Toward a critical politics of precarity

In recent years, the term precarity has proliferated in the social sciences at the risk of losing its analytical purchase. This review considers the value and limitations of precarity in the various ways it has operated as both a theoretical and political concept. It first traces the historical development of the term in sociology and cognate fields, ultimately arguing for a relational approach to the concept rooted in the analysis of specific labor conditions. It then examines emergent critiques of the (often hidden) political work that the concept of precarity performs. That is, the denunciatory discourse of precarity, ironically, has the potential to uphold normative forms of work and life, including the ideal of full‐time wage labor. Instead, a critical politics of precarity leaves open the question of how precarious labor relates to precarious life and attends to ruptures that offer alternatives to the valorization of waged work.     

Care and community revalued during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A feminist couple perspective

The COVID‐19 pandemic led us to understand and revalue care ethics within our daily lives and communities based on the feminist theory of care ethics. This article is a personal reflection of an academic couple living in Japan as we reflect on our experiences and the challenges encountered in caring for ourselves and our community. We discuss the ideas of care theory mainly: caring‐about and caring‐for, interchangeably in our discussion across the three‐stage categories: Home — A Commonplace; Care Ethics in Community; and Care Ethics for Self. Through these personal narratives, we strive to recognize the struggles of living through the pandemic in a virtually connected world that often disconnects us from self. We foster the idea of embracing care ethics as a starting point at an individual level.     

Migration as a window to empowerment: Nepalese women's experiences in South Korea

ABSTRACT

Migrant women are often described as victims of the global economy: accounts of human rights abuses and economic exploitation have eclipsed more positive accounts of the impact of migrant work on women's lives. Some migrant women are positioned to make use of new opportunities which they see as empowering, in contrast to earlier experiences in their homes or sending countries. This study, based on qualitative interviews with 13 young Nepalese women working in manufacturing and agricultural sectors with Employment Permits in South Korea, highlights a rather positive window of women's empowerment. It shares the perspectives of young, mostly single women who gain self-confidence through their new ability to take care of their family (some becoming primary breadwinners). The women are also able to plan for their economic futures, and report their voices being heard more in important family decision-making. These material, relational, and perceptual improvements are all important dimensions of empowerment. In these experiences, gender intersects with age and other factors to produce a nuanced view of specific young women's experience of migrant work.     

‘Cukup for me to be successful in this country’: ‘staying’ among left‐behind young women in Indonesia's migrant‐sending villages

By examining the aspirations of young, rural Indonesian women who, unlike their parents, want to stay behind rather than migrate for work, we look at how these women's experiences of feeling left‐behind affect their quests for alternative futures. Using a household relational lens, we employ the mediating concept of enough (cukup) to analyse the aspirations of young women wishing to remain at home. By focusing on their commitment to inter‐generational continuity and care rather than a lack of choice, we are able to offset the discourses associated with the culture of migration and its accompanying remittance euphoria. Our findings showed three main reasons for their choice. First, these young women pursue remittance‐funded higher education as a counter to parental sacrifice. Second, staying allows them both to provide the hands‐on care they themselves were denied as children and to pursue meaningful local careers. Third, the idea that migration has been ‘enough’ is a rational response to the social risks with which migration confronts a family.     

The lived experiences of foreign women: Influences on their international working lives

The lived experiences of foreign women were explored to discover influences on their international working lives. Life history narratives were collected in interviews with 12 participants who were female, foreign (nationality differs from their country of employment) and employed or a business owner in the United Arab Emirates. A phenomenological framework of analysis resulted in identification of three emergent themes around life experiences that had shaped participants' working lives: becoming a new generation of expatriates; adjustment to sociocultural change; and centrality of womanhood. The implication of these themes was the influence from lived experiences on the development and professional identity of foreign working‐women. Findings offer insight about influences on the actual and potential economic participation of foreign women for business practitioners and policymakers. A new classification of foreign worker, the ‘foreign working‐woman’ (FW‐W), extends the body of academic knowledge. A research direction is proposed for further international study about influences from life experiences on the FW‐W.     

