Precarious Life Research Articles

Blurring the lines: precarious lives and social reproduction in labour geography

ABSTRACT In this article, I depart from narrow understandings of precariousness as a labour-specific phenomenon to illustrate that broader perspectives can enrich labour geographic research on workplaces and worker agency. I build on recent feminist scholarship in human geography in which work/life and formal workplace/home boundaries are blurred. The findings indicate that worker agency reaches beyond workers’ precarious position in employment, encompassing how they exert control over their social reproduction. Acknowledging caring practices as worker agency, I show how workers shape worker geographies of care, crucial for how they navigate their precarious lives. To support my argument, I draw on two community-led collaborative workspaces in rural Austria and Greece, where work which would otherwise be conducted independently, is carried out alongside peers.

Precarious lives: Exploring the intersection of insecure housing and energy conditions in Ireland

Precarious lives: Exploring the intersection of insecure housing and energy conditions in Ireland

John Boyne’s The Boy in Stripped Pyjamas: A Critique of Bare Life

Nailed to the starve and immolate policy hailed by the Nazi in the concentration camps, John Boyne’s novel, The Boy in Stripped Pyajamas rethinks the immured detainees’ bare lives that have lost socio-political entitlements. The study assesses precarious life of the indentured detainees which ironically implies their inclusion in the holocaust politics. The encamped Jews have lost their biỏs, qualified life which means they are consigned to hold zoẻ, a mere biological life that every living species shares. In addition, it examines their subjectification to killable body. Informed by Giorgio Agamben’s extension of Michel Foucault’s biopolitics especially the notion of homo sacer who is destined to hold the bare life after stripping down of his biỏs, the study probes into Jewish ripped off life in concentration camp surfaced in Boyne’s narrative. Agamben’s notion of biopolitics contours a critical insight to interrogate the politically hacked lives of the immured Jews in a normalized regime of Hitler in Boyne’s narrative. The study critically reads the abject bare life of the holocaust detainees focusing on their outlawed lives. It concludes that Boyne’s narrative constitutes a literary discourse to brood over how Nazi regime rips off detainees’ human position that helps to advocate the human rights of ordinary people

가정 밖 여자 청소년의 자립 과정에 관한 단일 사례 연구 - 이성과의 관계 경험을 중심으로

This study aimed to examine the independence process of out-of-home female adolescent, focusing on their experiences in romantic relationships. To do this, a single case study method was employed to conduct an in-depth exploration of a female out-of-home adolescent undergoing the independence process. This approach enhances the understanding of specific phenomena, issues, and situations while providing rich information about the case. The findings categorized the independence process of out-of-home female youth into three main themes: ‘embarking on a harsh journey of independence,’ ‘needing someone to rely on,’ and ‘dreaming of true self-reliance.’ The category ‘embarking on a harsh journey of independence’ was further divided into the subthemes ‘blindly stepping into the world’ and ‘standing on the edge of a cliff.’ The category ‘needing someone to rely on’ included the subthemes ‘unable to live without a boyfriend’, ‘daliy life shattered by the pain of breakup.’ and ‘realizing that I was the one ruining my relationships’. The category ‘dreaming of true self-reliance’ comprised the subthemes ’breaking free from the past and living in reality.‘ The psychological deficiency and deprivation felt by those who carry the wounds inflicted by their parents in a reality where they are alone led them to form continuously unstable relationships with others. This dynamic acted as both a positive and negative factor in their process of becoming independent. However, despite these experiences, the participants continued to grow. Although they will continue to live precarious lives in an unstable state, the process is not entirely dark. This study is significant as it explores the independence process of out-of-home female adolescent who must navigate life on their own, using their experiences in romantic relationships as a lens.

