibility Dark Souls offers a different, compensatory appeal. Through an analysis of the game's aesthetics from philological, economic, and postcolonial perspectives, this research argues that Dark Souls’ gameplay constitutes an economic fantasy. The game's difficulty can be overcome in the manner celebrated by capital: hard work. Moreover, this fantasy offers a level playing field, a quantitative accounting of progress, and the opportunity to be better than one's neighbors. Dark Souls offers a fantastic economic simulation in which all of capital's demands are justly and predictably rewarded. It both legitimizes the mythologies of capital and invites players to content themselves with the precarious labor of the loyal employee rather than the power of the owners.

‘Like every other day’: Writing temporalities of banal exploitation among precarious migrant workers

AbstractThe violence of precarious labour migration is often represented in popular and policy accounts through episodic frames that emphasise particular—often sensationalised and extreme—aspects and moments of more complex and mundane experiences. These depictions commonly appear under the labels of ‘modern‐day slavery’ and ‘labour trafficking’. This paper advances a participatory methodology aimed at elucidating more complex temporalities experienced by precarious migrant labourers, drawing on a project with male migrant workers in Singapore. The methodology developed for this project centres on written diaries/narratives authored by the participants over periods ranging from one to three months. These detailed narratives document struggles—physically, relationally, financially and emotionally—in the context of post‐labour destitution. These struggles appear as both ‘everyday’ difficulties and longer‐term problems, with both temporalities rendered visible as a form of slow violence. This methodology fuses key principles of qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) methods with participatory action research (PAR) to develop a methodological orientation to temporally extenuative experiences of violence that are visible through processes that draw on participants as key producers of knowledge and advocates for change. As a way of engaging migrants' mundane post‐labour struggles, this methodology allows for tracing of the longer‐term and cumulative impacts of precarious migrant labour through participants' own frames of reference.

Employment policy for a just transition – the example of Germany

The green transformation and Industry 4.0 are associated with considerable risks for workers in countries with dual labour markets such as Germany. The biggest risks are wage losses due to the involuntary transition into the precarious secondary labour market and insufficient education and training for the new ‘green’ jobs. Institutional reforms are necessary for a ‘just transition’. The ongoing reforms in Germany in education and training and wage setting show that the transition is a critical juncture in which new stakeholder constellations have the opportunity for non-path-dependent changes from a dual to an inclusive employment system with better work. The approaches adopted in recent German reforms are of overarching interest. Featuring the strongest manufacturing base in Europe, Germany is under particularly high pressure to fully embrace the green transformation and digitalisation. The country has learned from other countries and, conversely, can perhaps also help trigger a just transition in other countries.

Asymmetric new Keynesian Phillips curve for Mexico, 2005Q1–2022Q4

PurposeThe labor market responds in a differentiated manner during recessions and expansions, and it is of vital importance to know the magnitude asymmetries. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of the disinflationary monetary policy (2005Q1–2022Q4) through the sacrifice rate measured in terms of unemployment and rate of critical labor conditions (RCLC) with nonlinear auto regressive distributed lag (NLARDL; Shin et al., 2014), which allows to efficiently estimate asymmetric effects in short and long terms in the presence of variables of different integration orders.Design/methodology/approachThe authors estimate an asymmetric accelerationist Phillips curve, augmented with labor precariousness for Mexico (2005Q1–2022Q4) following the NLARDL approach (Shin et al., 2014).FindingsThe authors prove that the increase in the unemployment gap has greater disinflationary effects than the RCLC in both the short and the long term; the expansionary phases of the business cycle, which reduce UGap, do not have inflationary effects either in the short or in the long run, but improvements in the labor market do, when RCLC is reduced; raising RCLC appears to have been the companies’ main survival strategy since 2015; and these asymmetries can generate a low unemployment trap with high and growing precariousness, with huge dynamic costs for well-being, economic growth, inequality and poverty.Social implicationsAs labor precariousness grows, the implications are several both in the short and long run. In the short run, the most notorious example of the effects on workers has to do with unstable and insecure situations, that disrupt all their life planning options, and health issues. Bohle et al. (2004) found in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries that casual employees had less desirable and predictable working hours, greater work–life conflict and more associated health complaints than people with permanent jobs.Originality/valueThe approach includes the labor precariousness variable, which describes a new phenomenon in the labor market. Nowadays, workers are facing a new threat since firms are employing a new labor cost reduction strategy in which they do not lay off workers but rather paying them less, working them more hours, or reducing benefits. The asymmetries between the effects of precarity and unemployment can generate a poverty trap in the long run. This problem is, once again, of great relevance in the context of global high inflation.

