Defining Terms: Problematizing Precarity

The term “precarity” is not limited to work and indeed has been used to broadly characterize a contemporary social condition and to propose an axis of popular mobilization, especially in Europe. In this issue, however, we limit our attention to precarious work.Footnote ² Three definitions of precarity as applied to work are widely used and cited. Perhaps the best known is advanced by Guy Standing in his provocative work, The Precariat. Standing defines the precariat as a social category lacking the seven main forms of labor security: labor market security (adequate income-earning opportunities), employment security (protection against arbitrary dismissal), job security (opportunities to “retain a niche in employment” and access upward mobility), work security (protection against accidents, illnesses, and arduous working conditions), skill reproduction security (opportunities to gain and use skills), income security (assurance of an adequate stable income), and representation security (a collective voice in the labor market).Footnote ³ In contrast, Cynthia Cranford, Leah Vosko and Nancy Zukewich, drawing on Gerry Rodgers's work, define precarity as a “continuum” defined by four criteria: degree of certainty of continuing employment, control over the labor process, degree of regulatory protection (through unions or laws), and income level.Footnote ⁴ Finally, Arne Kalleberg and Jan Breman and Marcel van der Linden narrow the focus to a lone (but expansive) criterion, defining precarious employment as, in Kalleberg's words, “employment that is uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker.”Footnote ⁵ Kalleberg and Kevin Hewison further elaborate this definition, arguing, “Precarious work is a process”—a shift in power between labor and capital, mediated by the state and its policies—not a binary state. They also point out that the impact of precarious work on a worker's life depends not only on the work itself, but also on contexts such as the welfare state: For example, Danish “flexicurity” entails far fewer perils for workers than the Nigerian informal sector.Footnote ⁶

In practice, of course, many researchers either leave the concept implicit (as in most of the articles in this special issue), formulate a new definition they find conceptually preferable,Footnote ⁷ or adopt an ad hoc operationalization based on available data sources.Footnote ⁸ Arguably, Standing's definition is overly restrictive, premised as it is on the intersection of seven criteria. On the other hand, the Rodgers/Cranford et al. relative definition is overly broad, opening the door to any combination and virtually any level of the four criteria. These two definitions offer the choice between a rigorously defined socioeconomic category and a variable economic indicator. Kalleberg's definition is broader than Standing's but narrower than Rodgers' and is posed in a form that allows for either categorical or continuous measurement.

All of these conceptualizations define precarious work in opposition to some notion of “standard” employment. Defining precariousness in this relative fashion throws the concept into question—if “standard” work ceases being standard and/or in situations where “standard” work is absent or nearly so. We explore this issue throughout this introduction, but raise core considerations of distinctiveness, usefulness, and optimality here.

“Precarious employment” is a new coinage, but how distinctive and new is the phenomenon? As we explore further below, in the history of capitalism, precarious work has been the norm around the world outside of a few decades.Footnote ⁹ Even in the golden age of standard employment in the Global North, work's social contract largely excluded women, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and youth.Footnote ¹⁰

The concept of precarity is correspondingly more useful in some times and places than others. Akua Britwum, a Ghanaian scholar, who responded to an International Labor Organization presentation on precarious employment at the 2011 Global Labor University Conference in Johannesburg commented, “What you are calling precarious work sounds like what we in Ghana call—work.” We take this up further below as well.

Finally, how does precariousness stack up compared with alternative terms? In other words, is precarity the optimal term for our purposes? Three main alternatives stand out. One is a set of terms like “flexible,” “contingent,” and “casualized.” These terms are, on the whole, adequate for capturing the narrow definition of precarity as lack of job security favored by Kalleberg, though with less emphasis on consequences for the worker, but fall short if one prefers a more encompassing concept. A second competitor is a set of terms like “nonstandard” and “atypical.” These terms have been used to characterize jobs that are inferior from the viewpoint of workers, and for that purpose precarity is a much clearer and more appropriate term.