Community-based Disease Prevention and Health Promotion: Promoting Digital Health Literacy among People in Precarious Living Conditions

The rapidly advancing digital transformation is opening up innovative opportunities for disease prevention and health promotion, particularly through sociotechnical innovations. Digitally-enabled interventions serve as augmentative tools for disseminating health-related information and promoting individual empowerment and self-efficacy. Despite their potential, digital media in community-based disease prevention and health promotion face challenges, such as the need for low-threshold design and consideration of technological acceptance factors. People in precarious life situations, who often face limited access and lower literacy towards digital technologies, could benefit from targeted measures geared to their specific needs. At the same time, it is important to highlight the risks of insufficient digital health literacy, which can have a negative impact on health. Promoting digital health literacy therefore appears to be an essential tool for improving the health situation of people in precarious living circumstances. This article argues for evidence-based and targeted further development of digital interventions for health promotion that are tailored to the needs of people in precarious living conditions and emphasizes the central role of digital health literacy in this process. In this contribution, the area of early childhood intervention is considered for exemplification.

“This was no Swarga”: Negotiating ‘Ecoprecarity’ and Mythology in Ambikasutan Mangad’s Swarga: A Posthuman Tale

In his seminal work, Ecoprecarity: Vulnerable Lives in Literature and Culture (2019), Pramod Nayar defines “ecoprecarity” as the representation of “the precarious lives humans lead in the event of ecological disaster” (7). This concept of ecoprecarity also brings to the surface the numerous ways the dialectics of the environment get “rendered precarious due to human intervention in the Anthropocene” (7). Ambikasutan Mangad’s acclaimed Malayalam novel Swarga: A Posthuman Tale (2017), translated into English by the eminent historian Jayakumari Devika, canvasses the years-long battle against the devastating impacts of endosulfan usage in producing extensive cashew crops at Kasaragod district, Northern Kerala. Neelakantan and Devayani, outraged by the mechanisms of the capitalistic gig economy of the metropolitan space, decide to settle in the remote, peaceful, dense jungles of Swarga to live in a deep symbiotic relationship with non-human entities. The ruinous consequences of chemical pollution at this indigenous site prompt this couple to protest against the degradation of environmental resources in association with the brave, honest journalist Jayarajan. This article maps how the prevailing idea of “ecoprecarity” as an “intertwined set of discourses of fragility, vulnerability, power relations across species” (6) pinpoints the “vulnerability of all lifeforms, their attendant ecosystems and relations between and across lifeforms” (14) in Mangad’s eco-narrative. By foregrounding Hindu mythology as a living ontological framework, this paper further interrogates how the climate catastrophe has become a peril of the rich Keralite culture and heritage as God’s own country in this fiction.

When God Provides

Abstract Drawing from ethnographic research conducted at an Orthodox sociomedical center in Beirut, this article investigates welfare practices situated at the intersection of lived theology and sect-based clientelism. Amid the crises engulfing Lebanon since 2019, the center's activity was shaped by Orthodox models of social activism where “heaven starts from earth.” Theological concepts of service were activated in relation to a divine management that addressed concrete needs and in response to economic uncertainty. Together, they authenticated a pragmatic God working through the center's social and material infrastructures. The human-divine relationality shaped by these models is analyzed in relation to sect-based networks entangled in the everyday lives of Lebanese people. This approach argues for a reconsideration of charity alongside and beyond sectarian models of differentiation and secular ideals of national unity. Focusing on an Eastern Orthodox community in the Middle East, the article is a critical intervention in the anthropology of Christianity. It underscores localized expressions of Christianity by highlighting the social life of theological concepts amid the realities of a country in crisis. Additionally, the focus on religion at the intersection of lived theology and precarious lives reveals the entanglements of Orthodoxy as sect and community of practice in Lebanon.

Black, white, & read all over: is wearing a keffiyeh enough for Palestinian justice?

ABSTRACT Following the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023 levied against Israel, Israel launched an ongoing military campaign in Gaza which many pundits, scholars, and officials have deemed at a minimum disproportionate retaliation if not a genocide against Palestinians. These atrocities spawned international protests which were underscored by a variety of artistic and material cultural artefacts to bring awareness to this violence and demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian people. As a result, the keffiyeh – which was knighted as a political accessory in the 1960s – has reemerged as a central garment of protest for demonstrators in the West [Renfro, E., 2018. Stitched together, torn apart: The keffiyeh as cultural guide. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 21 (6), 571–586. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877917713266]. As an inherently political medium, fashion has a long-standing track record as a vehicle of politico-cultural change. Building from the Ted Swedenburg’s (1990. The Palestinian Peasant as National Signifier. Anthropological Quarterly, 63 (1), 18–30. https://doi.org/10.2307/3317957,1992) pioneering study of the keffiyeh, here, I situate fashion as an integral medium through which to interrogate geopolitical histories and transnational collective action by analyzing the keffiyeh as an object of protest through the lenses of enmity [Mbembe, A., 2019. Necropolitics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press], proximate precarity [Butler, J., 2012. Precarious Life, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Cohabitation. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 26 (2), 134–151. https://doi.org/10.5325/jspecphil.26.2.0134], and vulnerable solidarity [Cherry, M., 2017. State Racism, State Violence, and Vulnerable Solidarity. Oxford University Press].

