Precarity: A Genealogy of a Concept

1. Precarity: A Genealogy of a Concept • Maribel Casas-Cortes + Sebastian Cobarrubias • Post-Doctoral Fellows • Geography Department, UNC-CH

2. Prewhat? • Precarity > to pray, to plead • Precarious literally means unsure, uncertain, difficult, delicate. • Instead of the neutral sounding “flexible labor”, • precarity has a critical connotation referring to living and working conditions without guarantees.

3. Precariedad PrécaritéPrecarietá • It is a term of everyday usage in a number of European countries, where it refers to the widespread condition of temporary, flexible, contingent, casual, intermittent work, brought about by the neoliberal labor market reforms that have strengthened the right to manage and the bargaining power of employers since the late 1970s.

4. Precarity is a general term to describe how large parts of the population are being subjected to flexible exploitation or flexploitation (low pay, high blackmailability, intermittent income, etc.), and existential precariousness (high risk of social exclusion because of low incomes, welfare cuts, high cost of living, etc.) • The condition of precarity is said to affect all of service sector labor in • a narrow sense, and the whole of society in a wider sense, but particularly youth, • women, and immigrants

5. Precarity: analysis & politics • Critical analysis of current trends in the new economy, • Political rethinking of heterogenous class formations. • Precarity is used both as an analytical tool and as a strategic point of departure to produce political subjectivities and re-invent different alliances and ways of struggle. • “ Precarity is a political proposition more than a sociological category” MayDay organizer

6. Conceptual developments • Worsening of Labor Conditions • Qualitative Transformations of Labor • Labor and Migration • Vulnerability in Everyday Life

7. Cartography of the conceptual development of precarity & European precarity struggles Loss of labor rightsQualitative transformations of laborLabor and MigrationVulnerability in Everyday life

8. Loss of labor rightsQualitative transformations of laborLabor and MigrationVulnerability in Everyday life • The use of the term precarity emerged as response to the legalization of temporal, part-time and training contracts. The generalization of these atypical types of contracts were associated with an unstable labor • relationship, normally a lower salary and lessened protections against firing. • Precarity means increasing loss of labor rights historically won by historical workers’ movements in certain European countries. Including quantitative transformations in labor conditions and labor contracts such as: • from full-time to part-time, from permanent job to temp job, from full labor protections to less acquisitive power, less security measures, easier layoffs or less unemployment benefits. • This loss includes other welfare protections such as health insurance.

9. worksite based struggles against flexplotation:general strikes, anti-privatization, interns & unemployed movements • Defensive struggle to prevent the erosion of labor conditions and welfare rights • New demands of free services

10. Loss of labor rightsQualitative shifts of laborLabor and MigrationEveryday vulnerability While the first bubble focuses on precarity as insecurity, as a quantitative deviation that workers should fight to correct back; this second round of responses looks at precarious labor as qualitatively different, with distinct characteristics, that will make it spread as a general tendency beyond workspaces. This conceptual wave advanced two new qualities of labor: 1) intermittency and 2) immateriality.

11. 1. intermittency:Temporary work as permanent condition 2. immaterial labor: Growing use of communicative, affective and intellectual skills during production

12. Loss of labor rightsQualitative shifts of laborLabor and MigrationVulnerability in Everyday Life • Special vulnerability of undocumented workers • The becoming migrant of labor: mobility as fundamental trait of all laborers

13. Loss of labor rightsQualitative shifts of laborLabor and MigrationVulnerability in Everyday Life • A general tendency that affects the overall everyday existence (questions of care, body, city, etc...)

14. Towards a Precarious Workers Day

15. III. The Intermingling of Precarity & Migration Intro: Call for Madrid MayDay 2008 by PD Migrant and Autochthonous workers unite! The Becoming-Migrant of Labor Speaking from the Border: the Biopolitics of Precarity Militant Cartographies of the Border Extension #1: Freedom of Movement IV. Precarity as Uncertain Lives Spaces of Reproduction Feminization of Labor Precarization of Life Precarity & Care Precarity and Body Precarity and the City: Metropolitan Cartographies Extension #1: Reorganization of Care Work V. Archipelago of Cross-Crossing Bubbles: New Social Rights Intro: Precarity as a Platform of new social demands A Conference on, by and for Precari@s? The Archipelago of Criss-Crossing Knitters Social Rights Offices and Agencies for Precarious Affairs Towards Social Movements’ Institutions [Parenthesis for Theoretical/Methodological Speculations] Bubbling as Method Social Movements as Meaning Makers Possible shortcomings of the concept Precarity travels to the USA CHAPTER 6. PRECARITY: TOWARDS A GENEALOGY OF A CONCEPTI. Precarity as Loss of Labor Rightsa. The arrival of garbage contractsb. Legalizing Temporary Job Agenciesc. The decline of traditional union organizingd. Efforts by current grassroots unionisme. Spanish Labor Reforms and the European Economic Policiesd. Flexibilization and the European UnionExtension #1: Welfare as social wageExtension #2: Utopias of no-work Los Lunes al SolRe-appropriation of services and goodsII. Precarity as qualitative transformation of labora. From mall consumer to chain workerb. From McDonalds’ Strikes to MayDay Paradesc. From San Precario to Bio-sindicalism d. Intermittent work as current labor paradigme. Precarity as Immaterial Labor f. Struggles of the CognitariatExtension #1: Free Culture & Copy Left Copy Left Licenses Copy Left and Immaterial LaborFighting for the New CommonsActors in DisputeTowards a Hacking PragmaticsThe Politization of SharingFree Culture logic in Global Justice MovementsExtension #2: Updating Demands FlexicurityCommonfareBasic Income

16. Precarity in Asia? • M Text Text Call for Mayday 2008 in Tokyo