Precarity

In this book, I identify contemporary developments on the theme of vulnerability within critical theory while also seeking to reconstruct an idea of vulnerability that enables an articulation of the political and demonstrates how it is socially produced. Philosophies that take vulnerability as a moral object contribute to rendering the political, as the site of a specific power and action, foreign to vulnerability. The notion of recognition offered by critical theory does not correct this deficit. Instead, I argue that vulnerability, as susceptibility to a harmful event, is above all a breach of normative expectations. I demonstrate that these expectations are not mental phenomena but are situated between subjects and must even be conceived as institutions. On this basis I argue that the link between the political and vulnerability cannot be reduced to the institutional implementation of moral principles. Rather I seek to rethink the political by taking vulnerability as the starting point and thereby understand the political as simultaneously referring to the advent of a world, the emergence of a relation, and the appearance of a political subject.

Il volume ricostruisce la dialettica fra il rapido consumarsi del movimento '77 e l'affermarsi della precarietà lavorativa nell'Italia del post-miracolo economico, secondo un inedito e fertile approccio interdisciplinare, che spazia dalla storia contemporanea alla sociologia, passando per la filosofia politica, la critica artistica, gli studi giuridici, l'analisi dei processi produttivi e finanziari. Incrociando diversi sguardi metodologici su fisionomia, finalità e saperi di questo fenomeno sociale unico al mondo - autorappresentazione della "generazione dei non garantiti", ovvero la prima leva di giovani che sentiva di non avere un futuro certo e degno perché, orfana del "boom", sarebbe vissuta in un mondo di recessione permanente - si è potuta concentrare l'attenzione sul tornante della storia italiana che ha aperto la "crisi del Sistema-Paese". Muovendo lungo la problematica geografico-territoriale dell'asimmetrico sviluppo nazionale, con una particolare considerazione allo snaturarsi dei tradizionali modelli di eccellenza come il cosiddetto "modello emiliano-romagnolo", e senza tralasciare continuità e fratture con il retaggio sessantottino, si è così arrivati ad affrontare il conflittuale processo di decentralizzazione del lavoro in Italia, nel più ampio formarsi di una nuova dimensione post-fordista e post-salariale dell'organizzazione capitalista occidentale.

Precarity Pilot is an online platform and a series of nomadic workshops that aim at addressing in inventive ways issues faced by precarious designers.

Shaken by the concerns that emerged from our earlier investigations, namely Designers’ Inquiry (2012-2013) and Designing Economic Cultures (2011-2013), Precarity Pilot wants to support designers in re-shaping, re-orienting and taking ownership of the course their working lives.

In collaboration with Caterina Giuliani. The website has been funded by Akademie Schlos Solitude.

How can one walk the line between some sort of financial sustainability and the production of design work t hat critically challenges accepted power structures and discourse? How can one organise a design practice t hat creates space for work that is socially- and politically-engaged and aims for social transformation?

Het werk van kunstprofessionals is van grote waarde voor de samenleving. Hoe essentieel kunst is in het leven van vele mensen, bleek eens te meer tijdens de coronapandemie. Tegelijkertijd is de beroepspraktijk van kunstprofessionals, veelal zzp’er, kwetsbaar.
Hoe kunnen we de beroepspraktijk van kunstprofessionals verstevigen en zo de maatschappelijke waarde van hun werk duurzaam borgen? Dat hebben de universiteiten van Groningen en Maastricht onderzocht in opdracht van LKCA (penvoerder), het Huis voor de Kunsten Limburg, Stichting Kunst & Cultuur (Drenthe) en de Boekmanstichting. Met een literatuurstudie, een enquête onder bijna vierhonderd kunstprofessionals uit Limburg en Drenthe, twee focusgroepgesprekken en een aantal aanvullende interviews zijn de ontwikkelingen in de beroepspraktijk in kaart gebracht. In deze publicatie worden de belangrijkste conclusies en aanbevelingen beschreven.