Resonating with physics: physics students’ stories about existential and affective relations to science in and beyond formal learning spaces

ABSTRACT In this paper, we seek to contribute to understandings about how physics allows reflection on what it means to be human. Drawing on life-history interviews with three university physics students, we explore the affective and existential aspects of engagement in physics, with attention to experiences from informal and formal science spaces. With Hartmut Rosa’s conceptualization of resonance, we show how (intertwined and parallel) relations to physics – as a superstructure, science materials, and people via science – can provide meaningful connections to the world and oneself. The students, all of whom had undertaken adult education, had enrolled in university physics for reasons of awe, joy, and, also, serenity in hardship. Though reiterating common understandings of physics as an ‘objective’ and ‘challenging’ subject, the interviewees described their engagement in physics as salutogenic. Physics provided existential meaning and well-being; e.g. its epistemic character of boundaries and beauty offered stability in precarious life situations. Our study shows how science can be important for (i) reshaping one’s worldview and self-understanding, (ii) fostering meaningful relationships, and (iii) enhancing well-being. We conclude that to cultivate engagement in science, education should prioritize creating meaningful, respectful learning spaces that support students in forming a diverse range of resonant science-related relationships.

How Could It Be Better? Seeking Solutions to the Precarization in the Tourism Workforce

In the tourism industry, businesses have introduced part-time, temporary, and seasonal work arrangements to increase their short-term profits and save on human resources, which are the most significant cost factor. This has led to the formation of a precarious working class in tourism. The question of how to struggle with this emerging problem of precariousness remains unanswered. Strategies to fight against precarious work have become a central focus for academics working in labor and employment and labor organizations. This study aims to reveal the problem of precariousness in the tourism industry and its consequences and offer suggestions. Although there are many studies on the issue of precariousness, there is a noticeable lack of studies focusing on solving these problems in the tourism field. This study addresses this gap by presenting proposed solutions. In the study, a narrative literature review was conducted and a Google Scholar database was used. The concepts of “precarious work”, “precarious employment”, “precarious life”, “precarization”, and “precariousness” were searched and then the concepts of “tourism”, “hospitality”, and “service” were searched together. The study has two main results: (1) The forms of precarious work in the tourism industry and the consequences it creates, and (2) solution proposals to eliminate precarious and adverse working conditions. In this respect, the study aims to contribute to the literature and protect tourism workers' rights.

‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’, or Affect and Ethics in a Spectacle of Distant Suffering: 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War Documentaries

This article explores the rhetorical interplay of affect and ethics in mediated violence within war documentaries, focusing on four films that portray the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war: Motherland (2022), 45 Days: The Fight for a Nation (2021), Invisible Republic (2022), and 1489 (2023). The analysis primarily employs a rhetorical method, while the theoretical framework builds on scholarship from three different areas of inquiry, thus engaging with Judith Butler’s philosophy of ethics, Wendy S. Hesford’s rhetorical theory of spectacle of distant suffering, and Sinnerbrink’s and Rossouw’s ideas on ethical experience through film. The article deploys as a leading trope Emmanuel Levinas’ ‘face’—a concept that communicates both the precarious life of the Other and the interdiction on violence—to gauge the rhetorical gesture in the establishment of relationality necessary for cinematic ethics to be transformational. Finally, the article offers theoretical propositions to better comprehend the intricate entanglements between affect, ethics, and war and their manifestation in the rhetorical choices of war documentary filmmakers.