In our view, perhaps the strongest rival for “precarious” is “informal.” Following Agarwala (this issue) and others, we define informal work (as distinct from informal enterprises) as labor that creates legal goods or services, but does not offer the standard terms, conditions, and benefits specified for jobs under law—either because the law does not cover these particular jobs or because the law is not effectively enforced.Footnote ¹¹ Agarwala frames this as a relational definition grounded in the relations between labor, capital, and the state with regard to particular work, akin to Kalleberg and Hewison's conceptualization of precarity as process.Footnote ¹² “Informal” does have two main weaknesses. It risks generating confusion between informal work (which, as defined, can take place in the formal sector) and the informal sector. Additionally, it combines self-employment with employment by enterprises—an issue if one is particularly interested in studying the evolution of the employment relationship. However, “informal” also has strengths. Though defined in relative terms, it is meaningful as long as there are labor and employment laws making it useful in times and places—such as Ghana—where “standard” work is far from standard. As Agarwala (in this issue) observes, “informal” is widely used and meaningful in India despite including about ninety percent of the workforce. “Informal” also connects with a broad, four-decade literature on informality anchored in the Global South, but it increasingly analyzes the Global North as well. There is also evidence that from a “class for itself” viewpoint, combining informal self-employment with other forms of employment may be quite appropriate: Agarwala (this issue) reports that self-employed informal workers view themselves as exploited workers making demands on capital, and a major Nicaraguan street vendor leader expressed the same view to coauthor Tilly, even describing self-employed street vendors as “part of the proletariat.”Footnote ¹³

We do not seek to adjudicate among the competing terms in this essay. All are both evocative and analytically useful; none are universally accepted. We privilege the word “precarious” in our special issue title because of its broad and expanding currency in Europe, Latin America, the United States, and Australasia. Most authors in the issue use the term “precarious,” but there are exceptions. Sarmiento et al. use “informal.” Agarwala uses both words interchangeably—but uses them to refer to the definition of informal work.

Historical Development of Precarious Labor

There is now a vibrant international discussion of the causes of precarious work, the characteristics of precarious employment, and efforts to gain greater social protections for precarious workers. However, this discussion has two important limitations, which we address in this and the following section. First, this discussion focuses on the very recent rise in precarious labor in contrast to the Fordist era, implicitly suggesting that the golden age of postwar capitalism was the historical norm. In contrast, several authors argue that the Fordist moment of standard employment relations with social protections was the historical exception. In this context, we need to understand current patterns of precarious work within a much longer historical time frame and to recognize it as the norm through much of recorded human history. Second, the concept of precarious work has been too narrow in its geographic scope. Emerging from intellectuals and social movements battling work insecurity and welfare state retrenchment in the Global North, the concept of precarious labor tends to assume that Europe and the United States represent the norm of labor relations. However, precarious labor has long existed in the Global South, but it has taken different forms than in the Global North. Further, some scholars argue that the current rise of precarious work in the Global North in some ways emulates patterns already present in the Global South, thus reversing the post-World War Two developmentalist narrative according to which developing countries would follow a path of industrialization and mass consumption already charted by developed nations. We compare precarious labor in the Global North and Global South in the next section.

While most of the scholarship on precarious labor focuses on the loss of stable, protected employment in the United States and Europe since the mid-1970s, this short-term historical frame misses the larger story of precarious labor. Indeed, van der Linden traces precarious labor back to ancient Greece, where individuals who were unattached to the oikos or household sought out intermittent employment without the support of the household. He also finds references to day laborers in the Bible. Further, landless laborers were widespread in medieval Europe. In short, there is evidence that precarious labor was present and widespread throughout much of recorded human history.Footnote ¹⁴

Precarious labor was also common during the early period of industrialization in Europe and the United States. As Kalleberg notes, most US jobs were precarious prior to the New Deal. Examples include the “shape up” in which dockworkers sought employment for the day in the United States and Europe as well as seasonal agricultural labor.Footnote ¹⁵ Breman and van der Linden note that the beginnings of social welfare legislation were evident in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, addressing child labor, public health, water quality, and food safety, among other issues. While these laws did not create stable employment relations, they were the beginnings of government efforts to address the needs of the whole population.Footnote ¹⁶ Further, Richard Edwards and David Montgomery describe the employer-initiated welfare capitalism of the 1920s through which business owners provided housing, healthcare, and other services to their employees, but these programs were often steered toward loyal workers and therefore should not be seen as providing universal protections.Footnote ¹⁷