A Hitchhiker's Guide to caring for an older person before and during coronavirus‐19

Coronavirus‐19 (COVID‐19) has reconfigured working lives with astonishing velocity. Older people have suffered the worst effects of the pandemic, with governments marginalizing or overlooking their needs. Women perform the majority of care for older people, often compromising their working lives and health. Yet in academic articles their voices are often filtered or aggregated in quantitative studies. Based on a weave of personal experiences and secondary research, the article traces a path through UK forms of care and shows how the inadequate response to COVID‐19 stemmed from existing policies embedded in health and social care. COVID‐19 has severed important informal care work, rendering the vulnerable yet more exposed and carers anxious and bereft. Longitudinal research capturing the trajectory of care from the perspective of older people and their carers would lead to improved support hence gender equality.     

The ethics of care and academic motherhood amid COVID‐19

The COVID‐19 pandemic has upended the lives of working parents as they strive to meet the conflicting demands of childcare and professional obligations. While growing evidence suggests the extraordinary challenges to time and work brought by the pandemic, this article explores the pandemic as an opportunity for stillness and reflection, a personal and professional recalibration. Through a personal narrative describing my experiences as an academic and mother before and during the pandemic, framed within the ethics of care, this article brings light to the untenable reality of working mothers pre‐pandemic, explores the ways in which the pandemic has positively facilitated caring relationships at home as well as the reallocation of time and household responsibilities, and argues for policy and legislative action at the institutional and societal levels that support and value the care work of women and men alike.     

INTERACTIONS AMONG ‘OTHER WOMEN’: CREATING PERSONAL AND SOCIAL MEANING

This article examines the experiences of the ‘other women’, non‐academic women, who have created spaces of dialogue in which they are building networks and transforming their lives. It offers an analysis of the psychological and educational barriers they overcome in order to create personal and social change. It shows how dialogic and egalitarian learning and associative settings allow the other women to express their voices and build new proposals for the present and future. This has the potential to present new avenues for social workers and educators in their work with women in general and marginalised women in particular, pointing to more dialogic and egalitarian relationships and dynamics.     

Social workers: a new precariat? Precarity conditions of mental health social workers working in the non-profit sector in Greece

ABSTRACT

Traditionally, in western countries, the social work profession primarily has come into contact with issues of precarity through the lives of service users. This paper introduces precarity in the social work scholarly literature as a feature of social workers’ professional and personal lives. It draws from the findings of a qualitative small study of mental health social workers working in the non-profit sector in Greece. The findings reflect a picture of social workers experiencing precarious conditions as they have become part of the growing phenomenon of the working poor, surviving by loans, experiencing housing insecurity, reproductive insecurity, fuel poverty and unable to pay for their commuting expenses to and from work. Furthermore, the paper maintains that the expansion of the conditions of precarity to university-educated professionals, such as social workers, needs to be understood within an International Political Economy (IPE) perspective in order neoliberal capitalism which brings rising levels of inequalities to become a focus of intervention.     

Precarious leisure: (re)imagining youth,transitions and temporality

ABSTRACT

The precarity of young people’s transitions to work has been a longstanding focus in youth studies. As Furlong and others have demonstrated, processes of social, political and economic restructuring have led to a pronounced instability for young people entering the labour market. While the notion of labour market precarity has gained attention, the ‘contamination’ of precarity into other spheres of life such as leisure has been less developed. This article seeks to extend these debates through interrogation of the concept of ‘leisure precarity’. Drawing on a qualitative study of youth leisure in Glasgow, it argues that temporal anxieties have reframed young people’s experiences and understandings of leisure such that young people have come to fear ‘empty’ or unproductive time. The pressures of juggling work and study, or looking for work, meant that most participants in our research had limited time free for leisure, and temporal rhythms became fragmented between past, present and future. The paper argues that these multiple and contradictory leisure dispositions reveal new forms of individualisation and uncertainty, as well as traditional patterns of inequality, thereby bringing youth transitions into dialogue with the study of precarity in the twenty-first century.     