Skriften som kamp- og arbejdsplads

This article explores writing as both a place of work and a place of battle in the novel Har jeg været her før (“Have i been here before”, 1978) by Sandra Holm. The novel is not a typical worker’s novel in the sense that the main character is not working in e.g. a factory, her job is writing books. but that job also comes with challenges and indeed a precarious life. The novel presents a different type of woman in the 70’s women's literature, a woman who is not a housewife neither a worker, but an artist, that stages herself as a bohemian/flaneur – a position normally held by male writers. The novel contains parodies of male flaneurs that can drink, travel and write as they like, which is not as easy for the female protagonist. furthermore, the protagonist is alone when she is writing and travelling, and therefore also not a part of the women’s movement. in that sense is Har jeg været her før an interesting work, that can shed new light on the 1970’s nordic women’s literature.

Seguir con el problema (de género): la subjetividad poshumana, melancolía y ficción distópica según Mariña Pérez Rei y María Reimóndez

Posthuman feminism abandons the notion of representing a universal subject and questions the phallogocentric and humanist paradigm of the symbolic order. Subjectivity becomes ex-centric, nomadic, animalistic (both personal and communal). This, in turn, allows for the redefinition of certain interiorized narratives in relation to nature, gender, materiality and the body; those schools of thought focus on precarious and vulnerable lives, both human and non-human (Braidotti, 2022; Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2020; Segarra, 2022). Science fiction has become prominent in creating, rewriting and debating the theoretical and political positions mentioned above. Hence, the aim of this article is to analyse through the lenses of ecofeminism, posthumanism, memory, and mourning/melancholia processes three dystopian novels written by Galician women writers: M. Pérez Rei´s Canícula (2007) and M. Reimóndez’s Cobiza (2021) and Multitudes (2022). The article delves into the intricate interplay among melancholy, social transformation, and political engagement, as codified in the analysed dystopian narratives. Thus, we will question the extent to which the dystopian melancholic literature is rife with the peril of succumbing to immobility. We argue that despite their apparent detachment and seemingly apolitical stance, the mourning/melancholia dialectic inscribed in those novels fosters a political and ethical contemplation of vulnerable subjectivities/ communities and agency.

‘Time becomes memory, and memory becomes the ditch in which we drown’: rethinking modes of knowing the past in Ian McGuire’s The Abstainer (2020)

ABSTRACT This article argues that historical novels play a crucial part in rethinking contemporary modes of knowing the past. Drawing on Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics and Judith Butler’s thoughts on precarious life, this article elucidates the close relationship between modes of knowing the past and progressive politics in the present, crystallised in the political concept of grievability. National histories paint the picture of ‘a past without strangers’, in the terms of Achille Mbembe, creating narrow circles of grievability which do not challenge established solidarities and structures of political inequalities in the present. This article goes on to demonstrate that historical novels may subvert this nationalist fantasy through the portrayal of liminal characters in liminal spaces. Ian McGuire’s The Abstainer (2020), set in an intra-European colonial context, continually breaks the frame of what is considered a grievable life by criticising a mode of knowing the past that prioritises mourning the dead over caring for the needs of the living in the present. In conclusion, this article argues that The Abstainer ultimately proposes a radical and paradoxical mode of knowing the past: It urges us to recognise that commemoration of the dead may become an obsessions and justification for acts of violence, and encourages us to rethink not just what histories we tell, but also how we tell them.

Put at and kept from risk: The sexual risk dilemmas confronting marginalized youth.

Put at and kept from risk: The sexual risk dilemmas confronting marginalized youth.

Care as survival and resistance for precarious lives

AbstractWidespread economic and social precarity has made care essential to sustain life while simultaneously unremarkable due to its ubiquity. Failure to attend to care inadvertently accepts associated inequalities and ignores the potential for resistance. I explore in this paper the potential for anthropological investigations of care to overturn assumptions of care as ordinary amid precarity. Drawing on transdisciplinary anthropological, feminist, and disability studies scholarship on care and my own ethnographic work with people with disabilities and their family caregivers in Appalachian Kentucky, I argue care is best characterized as an expansive conceptual frame to understand and contest conditions of protracted precarity. Moving beyond assumptions of care and caregiving as ordinary, I theorize care as a relational, moral, and practical act; situate care within the context of neoliberalism, inequality, and repression; and recognize the persistence of resistance enacted through care practices to center efforts for justice. Care as a focus of feminist scholarship and practice must move beyond oppression. Care is an everyday means for interdependent resistance amid the conditions of precarity, offering vital recognition of personhood and worth for precarious lives. Caring labor sustains life when industrial capitalism cannot. Care persists as a way to survive and thrive amid injustice.