An important shift occurred after World War Two in the United States, Europe, and, to some extent, Latin America when a booming economy, growing labor movements, and an interventionist state created what we now understand as the “Fordist bargain” or the “standard employment relationship” for many, though not all, workers. An increase in unemployment, health, and old-age insurance, long-term employment contracts, and established workplace-based and legal protections gave an important segment of the workforce a stable income, a rising standard of living, and a buffer against unemployment, illness, and old age. However, this bargain was never universal. Dual labor markets meant that women, members of ethno-racial minorities, and immigrants received poorly paid, weakly regulated, and unprotected jobs. Indeed, the United States and several Western European nations created guest worker programs for immigrants that established working conditions and opportunities for citizenship for guest workers that were inferior to those enjoyed by native born workers.Footnote ¹⁸

The postwar bargain unraveled in the 1970s due to the combined force of the elimination of the Bretton Woods accords; the oil price shocks; heightened competition from Germany and East Asian nations; technological changes in manufacturing, transportation, and communications; and a political backlash against unions, social welfare legislation, ethno-racial minorities, and immigrants from the Global South. Traditional union strongholds shed workers, manufacturers began to subcontract and export manufacturing capacity, a growing service sector increasingly relied on temporary and short-term contracts, employment became more insecure across economic sectors, and informal employment became more commonplace.Footnote ¹⁹ This current setting has sparked discussions among scholars and activists about the rise of precarious work.

Comparing Precarious Work in the Global North and Global South

The trajectory of precarious work outlined above focused almost exclusively on the Global North. How has precarious work differed in the Global North and the Global South? To what extent are we now witnessing a global convergence in labor conditions?

Several scholars suggest that the focus of most discussions of precarious work in Europe and the United States leads us to miss the global nature of this phenomenon and its variations across world regions. For example, Ronaldo Munck suggests that the focus on the standard employment relation as something that must be recovered through political action emanates from the European experience but may not be applicable to postcolonial societies where “standard” employment was not the norm in the postwar era. In the Global South, it may be historically inaccurate to call for a “return” to standard employment relations that did not prevail in the past.Footnote ²⁰

The development of labor markets in the Global South in the twentieth century took a different form from this process in the Global North. While light industry and mining developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the big push toward industrialization occurred during and after World War Two and encompassed a much smaller segment of the population than in the Global North. The rapid process of industrialization and its only partial absorption of the adult work force, a limit exacerbated by massive rural-urban migration, led to rapid urbanization with low levels of employment.

Anthropologist Keith Hart first coined the term “informal sector” to describe the street traders he observed in Accra, Ghana.Footnote ²¹ The International Labor Organization further developed this concept to understand large segments of the population that worked in what are now called nonstandard employment relations.Footnote ²² Migrants to cities constructed self-help housing relying on their own or others' labor, and large segments of the population worked as street vendors and independently employed tradespeople or service providers. All of these activities were untaxed and weakly regulated. Because of the inability of industry to absorb the surplus urban population and weak or nonexistent systems of unemployment insurance, individuals sought informal employment.Footnote ²³

While this system of informal employment in retail and services—and for that matter, in many arenas of goods production—is widespread throughout the Global South, there are also specific regional patterns that deserve mention. One important form of precarious work was the system of mining in South Africa and neighboring countries in which men tied to rural communities migrated to work and live in mining towns under horrible conditions for long stretches of time only to return to their rural communities. Further, the creation of Bantustans under the apartheid regime, in which blacks were forced to live and were permitted to leave only for employment if they held passes, offered workers no guarantees and placed them under extensive surveillance.Footnote ²⁴ Another important example is South Asian workers who attempt to work off debts in Dubai and other sites in the Gulf States while employed in the construction industry.Footnote ²⁵ Indeed, Hewison and Kalleberg note that the poorer nations of South and Southeast Asia export semiskilled migrants working as laborers and domestic employees. Because of their weak legal status, these workers are the most vulnerable to exploitation and work instability.Footnote ²⁶ Finally, though individuals in cities all over the world create makeshift jobs collecting and selling recyclable goods in garbage dumps, particularly elaborate organizational structures in waste picking have arisen in South American and South Asian cities.Footnote ²⁷