Ihr Forschungsprojekt beschäftigt sich mit der filmischen Darstellung von Armut und gesellschaftlicher Randständigkeit. Hat der Film als fotografisches und narratives Medium ein besonderes Interesse an diesen, heutzutage auf den ersten Blick ja oft wenig auffälligen Phänomenen? Schon die Frage nach der Auffälligkeit ist interessant. Ich selbst stelle fest, dass ich die Armut auf den Straßen des Stadtteils, in dem ich wohne (Berlin Kreuzberg), ganz anders wahrnehme, wenn ich nach einer Reise aus einer Stadt, in der es weniger sichtbare Armut gibt, nachhause komme. Das eigentlich immer sichtbare Elend wird mir dann deutlicher bewusst, während der alltägliche Anblick von Flaschensammlerinnen, Alkoholikern oder Verkäuferinnen von Obdachlosenzeitungen bei mir auch zu einem Gewöhnungseffekt führt. Gleichzeitig handelt es sich bei diesen deutlich sichtbaren ja nur um die extremeren, öffentlichen Formen von Armut. Die meisten Probleme finden jedoch hinter verschlossenen Türen statt oder manifestieren sich vielleicht daran, dass Schülerinnen nicht mit den Kleidungs-oder Freizeitstandards ihrer Klassenkameradinnen mithalten können, weil der Vater arbeitslos ist und die Mutter nur einen Minijob hat oder so. Ich denke, dass der Film über eine ganze Bandbreite an Möglichkeiten verfügt, Probleme wie sozialen Ausschluss und Prekarität sichtbar zu machen. Die Fragen, die mich vorrangig interessieren, sind die nach den filmischen Mitteln und nach deren möglichen Effekten. Also: Wie wird Armut dargestellt, wie werden Geschichten über prekäre und ausgegrenzte Menschen erzählt und mit welchen Implikationen? Handelt es sich um individuelle Schicksalsschläge oder um politische und ökonomische Zusammenhänge, die filmisch aufbereitet werden? Wie gelingt es Filmen, die Kontexte in den Blick zu bekommen? Was können wir durch die Filme über die Gesellschaft, in der wir leben, lernen? Wie nah erlauben uns die Filme, den Menschen oder den Figuren zu kommen? Da mich dabei, wie gesagt, die gesamte Bandbreite interessiert, möchte ich mit meinem Team auch mit den verschiedenen Gattungen des Spiel-und Dokumentarfilms beschäftigen, und auch mit anderen und neuartigen Formaten wie etwa aktivistischen Webvideos. Jeweils scheinen mir die Gattungen und Medien unterschiedliche Potenziale zu besitzen, um Armutsphänomene zu reflektieren. Spielfilme können vielleicht aufgrund ihrer Dramaturgie und ihrer Figurengestaltung besonders zur Empathie mit den Figuren einladen, während Dokumentarfilme den realen Begebenheiten auf die Spur kommen und damit Wirklichkeitsbereiche für uns im Wort Sinn ent-decken können. Web-basierte Formate wiederum müssen aufgrund ihrer Kürze oft pointierter arbeiten, sind dafür aber meist in mediale Umgebungen eingebettet, die wiederum die Wirkung beeinflussen und durch die sie evtl. eine größere Reichweite bekommen und unmittelbar Diskussionen auslösen können. Anders gesagt: Ich glaube nicht zwingend, dass der Film als Medium von sich aus ein besonderes Interesse an den genannten Phänomenen hat. Aber ich glaube, dass er besondere Möglichkeiten aufweist, um uns damit zu konfrontieren. In welchem Maße und wie diese Möglichkeiten genutzt werden, ist Gegenstand unserer Untersuchungen. Je nach angelegten Kriterien ist das Material, das für die Untersuchung in Frage kommt, sehr umfangreich. Wie haben Sie die Filme ausgewählt? Der Fokus des Projekts liegt auf europäischen Filmen der Gegenwart und der jüngeren Vergangenheit, grob gesagt von den 1990ern bis heute. Mich interessiert, wie wir uns auf diesem Kontinent über unsere Lebensbedingungen und über die herrschenden Verteilungsungerechtigkeiten verständigen. Ein wichtiges Kriterium ist dabei, dass Armut, Prekarität oder Exklusion in den Filmen wirklich zentral thematisiert werden, also dass nicht nur kurz mal eine Obdachlose ins Bild gerät und dann wieder verschwindet. Es geht schon um den genaueren Blick darauf, um die filmische Diskursivierung verschiedener Facetten des sozialen Ausschlusses. Wie groß das Gesamtkorpus tatsächlich ist, wird sich wahrscheinlich erst nach einem Jahr Forschung zeigen, wenn wir als Gruppe systematisch mögliche Quellen wie etwa Festivalkataloge und andere verfügbare Publikationen ausgewertet haben. Momentan verfüge ich über eine Liste, die ich permanent erweitere, wenn mir relevante Filme begegnen, von der ich jedoch sicher bin, dass sie keineswegs vollständig ist. Das sind zur Zeit ca. 100 europäische Spielfilme zwischen 1991 und 2018 und etwa 50 Dokumentarfilme im selben Zeitraum. Natürlich können nicht alle Filme, die wir finden, gleichermaßen detailliert analysiert werden, aber wir werden