Implementation of Social Programs in Conditions of Increasing Labor Precarization: Regional Aspects on the Example of the USA

The current complex phenomenon of labor precarization has been extremely actively developed in the United States of America, especially over the past two decades. Undoubtedly, the main reason for the increase in the share of the precariat in the labor market is economic development based on a change in technological patterns, which is characterized in the capitalist economy, on the one hand, by an increase in the role of human capital, and on the other hand, by its overconcentration, including at the intra-country regional level. The emergence and development of a new form of labor relations invariably leads to the need to revise social policy. The regional aspects of the implementation of social programs considered in this paper, which are to some extent capable of mitigating the consequences of the instability of employment and the insecurity of labor relations in the United States for the period 2007–2020, serve as one of the explanations for the intensifying processes of regionalization observed in the country. The result of the study was the identification of two main aspects of the implementation of social programs at the level of subregions and individual states of the country. The first reflects the further regionalization of federal relations in terms of social support for the population, carried out without taking into account the growing precarization of labor in regions with the largest share of the precariat among the employed. The second aspect, which takes into account the structural features of the distribution of funding in the areas of education, health care and social protection of the population, reveals the authorities’ attempt to carry out balanced social programming in the subregions that are potential centers of the “new industrialization” of the American economy. This approach is aimed at preserving and qualitatively developing the human capital of the region by smoothing out the negative consequences of labor precarization.

“It’s been a roller coaster”: insights from performing artists on the COVID-19 pandemic and cultural policy

ABSTRACT Before COVID-19, the cultural sector was already in crisis – suffering from precarious labour conditions, intersectional inequalities and insufficient public funding. During the pandemic, performing artists, particularly the self-employed, were hit hardest due to the difficulties of adapting their work to digital audiences, their fragile and unstable economic situation, and the limited financial support available to them. This article examines from a sociological standpoint how the pandemic has affected performing artists in London and Buenos Aires. We discuss, through online in-depth interviews and focus groups, the work strategies that 73 self-employed workers (musicians, actors, dancers, opera singers and circus artists) have deployed to cope with the crisis. Suggestions are made about how cultural policy can best support the recovery of the performing arts post-pandemic, while also reflecting on what our findings reveal about the prospects of cultural policy and the future of the performing arts in Argentina and the UK.

A basic income for a complex society: Introduction

Proposals for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) have a long history, but a surge of interest since the global financial crisis suggests a connection to growing inequality and insecurity. The pandemic intensified interest through the global explosion in the use of cash transfers. This special issue arose from pre-pandemic debates among Australian sociologists connecting global interest around UBI to emerging patterns of inequality and insecurity stemming from Australia's precarious labour market and expensive housing market. Those discussions broadened to reflect on Australia's colonial history and patriarchal economy, and the potential to recognise more diverse contributions and values. Evolving through the Covid crisis, the issue now incorporates the remarkable alternatives that were, briefly, made possible. The articles reflect both scepticism and optimism towards UBI, but all reveal how basic income can provide a useful lens for Australian sociology – a simple tool responding to an increasingly complex society.

Social Protection as Technocratic Fix?: Labour Precarity and Crises of Capitalism after Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza Collapse

Abstract After the 2013 collapse of Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza garment manufacturing building, the Rana Plaza Arrangement (rpa) provided work-injury compensation benefits to injured survivors and the families of those killed, funded by global apparel brands. This article draws upon qualitative interviews with international stakeholders—including global brands, activists, and the International Labour Organization (ilo)—who developed and implemented the rpa, and survivors who claimed compensation payments. We analyse the rpa as an experiment in transnational social protection, which attempted to recentre labour rights and state responsibility after three decades of neoliberal labour governance. Arguing that social protection can be a technocratic “fix” to restore and make tolerable an injurious economic system, we demonstrate the inherent paradox of attempting to integrate precarious labour into decent and dignified social protection. The rpa’s many failures suggest that state commitment to regulation and organized labour power are necessary ingredients for successful transnational social protection.