During the neoliberal era, multinational corporations have expanded investment in manufacturing and services in the Global South, often relying on short-term, seasonal, or temporary contracts.Footnote ²⁸ Furthermore, even work in the textile, garment, and toy industries can be deadly where capitalist investment in factory buildings and state regulation are deficient, as witnessed by numerous factory fires and collapses in South and East Asia.Footnote ²⁹ Nonetheless, this massive inflow of investment has not undermined the centrality of informal employment in these regions. In this regard, van der Linden, following Anibal Quijano suggests that informal work is a structural feature of economies in the Global South that does not ebb and flow with the business cycle as Marx suggested, whereas it represents a smaller portion of the economy in the Global North. Additionally, precarious workers in the Global North can still rely on limited social welfare benefits that set them apart from their counterparts in the Global South. Nonetheless, van der Linden suggests that the Global North to some extent is now following the path of the Global South because of the growing importance of precarious labor there.Footnote ³⁰

Sectoral Differences in Precarious Labor?

There is little research comparing precarious work across sectors. Indeed, we would suggest that, despite a proliferation of investigations of precarious work, the great bulk of work to date that goes beyond simple description has spotlighted either the evolution of precarity over time, the disparate impact of precariousness on certain populations, and/or individual or household survival activities of precarious workers—none of which grants much insight into the importance of sectoral differences.

This special issue does not change that situation greatly. The structures of articles in the issue on retail work (Kenny), circus work (Zhang), and other specific sectors are not conducive to meta-analytic comparisons. The two articles that pair sectors to investigate informal worker self-organization might appear more promising but deliver few sector-comparative insights. Sarmiento et al., in their contribution, compare Mexican street vendors and US day laborers but end up comparing nations more than sectors. In her article, Agarwala analyzes self-employed workers in apparel and recycling, but her main focus is on cross-sectoral commonalities between workers occupying the same employment status, not differences. Similarly, her more fully developed earlier work on cigarette-rollers and construction workers points to similar processes across the two sectors—though with important differences across Indian states, which she explains with political variables.Footnote ³¹

Despite the paucity of intersectoral comparisons of precarious work, we can suggest a number of hypotheses for future research. First, norms, stereotypes, and recruiting channels often link particular sectors to particular social identities, gendering a job or populating it with immigrants or particular ethnic groups. Since these social identities are linked to differences in power, status, and relationship with the state, such sector-identity pairings are clearly consequential. Second, consider likely sectoral influences on the rate or degree of precaritization or informalization. One is the level of skill involved and the nature of that skill—in particular, employers can less readily casualize jobs that require firm-specific human capital. Another is any legacy of collective control over the jobs. That, in turn, is certainly shaped by workers' structural power Footnote ³² (closely coordinated roles in production and large amounts of capital vulnerable to worker resistance activities, especially in large-scale workplaces) and by public production in relatively democratic regimes. A final precarity outcome that we would expect to be sector-based is the types of risk and uncertainty that characterize a job. Current job security seems likely to be particularly at risk in sectors that are highly competitive and in which labor is relatively interchangeable. Health and physical integrity would seem less certain in jobs that are physically demanding and difficult (such as Zhang's acrobats) or that involve dangerous substances or processes (toxic substances, heavy machinery, extremes of temperature, and the like).

Regarding precarious worker activism, we would foreshadow here a point made by Agarwala, Paret, and Sarmiento et al. in their articles in the issue: Because precarious and informal workers tend to be those with little economic (structural) power, the main arena for activism is politics. But political opportunity structures tend to vary by polity (whether national, provincial, or local) and by identity, rather than by sector. Hence systematic sectoral differences in activism are most likely limited—or mediated—by sectoral correlations with political geography or workforce demography.

In short, neither previous literature nor the articles in this issue shed much light on sectoral determinants of the nature and degree of precarity in employment. However, a number of plausible hypotheses about these determinants seem ripe for investigation. Lastly, there are reasons to be skeptical of the importance of sectoral differentiation in structuring precarious worker activism.

Intersectional Precarity

Experiences of precarious work are not uniform for all workers within and between countries. The collection of articles in this volume present the varied precarious experiences of workers from countries in the Global South and North. Yet, the specific experiences of workers have peculiarities that have to be explored and contextualized. These experiences of labor precarity are complex and shaped by context, race, gender, age, and/or citizenship.Footnote ³³ As such, a multidimensional understanding of precarity is important. Hence Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality, which posits that social categories such as race and gender interact in intricate ways so that men and women belonging to different ethnoracial groups have different experiences of privilege or oppression, is apposite here.Footnote ³⁴ However, the link between the concepts and experiences of precarity and intersectionality is rarely explored in the literature.