Questo volume appartiene di diritto a una vasta corrente - che non può essere classificabile e definibile solo con il termine neoliberismo, ma che lo presuppone come necessità - che crede che l’individuo abbia il dovere di scrivere il proprio destino e di modellare il proprio futuro in base alle proprie e scelte e libere decisioni.
Questi libri fanno appello al potere decisionale dell’individuo e lo investono di tutta la responsabilità di appartenere o no, al gruppo dei vincenti.

This report was prepared for the Toronto Workforce Innovation Group (TWIG). It examines relevant worksite and occupational profiles in Toronto's construction sector. It draws attention to what a more sustainable construction sector, that is more inclusive and responsive to all relevant stakeholders, would look like. The report is divided into two principle sections: (1) a general overview of work in Toronto’s construction sector, and (2) an overview of key occupations, as well as current and projected labour market needs and trends.

The literary rant is a unique mode of expression employed by dispossessed subjects to performatively highlight the mechanisms of their oppression and to create a rhetorical and political subject position from which to speak. The rant relies on the reader's complicity to witness the speech of the other and as such, it is like Judith Butler's rhetorical "scene of address" in which a listener judges the speaker as a recognizable member of society, or not. The ranter's language moves outside the domain of speakability risking misunderstanding in order to confront the limitations of language and the sociopolitical system has cast them out. It is a risk that challenges both the identity of the speaker and the social norms and responsibilities of the listener. Building on Dina Al-Kassim's scholarship on the rant, this article uses examples from Greek journalism and prose to demonstrate how ranting narrators usurp and redeploy sovereign speech to create a spectacle of their own abjection. Dimitris Dimitriadis's "Abomination" and selected stories by Christos Iconomou's Good Will Come from the Sea foreground the ranter's dispossession and explore the disruptive power that this speaking position offers.

Nicolas Wasser critically examines how sexual and racial identities are currently being articulated through capitalist brands and labor. On the basis of an ethnographic case study about a Brazilian fashion enterprise, he shows how young – lesbian, gay and black – sales employees take part in the ambivalent promises put forward by diversity management. Their affective labor, the study argues, is at the center of new and global- ly unfolding regimes of the precarious. Readers will thus find a rich sociological ac- count from the Global South on how neoliberal logics of self-optimization both tra- verse and charge the aspirations of the minoritized.