A post‐socialist legacy in transnational families: Russian and Polish women in Finland

In this article, we bridge the analytical gap between transnational anthropology and the anthropology of post‐socialism to explore the transnational family lives of Russian and Polish women in Finland. We point to three interrelated aspects of the post‐socialist legacy – (1) an inclusive understanding and practice of family that involves the interactions of immediate and extended family configurations; (2) intergenerational solidarity among women; and (3) feminine subjectivity built on the socialist ideal of a working mother. Our ethnographies illustrate that Russian and Polish women maintain their transnational families through networks of transnationally dispersed extended families. In women's lives and selves, traditional gendered motherhood and the liberal idea of a working woman are combined and supported by women's intergenerational companionship across borders. Our case studies show that such concrete, informal relations of affection and care provide women with a sense of security and self‐worth amid transnational change.     

Patriarchal bargains in short-term women's migration from Bangladesh

This paper looks at the migration of women from Bangladesh to the Middle East as short-term migrants, mainly for work in the domestic care sector as domestic workers, housekeepers, nannies, cooks, etc. This group accounts for about 15 per cent of the total short-term migration cohort. They face particular challenges around not only the precarity of their employment but also in navigating a series of patriarchal norms in both Bangladesh and the destination countries in the Middle East. The paper will build on the work of Deniz Kandiyoti and her seminal work on patriarchal bargains. This paper will explore the challenges women face in migrating to the Middle East: in their decision to migrate, their experiences abroad, and on return and reintegration into Bangladesh society and their home life, and how these are determined by a series of patriarchal bargains both in Bangladesh and the destination country.     

Beyond labour rights

The protection of workers worldwide is most often sought through reference to the International Labour Organization's ‘core’ labour standards. These rights are, in themselves, of great importance; that said, however, the blanket approach with respect to workers that results from the over-reliance on rights is gender-blind, and incapable of integrating the crucial normative dynamics of relational power, collective responsibility and mutual dependence into its analysis. By contrast, a normative framework based on a feminist political ethic of care allows for a clear picture of the actual, situated, interdependent lives of all people, and is particularly useful in highlighting existing gender imbalances with respect to responsibilities for care work. Globally, women bear by far the greatest responsibility for care work, and that burden has been multiplied exponentially under conditions of globalization. This article will argue that only a care-centred perspective can provide the necessary moral orientation and policy framework through which to begin to solve these problems of gender (as well as race and class) inequality related to both wage labour and paid and unpaid care work, as well as problems relating to the under-provision of care on a global scale.     

Becoming ‘Real’ Entrepreneurs: Women and the Gendered Normalization of ‘Work’

This article focuses on the way in which women entrepreneurs legitimate their place in a gendered economy by reifying a divide between ‘real work’ and ‘not‐real work’. Using ethnographic approaches to follow the everyday lives of several women who own and operate small businesses in the USA, our article documents three gendering practices the women use for ‘becoming real workers:’ embodied, spatial and temporal. The study shows that women entrepreneurs become ‘productive workers’ by recasting reproductive work as non‐productive or not‐real work. At the end, we explore two possible alternative conceptualizations of ‘work’ that could contribute to dissolving this gendered divide.     

Support for Academic Women in Political Science 1890-1945

Between 1893, when the first woman took a PhD in political science, and 1945, about 150 women became political scientists. Support for their professional lives came primarily from other women who were their teachers or their colleagues in women's colleges. Most early women did not marry; those who did found domestic roles detrimental to their careers. Graduate departments channeled women back to women's colleges and did not recruit women for their own faculties. Women are included in the professional organization primarily as representatives of women's colleges. The condition of entry into a secure academic life was to remain sigle and accept a sex-segregated place; but this security did not provide the necessary credential of a prestigious home department for leadership of the nationally organized profession.     

Precarious lives and resistant possibilities: the labour of people with learning disabilities in times of austerity

This paper draws on feminist and queer philosophers? discussions of precarity and employment, too often absent from disability studies, to explore the working lives of people with learning disabilities in England in a time of austerity. Recent policy shifts from welfare to work welcome more disabled people into the job market. The reality is that disabled people remain under-represented in labour statistics and are conspicuously absent in cultures of work. We live in neoliberal-able times where we all find ourselves precarious. But, people with learning disabilities experience high levels of uncertainty in every aspect of their lives, including work, relationships and community living. Our research reveals an important analytical finding: that when people with learning disabilities are supported in imaginative and novel ways they are able to work effectively and cohesively participate in their local communities (even in a time of cuts to welfare). We conclude by acknowledging that we are witnessing a global politics of precarity and austerity. Our urgent task is to redress the unequal spread of precaritization across our society that risks leaving people with learning disabilities experiencing disproportionately perilous lives. One of our key recommendations is that it makes no economic sense (never mind moral sense) to pull funding from organisations that support people with intellectual disabilities to work.     