Marxist and feminist scholars alike have also linked the vulnerability of workers to their social identities. Indeed for Marx in his “Theses on Feuerbach,” “the human essence is . . . the ensemble of social relations.”Footnote ³⁵ In countries such as South Africa, scholars have spoken of the “triple oppression” of women workers—based on gender, race, and class. The conclusion is that patriarchy, racism (in this case, apartheid), and exploitation reinforced each other for black female workers. The growth of precarious work in the Global North also has a particular character. For example, in the United States, the largest group of vulnerable workers continues to be immigrant workers of color. Their undocumented status creates an added burden of insecurity for international migrant workers.Footnote ³⁶ Moreover, precarity and informality shape identity in the eyes of the workers themselves and in the eyes of society: hence, the importance of “classification struggles” by such workers to define themselves as workers, as defined by ChunFootnote ³⁷ and as explored by Agarwala in this issue.

Intersectional identities bring with them not just a set of stereotypes and other aspects of marginalization, but also a set of actual and potential relations—economic and political, within the group and with external social groups. In the economic sphere, common group identity can constitute a basis for economic solidarity. Networks based on shared experiences and identity can structure job search and recruitment channels, especially for long-distance migrants, and paths of upward mobility (mentoring, entrepreneurship). On the political side, solidarity is once more an obvious corollary. But identity can also shape possible alliances and moral claims—or their opposites. Sarmiento et al., in this issue, point out that the US AFL-CIO union federation has allied with immigrant day labor organizations because its leaders see immigrant workers as one of the few promising avenues for union growth. On the other hand, in much of the world, legislators weighing whether or not to adopt laws protecting domestic workers may hesitate because they are employers of such workers themselves. More generally, since who and where an individual is shapes her/his experiences of social and economic oppression, the history and current experiences of exploitation are not homogenous, and we should expect the responses to vary accordingly.

Histories of Precarious Work and Workers in the South and North: Gender, Race, and Citizenship Matter

This special issue on Precarious Labor underlines the fact that a complete understanding of workers' differing experiences has to take into account their different social and economic realities. Many of the articles foreground the link between precarity and intersectionality, particularly in the first section, a set of historical accounts of precarious work in countries of the North and South. Bridget Kenny, Tracy Zhang, and Eloisa Betti explore the history and experiences of what it means to be a precarious worker in three countries. The three papers identify race, gender, and citizenship as important signifiers of precarious work. First, in South Africa, Kenny shows the continuities between the history of apartheid-generated cheap labor and continuous casualization in the present-day retail industry. She argues that the practice of “regimes of contract” started with apartheid-era pass laws and continued to labor brokering in democratic South Africa. Thus, as Kenny points out, precarity is not a new phenomenon for the majority of black and women workers. She notes that “a fragmented regime of contract by race and skill is definitive to the precarious labor regime in South Africa.”

The second account of precarity depicts acrobats whose work spans China and the United States. The history of Chinese acrobats shows how labor's spatial mobility (in this case, from China to the United States) in the service sector has intensified job and employment insecurity. The global growth of services has also intensified a new form of exploitation, emotional labor, as described by Hochschild in The Managed Heart.Footnote ³⁸ In this second case study, Tracy Zhang investigates how North American entertainment companies, with the active collusion of the Chinese state, recruit and employ Chinese acrobats and offer them low wages and no worker rights. The story of the Chinese acrobats reflects the contradictions of neoliberal globalization.

The third article in this first group explores the gendered experiences of precarity in Italy. Eloisa Betti explores how precarious working conditions of women and particularly female migrant workers have continued and evolved from Fordism to post-Fordism. Betti argues that gender must be seen as a “constant feature of precarious work.” Betti's study of Italy further makes the case for linking our understanding of economic precarity with intersectionality.

All three of these articles highlight the importance of understanding precarity historically. While many things have changed regarding the nature of work, there are obvious continuities and, in some cases, intensification of past experiences of employment insecurity and superexploitation. Yet, the works of Kenny, Zhang, and Betti also suggest possibilities for worker resistance, mobilization, solidarity, and alliances.