Ante la imposibilidad del mercado laboral de absorber la mano de obra disponible, y la dificultad para hacer frente al pago de los subsidios, los discursos ensalzando el autoempleo se han multiplicado en diferentes campos: las políticas públicas, los medios de comunicación, e incluso en las escuelas, donde los valores del emprendimiento están procurando incorporarse a los currículos de los estudiantes durante la escolarización obligatoria.
Sin embargo, el emprendimiento sigue siendo una figura poco frecuente en nuestro país, donde lo que prima, es, más bien, el autoempleo como externalización hacia el trabajador de las responsabilidades laborales que hasta ahora asumían las organizaciones. Las instituciones están animando a las personas en situación de desempleo a autoemplearse, pero, ¿existen medidas reales que contrapesen esa asunción de riesgo (necesidad de inversión, pérdida de la cobertura por desempleo, etc.)? El objetivo de esta comunicación es poner de manifiesto el contraste entre los discursos que idealizan el emprendimiento como solución a las dificultades de la población activa para encontrar un empleo y el contexto real (legal, administrativo, etc.) al que se enfrentan quienes dan este paso.

Autorin: Gabu Heindl. Erschienen in : dérive 34, Wien, 2009

Alles ist Arbeit – oder: Über das Leben in: Cathode Ray Mission oder: Fernsehzellen, Bürozellen oder: Ein Meer an Zellen, Flexiblen Zellen, Mobilen Zellen, Kapseln, Sheep Boxes in Manga Kissa

This paper, through an exploration of the phenomenon of panhandling in Tampa, Florida, and a set of policies that have further marginalized people precariously poised at the outer reaches of community, explores a theoretical framework for understanding the processes of community and precarity. The recent explosion of theories from the field of precarity both deepen the analysis and offer a means of conceptualizing the accretive tendency of the perceived interior and its diffusion in a precarious labor economy, so that the margins and the center are collapsing upon themselves. The aim of this work is to seek an understanding of community, politics and precarity, pulling from the work of Neilson and Rossiter, Isabell Lorey, Judith Butler and Guy Standing. Moreover, this work seeks to offer a means of understanding panhandling as a contingent phenomenon, a manifestation of the current, precarious social, political, cultural moment.

This collectively written article aims to offer a bird's eye view of the Italian debates about precarity in employment and life, as captured in discussions among participants in a focus group held in Milan in 2006. The chief topics that emerged from this discussion include the feminization of labour, feminist practices and methodologies, representation/participation, and guaranteed income. Here, we give as much space as possible to the diverse voices of participants and their strategies for transformation.

This article explores the various ways in which noise acts as an aesthetic marker of precarity in Nick Broomfield's Ghosts, a documentary account of the death of 23 undocumented Chinese nationals in the United Kingdom in 2004. Taking its cue from recent work on aesthetics and the temporalities of precarity, it considers the ways in which the different forms of noise-medial and informational-index the ways in which the figure of the undocumented migrant labourer disturbs dominant western accounts of the aesthetic predi-cated on a division between production and consumption. Noise, in the form of Michel Serres' conceptual figure of the parasite, it argues, registers the ways in which precarious labour has revealed the dependence of aesthetic categories on models of production rendered incoherent by the representation of undocumented migrant labour.

Prekäre Lebensverhältnisse, tiefgreifende Verunsicherung und brüchige Lebensläufe sind meist eng miteinander verzahnt. Heute prägen diese Faktoren den Alltag weiter Bevölkerungsteile. Gerade das soziale Totalphänomen Ernährung erweist sich als fruchtbarer Zugang zu ihrer Erforschung, denn es steht mit der Prekarität in einem Wechselverhältnis.
Im Rahmen von zehn Fallstudien ergründet der Sammelband dies ubjektive Verarbeitung von Prekarität im Spiegel qualitativer Interviews. Die Innensichten der Akteure geben Aufschluss über den Umgang mit finanzieller Armut, (arbeits-)biografischen Krisenerfahrungen, Planungsunsicherheit und psychischen Belastungssituationen.
Das Erzählen über die Ernährung dient dabei als alltagsnaher Indikator subjektiver Verarbeitungsweisen und ihrer narrativen Vermittlung vor dem Hintergrund historisch gewachsener Leitbilder. Auf diese Weise wird nicht zuletzt vor allem auch die Heterogenität prekärer Lebenslagen ins Visier genommen.

