Precarious Labour Research Articles

Envisaging Just Energy Transitions in Jharkhand: (Re)Interrogating the Politico-Economic Entanglements of the Private Regimes of Extraction and Accumulation

One of the major concerns around in coal mining and extractive regimes more generally in India has been the role of the private sector in managing precarious labor environments through intermediation, which has deep political roots. While the state–corporate nexus is well established in the coal mining sector, we observe here that an important part of sustaining productivity and profitability from mining has been the organized intermediation of private subcontractors who work between formal and informal coal economies and between coal companies and communities. This paper seeks to historically situate the emergence of these private entities and the nature of competition between them. Additionally, it elucidates how political machinery is deployed to manage such conflicts and competition. The paper argues that while competition among different private entities occurs at the profit level, the internal conflict and its efficient political management contribute to seamless accumulation—both primitive accumulation and surplus value accumulation—within the coal economies by preventing organized labor resistance. It concludes by arguing that without a nuanced understanding of the politics of the “private” within the coal economy and its accumulative regimes, any attempt at Just Transitions will fail to comprehend the multifaceted nature of exploitation, co-option, and negotiation within such regimes.

Degree of Concern and Awareness of Spanish Consumers About Working Conditions in the Clothing Industry

The clothing industry has experienced global and sustained growth in the last decades due, among other factors, to the decentralisation of production in this sector and its consequent lowering of prices, but also to the effect of the unceasing demand that fashion generates. Simultaneously, the number of people employed in the textile sector has been growing in economically developing countries under precarious labour conditions. The objective of this study is to analyse the level of knowledge and awareness of the Spanish population about the working conditions in clothing manufacturing at production sites. To achieve this, we applied statistical analysis to data collected from a sample (n = 3000) of Spanish fashion consumers. The main results show a society with a high degree of concern for labour conditions in the textile sector, as well as for the environmental repercussions triggered by this type of production. Considering the differences based on socio-demographic variables, we find that women, older consumers, and respondents with higher education show a greater degree of concern about the working conditions in the clothing industry. Along the same lines, respondents who are ideologically left wing present a higher degree of concern than respondents from the extreme right.

Precarity and agency in youthspaces of work: The case of food delivery platform workers in Athens, Greece

The growth of digital platforms is spawning new, if often precarious, forms of work. One such type of work that has particularly grown in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, is that of digital platform-facilitated on-demand food delivery services. Such deliveries are often undertaken by younger workers. Given this, here we explore the following research questions: (i) what forms of labour precarity are found and reproduced in the physical and digital spaces that young food delivery platform (FDP) workers create and inhabit?; and (ii) what types of agency do FDP workers develop within these spaces in order to navigate – and sometimes resist – precarity? Drawing upon concepts from critical Youth Studies, Geographical Political Economy and Labour Geography, the article develops the concept of precarious youthspaces of work to investigate the connections between youths’ everyday lives and the production of space. To do so we present a qualitative study conducted in Athens, Greece, that sought to capture the multifaceted working arrangements of FDP workers, both offline and online. Our analysis reveals that FDP workers suffer various forms of labour precarity which they must navigate. But such workers are not just accommodating to precarity. They have also generated forms of collective oppositional agency that are reshaping local labour markets. However, whilst their agency has sometimes generated solidarity and robust collective movements it has also led to divisions that have limited cooperation amongst FDP workers.

On Pipelines and Precarity: Competing Narratives on the Roles and Functions of Postdocs in South African Higher Education

It is broadly understood that postdoctoral research fellows (hereafter postdocs) play a significant role in higher education’s research outputs, teaching and learning, and the rating and ranking of an institution. Largely shaped by the neoliberal turn(s) in higher education from the late 1970s and 1980s, postdocs have become an indispensable yet precarious labour force that higher education institutions have come to rely on. In the South African context, research on postdoc fellowships is relatively new, with limited scholarship focusing on the narratives and voices of these marginalised scholars. In this article, I purposively recruited and interviewed 23 former and current postdocs in three research-intensive universities in South Africa as well as a university vice dean of research, and a former senior official of the Department of Higher Education and Training. I also consulted and analysed various South African higher education policy documents and ministerial articulations regarding postdocs in the country. Through the use of in-depth semi-structured interviews, two competing narratives emerged from the data—that is, the deeply rooted and entrenched idea of the postdoc system as a pipeline for novice researchers to transition into established scholars, and the idea of the postdocs as precarious scholars whose academic labour is insecure, unstable, and exploited in the university. I conclude the article with some broad systemic implications on the role and function of postdocs in South African higher education, and the need for more research to understand these marginalised scholars.