As problems of precarious work increase in the Global North and persist in the South, the process creates new spaces for resistance in ways Marx would have recognized.Footnote ³⁹ There is growing literature showing how precarious, vulnerable, marginalized, and exploited workers demonstrate both traditional and innovative responses against neoliberal capitalism. Though responses include individual resistance, of greatest interest here are collective responses orchestrated by labor movements old and new.Footnote ⁴⁰

For example, numerous scholars have explored possibilities of building global union movements.Footnote ⁴¹ Workers have embraced new strategies, experimenting with various types of countermovements and new social movements.Footnote ⁴² Such activities have included worker revolts, the “occupy” movement, recovered factory movements, and many others.Footnote ⁴³ Exploited workers have forged alliances with communities, expanding their focus beyond shop-floor issues to include community concerns about social security, hence the concept of social movement unionism.Footnote ⁴⁴ Trade unions have also experimented with working with states, for example, to change labor laws. In some cases, trade unions forge alliances with political organizations, as in Brazil and South Africa. We next consider these issues in thinking through the remaining articles in this issue.

In Part II of the special issue, the articles highlight the importance, diversity, and ingenuity of solidaristic responses by workers. While some articles show how traditional forms of worker solidarity are thriving in a new context, others also reveal new and innovative forms of power and solidarity.

For example, Marcel Paret explores responses to economic marginalization and shows that in Gauteng (South Africa) and California (United States), workers are organizing in new ways. In South Africa, the working class is making demands on the state to provide communities with basic livelihoods. In a context of high unemployment, a shift from narrow and traditional workplace demands toward community needs has proven necessary. This struggle between the community and the local state opens possibilities for new alliances and challenges the state to provide for its citizens. In California, the focus of May Day protests is partly on low wages (economic rights) but principally about the legal status of noncitizens (political demands). In a context where low-wage workers are overwhelmingly undocumented immigrants, demands for higher wages cannot be delinked from demands for formal legal inclusion.

Rina Agarwala documents ways that Indian informal—self-employed in particular—women workers are building power. Through organizations like the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA), workers are making demands for both welfare and secure wages. A struggle for minimum wages based on piece rates rather than work time, and engaging with the local and national state for welfare measures are innovative ways in which informal worker organizations are leveraging power for their members. India's self-employed workers are also organizing in other ways. For example, Agarwala states that “cooperatives and companies represent an important pathway through which self-employed workers secure their own livelihood while retaining their self-employed status.”

In Mexico and the United States, Sarmiento et al. similarly show that day laborers and street vendors are establishing alternative forms of representation to address economic and political challenges. Such community-based organizations have opened up spaces for new forms of social and political alliances, and thus a new terrain of struggle and possible victories.

The longue durée historical articles by Kenny and Betti in Part I of the issue also offer new insight into possibilities for worker struggles against precarity. In Betti's Italian case study, a workplace struggle for maternity rights becomes an opportunity for community and political mobilization. As she puts it, “The precarity-maternity issue also entered the political agenda of the women's associations in the twenty-first century. In 2006, UDI (the Union of Italian Women) launched the campaign, “Precarity makes us sterile” (La precarietà rende sterili), which testified to the association's continuing commitment to women's work stability, but also its renewed elaboration inspired by both feminist thinking and the claims of a new generation of women who have had to bear the consequences of job precariousness.” Kenny's research shows how trade unions have used state institutions to change a key labor law—demonstrating that cooperation between organized labor and the state can still be important in protecting worker rights. The successful amendments of the labor law, in this case, followed years of bitter struggle between employers and organized labor.

In Closing

To summarize, the histories of precarious work and workers in this issue use their analyses to look more deeply, to look backward, and to look forward. They look more deeply at precarious work itself to discern the contours of exploitation and marginalization, precarity's links to race, gender, and other identity categories, and how these phenomena have evolved over time. They look backward to understand what economic, social, and political—including public policy—forces conspired to deepen or consolidate precarity in the workplace in different sectors and countries at different times. Perhaps most importantly, they also look forward to workers' varied (and variously effective) collective responses to deepening or continuing precarity. This timely set of essays offers tools to understand precarious work, and to change it.