This paper explores the value of theorising about colonialism that is specific rather than universal, informed by our locations in colonial struggles and driven by engagement with our continuing material colonial relationships with land, place and people. We do this by examining recent scholarly engagements with our contemporary precarious global economic and environmental conditions, particularly within settler colonial theory. We argue that using analogy to think our way out of material colonial and racial relations can obscure the authority of Indigenous peoples and reproduce colonial epistemologies. This attempt to create solidarity through political equivalence risks reifying imperial relationships and resecuring white possession. Rather than seeking to evade our positions as colonisers embedded in violent political systems, we argue it is possible for colonisers to act in solidarity from a position of complicity. Working towards justice from our own locations involves building solidarity across differences, without first needing to reduce these differences to sameness.

South Korea's economic restructuring following the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis increased deregulation, privatization, and labor flexibility, creating new forms of social precarity. This article examines this precarity to rethink the relationship between macrolevel social changes and microprocesses of social life in relation to urban inequality. Drawing on fifteen months of ethnographic research conducted between 2009 and 2011 and in-depth interviews with twenty-two South Korean young adults, the author analyzes how a host of young adults strive for their belonging as they confront their own social precarity in a highly unequal and rapidly changing urban environment. Many young domestic migrants who moved to the Seoul metropolitan area are precarious workers and vulnerable tenants in emerging forms of substandard housing. Their attempts to reconcile the idealized notion of home and their precarious realities reveal the uneven and hidden effects of neoliberal restructuring.South Korea's economic restructuring following the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis increased deregulation, privatization, and labor flexibility, creating new forms of social precarity. This article examines this precarity to rethink the relationship between macrolevel social changes and microprocesses of social life in relation to urban inequality. Drawing on fifteen months of ethnographic research conducted between 2009 and 2011 and in-depth interviews with twenty-two South Korean young adults, the author analyzes how a host of young adults strive for their belonging as they confront their own social precarity in a highly unequal and rapidly changing urban environment. Many young domestic migrants who moved to the Seoul metropolitan area are precarious workers and vulnerable tenants in emerging forms of substandard housing. Their attempts to reconcile the idealized notion of home and their precarious realities reveal the uneven and hidden effects of neoliberal restructuring.

This paper analyses from a socio-narrative perspective the official music video of the 2009 song ‘P.H.A.T.W.A’, by Canadian-Iraqi political rapper The Narcicyst (“Narcy”). Drawing a distinction between performative and constative forms of self mediation (Austin 1975), I will argue that the video is an example of performative social construction which is prefigurative of emerging epistemologies of the globalised era.

In the sociological version of narrative theory, narratives are considered constitutive, rather than simply representative, of reality (Somers 1994; Baker 2006). They are furthermore not restricted to verbal forms of expression. This being so, recent conceptualisations of affect and precarity in critical theory and cultural studies can be called upon to enrich our understandings of contemporary narrativity by illuminating public spheres (narrative environments) as “affect worlds” (Berlant 2011) where rational or deliberative modes of thought are exposed as increasingly inadequate, masking the precarious nature of many people’s lived identities. In this context, performativity becomes a key political tool for the creation of global communities of affinity for individuals whose identities and values are not accounted for by the dominant narratives of liberal democratic society.