Changes in the problem and subject field of labor sociology against the backdrop of the time challenges (Based on publications in the journal “Sociological Studies” over 50 years)

Trends in the problem and subject field of labor sociology were identified by referring to the Sociological Studies journal publications for 1974–2023. An array of 351 articles on labor sociology was selected for qualitative and quantitative content analysis. Eleven problematic subject areas of research were identified by the criterion of the leading target of the article’s text. Fourtime frames in Russian society and economic development over the past 50 years have been distinguished to identify the time challenges that vary in content. Each period was provided with a brief description of the content of the research problem and subject areas, as well as interpretations thereof with due consideration of the time challenges. Analysis of the publications permitted to reveal that by the criteria of how frequent and stable the sociologists’ referrals to the selected areas have been, the core, the margins, and the mobile realm may be identified in the Russian sociology of labor. The core is formed by the areas related to the studies of labor attitudes, labor incentives, labor values, employee behavior, and job satisfaction. The areas – whose principal object of study is labor itself, along with its role and significance in both the society and the employees’ values as well as social problems of work at the enterprise – are adjacent to the core. The margins are formed by rare areas of research such as the workers’ capacity to act, manifestations of independence and involvement in the organization’s affairs, problems of the socioeconomic standing of workers and degree of labor protection, labor culture, shortage and reproduction of workers. The mobile realm of labor sociology is composed by the areas treated generally depending on the context of time and the aggravation of particular problem situations (labor organization, labor relations, precarity of labor, etc). We observed adequate coverage of the critical time challenges in publications in all those time frames; however, that coverage was reactive and appeared to lack forward-looking ideas that are ahead of theory and practice.

Poverty constructions and discursive strategies employed by participants in the Finnish Basic Income Experiment

In this article, we examine how eighty-one participants in the Finnish Basic Income Experiment discursively construct and make sense of their own and others’ poverty in face-to-face interviews. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), we identified three discursive strategies the interviewees use to engage with and challenge culturally dominant poverty discourses. First, poverty was constructed as a tragic experience attributed to external causes beyond individual control, such as precarious labour markets and governmental policies. Second, poverty was managed discursively through explicit and implicit moral judgements about other welfare recipients, which also highlighted the speakers’ own moral values regarding responsibility and self-sufficiency. Third, some interviewees discursively constructed their low-income status as a personal and deliberate choice to live an intentionally modest, sustainable or ‘deviant’ lifestyle. Overall, our results reveal how ideologically controversial sociopolitical experiments create a particular argumentative context in which poverty talk is constructed.

Regeneration, predatory inclusion, and migrant experiences in declining rural areas in Spain and Germany

ABSTRACT Declining rural areas have become central sites for migrant settlement. In the hope that migration will counteract rural shrinkage, migrants are increasingly portrayed as catalysts to revitalize communities. This article critically examines migration to declining rural areas vis-à-vis rural reception and regeneration policies. Drawing on qualitative research including interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observations, we compare migrants’ settlement experiences and their positions in rural revitalization processes in northeast Spain and eastern Germany. Our research illustrates that local reception and regeneration policies do not only sideline the role of newcomers as rural place-makers, who contribute to the sustainment (or expansion) of local services and infrastructures. They also result in conditions of ‘predatory inclusion’, in which migrants’ settlement is shaped regarding their potential ‘use’ for revitalizing local economies and housing markets in exploitative terms and along racialized lines. Facing precarious labor and housing conditions, migrants tend to reside only temporarily in our investigated areas. This article contributes to a growing body of migration research in rural areas and explains that attempts at regeneration through migration can run the risk of ignoring migrants' structural conditions, needs, mobility aspirations and life plans, thereby reinforcing racial and class-based inequalities present in rural areas.