Precarious Participants, Online Labour Platforms and the Academic Mode of Production: Examining Gigified Research Participation

In an economic environment defined by precarious and gig-based labour contracts, academic research has been reimagined as a source of income for research participants. In addition, with the rise of online labour platforms, researchers have turned to online labour platforms as a solution to the increasing difficulty in recruitment of participants in research. This present context makes explicit the hidden labour that research participants have always done in the production of research outputs within academia. This paper develops a Marxist lens through which we can understand the material conditions of the circulation of capital through academia and the role of research participants in this mode of production. By developing this broad analytical framework for the academic mode of production, this paper further argues that our present economic epoch of the gig economy and specifically the use of digital labour platforms for academic research, has accelerated the subsumption of research participation as a source of income through the fragmentation of work and the gigification of everyday life.

Precarity in Korean Film Industry: A Cultural Research Perspective

The Korean film industry has achieved remarkable success in recent years. However, the filmmakers behind the scenes have received relatively little attention, leading to precarious labor conditions. This paper aims to shed light on the reality that filmmakers face through participatory observation at film production sites. Commercial film shooting sites were visited and observed 14 times over 3 months. The researcher observed various aspects of the film sites from a cultural research perspective. In particular, the researcher used the theory of flexibility to assess the type of employment, labor process, and socialization of filmmakers. The study revealed that Korean filmmakers experience labor flexibility and are constantly exposed to the risk of extreme work-life balance disruption and job loss. This is due to the nature of their work, which often involves long hours and tight deadlines. The study also found that Korean filmmakers are often underpaid and undervalued, despite their contributions to the industry. The researcher hopes that this study will raise awareness about the challenges faced by Korean filmmakers and encourage further research into this important topic. By shedding light on these issues, we can work towards creating a more equitable and sustainable film industry in Korea.

The informalisation of precarious work in fishing crew: Experiences of Fijian fishers on distant water vessels

This paper examines the experiences of local fishing crew in Pacific Island states who join distant water fishing vessels, drawing on Fijian fishers as a case study for our discussion. Locally recruited and deployed fishers often face precarious labour conditions on fishing vessels and we discuss their vulnerability using three registers of precarious work: unsafe and exploitative working conditions, wage theft, and the lack of mechanisms for compensation after exiting their work on board the vessels. The experiences of many such crew fit internationally accepted criteria for forced labour. We contest the current characterisation of forced labour on distant water fishing vessels as primarily a problem that applies to Southeast Asian migrants. In developing a greater understanding the experiences of Fijian fishing crew, we draw out how their mode of entry into distant water fishing crew work, and location as Pacific Island nationals recruited in port/ fleet states can contribute to their vulnerability to exploitation.

From panic to business as usual: What coronavirus has revealed about migrant labour, agri‐food systems and industrial relations in the Nordic countries

AbstractThis article focuses on migrant labour in Nordic agriculture, wild berry picking and food processing. The starting point is the fear of a food crisis at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic (2020) because of the absence of migrant workers. The question was raised early in the pandemic if food systems in the Global North are vulnerable due to dependence on precarious migrant workers. In the light of this question, we assess the reactions of farmers and different actors in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden to what looked like an unfolding food crisis. In many ways, the reactions in the Nordic countries were similar to each other, and to broader reactions in the Global North, and we follow these reactions as they relate to migrant workers from an initial panic to a return to business as usual despite the continuation of the pandemic. In the end, 2020 proved to be an excellent year for Nordic food production in part because migrant workers were able to come. We discuss reasons why the Nordic countries did not face disruptions during the pandemic, map out patterns of labour precarity and segmentation for migrant labour in agriculture and food production in the Nordic countries and propose questions for further research.