In the case of ‘P.H.A.T.W.A’, I will demonstrate how the narrator-character of Narcy bridges the diegetic and non-diegetic worlds through his rap performance, using both music and humour to assert his identity in a form of ‘conscious individualism’ (Martin 2010) characteristic of the narratives of activist hip hop artists. In using his ontological narrative to critically and creatively engage with the War on Terror meta narrative, Narcy affectively connects with others in a similar position of precarity and enacts breach of the normative epistemological structures of the hegemonic political order, thus prefiguring alternative modes of social engagement and thought.

While work in the media and cultural industries has long been considered precarious, the processes and logics of
platformization have injected new sources of instability into the creative labor economy. Among the sources of such
insecurity are platforms’ algorithms, which structure the production, circulation, and consumption of cultural content
in capricious, enigmatic, even biased ways. Accordingly, cultural producers’ conditions and experiences are increasingly
wrought by their understandings—and moreover their anticipation—of platforms’ ever-evolving algorithmic systems.
Against this backdrop, I urge fellow researchers of digital culture and society to consider how this mode of “algorithmic
precarity” exacerbates the instability of cultural work in the platform era. Considering the volatility of algorithms and the
wider cross-platform ecology can help us to develop critical interventions into a creative economy marked by a profoundly
uneven allocation of power between platforms and the laborers who populate—and increasingly—power them.

En este articulo se presenta una revision de una serie de investigaciones realizadas en zonas dedicadas a la confeccion en el centro occidente de Mexico. Se detectan las principales practicas laborales y las condiciones en las que se combinan los trabajos informales y precarios con sistemas de organizacion de la produccion que se traducen en modelos que no se traducen en el empobrecimiento de los trabajadores, esto sin que se reduzcan las condiciones de competitividad en calidad y precio de los productos. Palabras clave: precariedad, informalidad, industria textil. Abstract This article reviews a group of investigations in areas devoted to clothing in west central Mexico. In this review, we noted that the practices and working conditions in the informal and precarious systems of production, it results in models that do not impact in the impoverishment of workers. However, the competitiveness in quality and price of the products is not reduced. Keywords: precarity, informality, texti...

In the face of a global crisis of social reproduction, welfare states have consistently failed to produce social security for the majority of the world's population. In this context, collective and grassroots practices of radical care have gained meaning as non-state strategies for enduring an unequal and insecure world. Through the lens of welfare state theory, this paper explores both the emancipatory potentials as well as the structural limits and pitfalls of radical care. Its focus lies in contemporary socio-material articu-lations of communities of care/'care-citizenship' and their paradoxical relations with the welfare state. This paper seeks to avoid the reductive dichotomy of communities of care vs. the state that it identifies in the approach taken by many protagonists as well as critics of radical care. To this end, it conceptualizes a paradoxical politics of care-citizenship that is not radically opposed to but rather is engaged in a strategic tension with state institutions, a means of contributing to a democratic and solidary renewal of the welfare state from below.

This book provides a unique insight into negotiations around language investment for employability in the context of public employment services. Drawing on extensive ethnographical research carried out in Regional Employment Offices in Switzerland, the authors follow the stories of various job seekers. In doing so, they challenge the currently dominant assumption that investment in language competences leads to better employability. Arguing for a political economic perspective on these issues, this book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the connections between language and social inequality, as well as students and scholars of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics.

It is common to hear about academics’ personal lives in terms of a lack. We know, for instance, that academics have fewer children, marry less, and work longer hours than those in other ‘professions’ (Mason et al. 2013; NTEU 2015). The growing population of precariously employed academics is understood as especially afflicted, with couples and families needing to move or separate for work, and living with low, irregular pay and limited or no leave. These issues disproportionately impact women, and particularly young women, as this group is overrepresented in precarious academia (May et al. 2013).