Publishing, Precarious Labour Relations and Sexual Violence in Academia

Publishing, Precarious Labour Relations and Sexual Violence in Academia

Webtoons, Desperately Seeking Viewers: Interactive Creativity in Social Media Platforms and Cultural Appropriation of Global Media Production

Webtoons optimize interactivity and participation of media users in the world of digital media by consolidating a unique digital culture. This article examines the role of users in interactive media by exploring the case of webtoons in the context of a changing global political economy and cultural dominance. Korean platform monopolies have established a new business model for webtoons and developed it as a center of Korean creative power. While webtoons have increasingly expanded and attracted the global market and the global audience, some persistent social issues remain, including the precarious labor structure, monopolistic power in the industry, and ideological dominance in content. Although webtoon viewers are often recognized as cultural intermediaries and powerful agents for their contributions to interactive creativity, their role has fluctuated according to changing political-economic structures and industrial strategies. In the course of expanding to the global market and to new business areas such as intellectual property (IP), webtoons have evolved in new fashions while disclosing the ambivalent nature of participatory media and digital interactivity. This article elucidates the double faces of interactive creativity focusing on viewers’ participation in webtoon production in the context of changing webtoon industry and growing partnership with global media.

“But on Sunday, They Are Free”

This article examines the site of the home in Baby Ruth Villarama's 2016 documentary Sunday Beauty Queen to better understand how tomboy migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong mess up and queer domesticity. By focusing on the appearances in the film of the home of Leo Selomenio, a tomboy Filipino migrant domestic helper and organizer of Sunday beauty pageants, the author explores alternative modes of care performed by tomboys that refuse respectability politics as they operate within transnational migrant labor structures. Despite the regulatory and confining modes of racialized and gendered care that structure global care work, Selomenio reconfigures and reshapes his home to operate as a site of refuge, an archive, a gathering space, and a site of resistance. Engaging in what the author terms “tomboy domesticity,” Selomenio utilizes his control over home space and time as a result of his exemption from the live-in requirement of his work to ensure collective survival in the face of labor precarity. Selomenio's performance of care ethics that refuse the state's neglect of domestic helpers articulates tomboy and diasporic Filipino life as valuable outside of its capacity to labor.

Between acceptance and resistance: Conceptualising migrant platform labour agency in Chile

AbstractDigital labour platforms are transforming labour markets worldwide, and migrant workers are pivotal in this transformation. Drawing on a qualitative study in Chile, we uncover how Latin American and Caribbean migrants navigate and resist platform labour conditions, considering the algorithmically controlled and surveilled aspects of food delivery platforms, as well as the impact of migration status on their work. We contend that understanding migrant labour agency requires examining both the platforms' socio‐technical structures and the host country's migration policies. These policies determine workers' migration status, shape their work experiences, and consequently impact their resistance to precarious labour conditions. We introduce the concept of migrant platform labour agency to illustrate the various forms of resistance migrants employ in navigating the platform labour market. This concept contributes to understanding the nuances in migrants' labour agencies, which range from acceptance to resistance, considering the interplay between the migration policy environment and platforms' socio‐technical assemblage.

The poster boys of aspirational labor: parables of success and failure in The Viral Fever’s web shows

Abstract Aspirational labor has been understood by scholars based in the Global North to encapsulate a form of labor undertaken by social media content creators that is mostly uncompensated for, but is, nonetheless, integral to the functioning of its economy. While this dominant theorization of aspirational labor is sometimes helpful for explaining the precarity of digital media labor in countries of the Global South, its uncritical application could also be severely limiting. I undertake a close textual analysis of select web shows created by the entertainment brand and YouTube content creators The Viral Fever (TVF) to demonstrate how it would be imprecise to see them as just victims of an exploitative economy. My article shows how TVF web shows consistently imagine elaborate cinematic narratives that valorize and embody the neoliberal values of aspiration and individual growth that in turn is complicit in the machinations of platform economy’s extractive affordances.

Risks, demands, and health damages faced by nursing workers in confronting Covid-19

This article aims to analyze how nursing work processes have impacted the health of workers, taking into consideration the risks, demands, and potential damages. Nursing work is characterised by a demand for care that affects workers on various levels: physical, emotional, and psychological during the pandemic, there has been an exacerbation of labor precarity, increased exposure to risks and demands stemming from their work processes, and consequently, health damage. A mixed-method approach was employed, using the triangulation strategy of three data collection techniques: questionnaire surveys, focus groups, and individual interviews. It was found that the majority of participants are women, aged between 30 and 39, identify as having a brown skin color, work as nursing technicians, and have been employed in hospitals specialising in severe Covid-19 cases. The thematic categories identified were workload overload; lack of breaks or facilities for physiological needs; absence, improvisation, or inadequacy of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE); noise; health damage: fatigue and illness. These categories have corresponding variables that, in turn, were statistically associated with health damage, such as muscular disorders, sleep disturbances, mental health issues, and dermatological problems.