The Relational Contexts of Migration: Mexican Women in New Destination Sites

This article assesses Mexican immigrant women's experiences of isolation and autonomy in three new destination sites in Montana, Ohio, and New Jersey. We highlight six case studies from our cross‐comparative data set of in‐depth interviews and field work with 98 women to illustrate the intersections between contexts of reception and gender relations in shaping women's settlement experiences. We find that women in sites with a concentrated Mexican population and a well‐developed social service infrastructure are relatively autonomous in accomplishing daily activities independent of their relationships with husbands or partners. In contrast, for women living in sites with few social support services, relationships with the men in their lives, what we call their “relational contexts,” matter for women's experiences of isolation or autonomy outside the home. Relational contexts have not been emphasized in previous literature on gender and migration but may be significant in shaping women's experiences across varying contexts of reception.     

Public Sector Reform and Women's Work in Poland: ‘Working for Juice,Coffee and Cheap Cosmetics!’

The debate on the transformation of work in east central Europe has concentrated on the restructuring of employment in manufacturing to the detriment of any discussion of the transformation of work in the service and public sectors, where the majority of women are employed. Moreover, while it is frequently recognized that women have been hit hard by job loss and unemployment, less attention has been paid the changing experiences of women in work. This article looks at the profound impact of market‐driven reforms in the Polish health and education sectors implemented in the late 1990s, and considers their implications for women and their work. It reports on interviews with a cross‐section of women workers in schools and hospitals and with trade union leaders at both the national and branch level. The impacts of the reforms and the experiences of women workers are discussed through the themes of changing employment levels, the restructuring of working conditions, job security, wages, training, and the double burden of balancing domestic and work lives. The general findings are that although the impact has been highly uneven between workplaces and regions, in general women have experienced an intensification of work and deteriorating working conditions. Their personal lives are not only more stressful due to the pressure at work, but also the double burden of paid and domestic work has increased due to the marketization of public provision. In both sectors, the response to reform has been widespread and militant industrial action, which has gained considerable political attention. We therefore also focus on how women have contested change, both passively and actively, through trade unionism and other political practice.     

The impact of infertility on men's work and finances: Findings from a qualitative questionnaire study

The impact of infertility on the emotional, social and relational aspects of men's lives is now more widely understood. Yet the impact of infertility on men's working lives and financial status remains largely overlooked. Drawing on a qualitative questionnaire study into men's experiences of infertility (n = 41), this article examines how work and finances are managed and negotiated during infertility, including treatment cycles. Three key themes were identified from our thematic analysis: managing infertility in the workplace; compromised job performance, (in)security and progression; the financial burden of infertility, suggesting that infertility can have significant implications for men's working lives, including their identities as productive workers. The impact had a gendered dimension, with threats to masculine‐relevant breadwinner roles and career ambitions. Awareness and management of infertility as a chronic health condition could be a useful way for employers to support disclosure of infertility and to allow men to navigate infertility and their working lives and identities in less stress‐inducing ways. This article contributes to our growing understanding of the stigma men experience in relation to infertility and how such stigma may intersect with masculinity in general and breadwinning in particular.     

And roses too: How “Better Work” facilitates gender empowerment in global supply chains

Women's increasing entry into paid work has not been accompanied by a corresponding change in the gender division of unpaid labor in the household and community. Though women participate in the labor market, the expectation is that they will also take responsibility for the household. To what degree does women's waged work in the garment industry transform gender norms and dynamics in their home lives? To what extent do the choices they make translate to their household-level empowerment? This practice-focused article examines these questions by looking at data collected on gender dynamics at work and at home in the clothing industries of Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kenya, Lesotho, and Vietnam. While women's empowerment through garment sector employment remains circumscribed by low wages, financial insecurity, and gendered expectations, we find that international interventions, namely the International Labor Organization's Better Work program, has expanded women's abilities to exert agency over their earnings within the context of household resource allocation and has decreased the negative effects of ongoing and systemic financial precarity.