The Unofficial University: Precarity and the Academic Profession

This essay challenges the prevailing consensus that the current depravations of the labor of the American university, primarily precarity and its associated ills, are the result of the neoliberal orthodoxy that dominated the late twentieth century. It offers an exploration of the influence of the nineteenth century German university on the formation of the then nascent U.S. system of higher education. Through this excavation it is shown that along with the foundational principle of wissenschaft as the indissoluble unity of teaching and research came the two-tier employment system of stable employment for some and precarious work lives for many. Understood as the “unofficial university” this analysis suggests that contingency is not a neoliberal virus imported from outside the university but instead a systemic employment feature present at its founding. The essay concludes by exploring the implications of this reassessment of neoliberalism for the burgeoning field of Critical University Studies as it reimagines the university for the twenty-first century as a locus for increasing social justice.

Toward a sociological explanation of anxiety: Precariousness, class and gender among independent musicians

While anxiety is generally explained using an individualistic and biological framework, this article contributes to sociological approaches to emotions, considering anxiety as being triggered by social structural conditions, such as, in the case studied here, an outcome of precariousness faced by musicians in the music industries. Confronted by unbearable forms of anxiety triggered by an uncertainty encompassing all aspects of life, participants struggle to secure ontological security. Although experienced individually, the article reveals (1) how the disadvantages and exclusions associated with gender and class background are unevenly distributed, ultimately triggering different forms of anxieties; and (2) how emotions are differently managed depending on these social variables. Methodologically, the article presents an original study looking at the working lives of semi-professional musicians aged 25–37, based in Paris (France), Brooklyn, San Francisco and Portland (United States), Stockholm (Sweden) and Reykjavík (Iceland). Often considered as being at the forefront of precarious working lives in previous literature, cultural workers embody the current transformation of the psychosocial impact of contemporary precarity. Ultimately, this article argues for a repoliticisation of emotions, considering them as cultural realities and not ‘just’ idiosyncrasies.

Internal bordering and debordering in urban humanitarian health care

ABSTRACT Current literature on internal bordering has suggested understanding health care as a key migration control field. This article takes a closer look at the humanitarian medical offices in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and patients from Romania and Bulgaria in precarious life circumstances. It addresses the strategies identified in the accounts of frontline workers beyond the mere provision of access to free and anonymous medical attention. Based on 16 interviews with medical staff, social workers and administrative officers, two approaches emerged. One clearly strives for the formalisation of the human right to health care in close collaboration with, or by challenging the local bordering actors; the other insists on bypassing any point of contact with them, focusing exclusively on informal and direct solutions. The interviews showcase how the resulting strategies can contribute to internal bordering and debordering on an urban scale, and affect the individuals’ trajectories as patients and as migrants.

Borderline Academic: Precarious Work, Life, and Self

Abstract Casual work is frequently the only option for early career researchers and aspiring academics, but it is steeped in precarity. Such uncertainty in one’s professional sphere inevitably affects stability in other areas, from financial planning to making social commitments, potentially rendering not just one’s career but one’s life precarious. The features of a precarious life are the same features that, when embodied, designate a person as mentally ill: unpredictability, instability, susceptibility to sudden change, existence in a liminal space. Those (professionally or otherwise) diagnosed with a mental illness find themselves perpetually on the border between ill and well, acceptable and unacceptable, subject to and excluded from institutional systems. Nowhere is this paradoxical dynamic more evident than in the nomenclature of the condition borderline personality disorder: the label evokes a state of flux (borderline) that is all-encompassing (affecting the whole personality) and which produces chaos (disorder). Drawing on my experience as both a casually employed academic and a person with borderline personality disorder, this article reflects on the imposition of precarity onto my professional (and, therefore, financial and social) existence. Without promoting the casualization of work, this think-piece also considers the creative possibilities inherent in uncertainty and the generative potential of being ‘on the border’.