Alternative Media: Free from State, Market, and Capital(ism)? On the Antagonisms of Alternative Media and the Alternative Economy

This work discusses the potentials, limits, and problems of alternative media in capitalism. It compares alternative media to commercial media and public service media. A model is introduced that compares commercial and non-commercial media projects. Its dimensions are the economy, work, production, and communication. Dilemmas of alternative media are analysed. As an example, a conflict at the Austrian free radio station Radio Orange is analysed. The paper discusses the political economy of alternative media. Alternative media such as free radio stations have set out to do media in a way that is different to capitalist media. In this context, the role of the audience as media producers and the rejection of the market, capital, and commodities are important aspects of alternative media. The analysis shows the problems and antagonisms that non-commercial, alternative media face in capitalist society. They struggle to establish independence from markets, capital, and the state. They face the problem of how to deal with these antagonisms which results in the alternative between adopting to capitalist pressures or operating as small-scale niche alternatives with small audiences and precarious labour. The paper concludes that material aspects and the political economy of alternative media need to be taken seriously. Not selling commodities and not paying wages puts many alternative media at a disadvantage vis-à-vis commercial media.

Humanitarian capitalism: The labour regime of aid and the surrogate welfare state in times of global displacement

Recent literature on the geography and political economy of humanitarian migration governance has highlighted the diverse circuits of economic value being forged through ‘refugee crises’ across the world. However, there is a noticeable gap in the examination of what kind of labour relations sustain these new economic circuits. Additionally, there is limited analysis of how humanitarian labour practices intersect with existing geographies of labour precarity in regions where refugee aid operations are conducted. This article aims to address these gaps by exploring the dominant labour relations within the changing landscape of private and public service providers in Greece following the 2015–16 European ‘refugee crisis.’ The article argues that the growth of the refugee aid sector in Greece both capitalised on and exacerbated ongoing processes of labour market deregulation and public sector contraction. The burgeoning aid sector operated as a surrogate welfare state, relying on devalued local labour to address the basic social reproduction needs of global ‘surplus populations’. Extending discussions on the political economy of migration industries beyond profit-making to account for their role in transforming the welfare state and labour relations in spaces of accentuated capitalist crisis, the article demonstrates how the emergency temporalities of aid funding, the rise of public sector managerialism, and employment protection liberalisation impact migrant-facing services, effectively serving as both anti-labour and anti-immigration policy. Furthermore, it illustrates how politically induced migrant ruination is used as a lever to intensify and moralise humanitarian labour in a feedback loop detrimental to both working-class locals and migrants.

‘Fettered mobility’ and translocality: Irregular farm workers and the informal labour market in rural Taiwan

Investigating the multi-layered mobility of Southeast Asian irregular farm workers in rural Taiwan, this article examines the formation of their mobility in a physical, geographical, occupational and socio-economic sense. Focusing on frequent movement in these four aspects, this article coins the term ‘fettered mobility’ for workers’ constant relocation in the villages’ informal farm labour market. In tandem with the focus of this Special Issue on the ongoing transformations of migration at the crossroad between the legal, social and economic obstacles dictated by nation states and the market, and new patterns of movement, this article shows how ‘fettered mobility’ is an unintentional result of the Taiwanese state’s mobility regime, which regulates foreign nationals’ mobility by categorizing a hierarchical legal status. Fettered mobility is facilitated by the translocal migrant community constituted by the co-ethnic link between migrant workers and migrant spouse farmers, and also by the inter-ethnic link between the migrant community on the one hand and Taiwanese farmers and unlicensed brokers on the other. When migration is reconfiguring at a global, regional and local scale, fettered mobility is an assemblage in which the state, market and individual amalgamate into a networked, mobile, irregular and precarious labour force in which unprotected migrant workers are vulnerable to the state’s power to repatriate. Repatriation is an omnipresent threat, and anyone who knows of a migrant worker’s fettered mobility can put an end to their migration. Presenting fettered mobility as an assemblage, this article enriches the ongoing debate on the relationship between mobility and immobility and underlines its conditionality and instability.

Vulnerabilidad y Precariedad Laboral: estudio de casos sobre la situación de los trabajadores de delivery en Paraguay en el contexto de la pandemia del COVID-19 (2020-2021)

La pandemia del COVID-19 evidenció el crecimiento exponencial del sector de reparto o delivery en Paraguay. Este trabajo de investigación busca indagar en las situaciones en que este sector se desempeñó durante ese periodo, específicamente, tiene como objetivo conocer las condiciones laborales de los trabajadores de este rubro. La estrategia metodológica desarrollada es un estudio de caso de carácter exploratorio, con un enfoque cualitativo, utilizando entrevistas y análisis de fuentes secundarias. Para la selección de la muestra, se tomaron los siguientes criterios de inclusión: el ejercicio del trabajo en el sector del reparto y la presentación por parte de los trabajadores de demandas de violación de derechos laborales y la residencia de estos en el Área Metropolitana de Asunción. Los resultados, aunque no generalizables, muestran que el trabajo de reparto en el contexto de la pandemia del COVID-19 presentó situaciones recurrentes de vulneración de derechos laborales.

Neoliberalismo e a uberização do trabalho

In the global context, the spread of the neoliberal paradigm in the brazilian labor market, driven by technological progress, intensifies the precariousness of work, with Uberization being a determining factor in the reconfigurations and challenges imposed on workers. This study aimed to understand Uberization, outlining its emergence and expansion through digital platforms, analyzing its impacts on different sectors of the labor market in Brazil. The research, characterized as a qualitative narrative review, encompassed works in the databases of Google Scholar and Scielo, using descriptors such as "Uberization," "work flexibility," "informalization," and "work precarization." In light of the literature, it is concluded that Uberization, resulting from the intersection of technological advancement and the neoliberal paradigm, enhances labor precarity, giving digital platforms a central role. This understanding is imperative for addressing the impacts on workers, requiring deep reflection, the formulation of public policies, and the implementation of social strategies.

Söndrade kroppar, invasiv bemanning och prekära anställningar. Intersektionella perspektiv på försörjning, lönearbete och social reproduktion

While wage labor has been celebrated as a means of women’s emancipation within Swedish gender equality policy, unequal workplaces, the prevalence of sexual harassment, precarious working conditions, and work-related health issues indicate that wage labor also entails serious problems for many women. This article examines how unstable working conditions and work organizations built on precarious labor and flexible staffing strategies impact women’s well-being. Through feminist intersectional perspectives on social reproduction, the analysis sheds light on the risks posed by current work models to workers’ health, work capacity and liveability. The article is based on survey responses among retail workers. Their responses show that working life in retail is characterized not only by precarious employment conditions but also by invasive staffing strategies. The consequences are precarious livelihoods, stress, and limited possibilities to leisure time and social relationships. The lack of opportunities to recover highlights how workers’ bodies bear the brunt of companies’ pursuit of precarization. Building on theories of social reproduction and an analysis of working conditions in retail, we call for a deeper examination of the role of wage labor in feminist strategies.

Precarious labour geographies of working holiday makers: querying sustainability

The boundaries between tourism and migration are blurry. This blurring has been beneficial for the governments of wealthy countries enabling them to import a large and flexible temporary workforce that can be directed toward regions and industries where there are labour shortages. Such is the case with the Australian Working Holiday Program (AWHP); a historically tourism-focused cultural exchange program that began in 1975. Since the 1990s, the Australian Government has leveraged the AWHP to support several of Australia’s critical industries. This has been achieved through the tweaking of mobility infrastructures that link Working Holiday Makers’ (WHMs) ability to stay in Australia to employment conditions. Such conditions increase precarity among WHMs, directing them towards remote regions and industries where there are evident labour shortages. While these mobility infrastructures significantly benefit Australia’s economy, they result in WHMs being highly vulnerable to exploitation. Such vulnerability is layered with WHMs from less wealthy, non-English-speaking countries facing the highest levels of vulnerability. This study investigates the way mobility infrastructures in the AWHP influence WHMs’ mobilities, as well as how such mobilities are experienced in uneven and unjust ways. There is urgency to interrogate the role that such programs play in contributing to unjust mobilities, and to query the attendant implications for sustainability.