Without a doubt, the question of rave culture’s politics – or lack thereof – has polarized debate concerning the cultural, social and political value of rave culture not only within electronic dance music culture (EDMC) studies, but in disciplines that look to various manifestations of subculture and counterculture for political innovation. It is time for the groundwork of this debate to be rethought. Ask not what rave culture’s politics can do for you; nor even what you can do for it. Rather, ask what the unexamined account of politics has ever done for anyone; then question all that rave culture has interrogated – from its embodied and technological practices to its production of ecstatic and collective subjectivities – and begin to trace how it has complicated the very question of the political, the communal and the ethical. This complication begins with the dissolution of the boundaries of labour and leisure and the always-already co-optation of culture. To the negation of ethics, community and politics, this tracing calls for the hauntology of technics, precarity and exodus. And it ends with a list of impossible demands demonstrating the parallax gap of rave culture’s politics.

Germany’s so-called ‘Freies Theater’ (free theatre) exists as a plethora of diverse theatre groups and forms of organizations (collectives, networks, groups) that work outside of institutions and already fixed structures: ‘the conditions of productions are designed by themselves — insofar as the economic constraints allow’ (Annemarie Matzke, 2012). Such a free theatre scene, she continues, thus always works on two levels: on their productions and on the reflection of their own institutionalization: unlike public theatres nominated by municipal politicians, ‘how, with whom and where to produce are among those questions that every project in the free scene has to ask itself again and again’ (Matzke, ibidem).

This article offers reflections on an artistic network of German freelance performing artists, the cobratheater.cobra network, founded at the University of Hildesheim in 2008. Its organizing ideology is one of radical aesthetic autonomy and mobile flexibility: there is no central organizing committee and productions can be realized autonomously by members of the network, thus allowing for a plethora of productions spread across Germany with different institutional affiliations.

This article describes and discusses some of the strategies elaborated by the network in order to continue working and living as mobile, autonomous, free performing artists in contemporary Germany.

Published as part of "small, deferred: On Souvankham Thammavongsa's Writing." Co-authored by Vinh Nguyen, Beth Follett, Anjula Gogia, Bryan Thao Worra, Candida Rifkind, Joanne Leow, Warren Heiti, Guy Beauregard, Denise Cruz, Y-Dang Troeung, and Souvankham Thammavongsa.

Il volume ricostruisce per la prima volta la parabola storica della precarietà del lavoro nell'Italia repubblicana. Dibattiti e azioni politico-legislative sono esaminati parallelamente all'evolversi della percezione e delle lotte di precari e precarie che, dalla posizione di marginalità degli anni Cinquanta, sono oggi al centro di una rinnovata riflessione e mobilitazione sul lavoro. Grazie alla prospettiva storica e di genere, il libro sfata il mito del lavoro precario come problema contemporaneo, fornendo gli strumenti per comprendere i processi di precarizzazione degli ultimi sessant'anni, vecchie e nuove forme di precarietà, il ruolo degli attori sociali. L’autrice ripercorre le principali fasi della storia della precarietà: la sua scoperta negli anni del boom economico, la costruzione del lavoro stabile tra Parlamento e legislazione negli anni Sessanta, l’affermarsi della stabilità e la diffusione di rinnovate forme di lavoro precario negli anni Settanta, l’emergere del paradigma della flessibilità negli anni Ottanta, la nuova ondata di precarietà tra anni Novanta e Duemila, la sua normalizzazione negli anni della crisi globale.

Este artículo condensa nuestros últimos trabajos en torno al emprendimiento y la juventud y los sitúa en el marco de reflexión que Gaceta Sindical propone en este número. Para ello revisamos primero el contexto socio-laboral de precariedad en el que se ha desplegado el discurso del emprendimiento entre la juventud y proponemos la noción de gramáticas del emprendimiento para analizar los mecanismos de reproducción del fenómeno. Tras esbozar el tipo de individualidad, valores y actitudes que promueve el emprendimiento, recopilamos varias figuras analíticas, que denominamos anti-heroicas y que reflejan algunos de los desajustes y efectos no previstos del emprendimiento en una coyuntura de precarización laboral y vital. Finalmente, exploramos varias líneas de reflexión para situar el fenómeno del emprendimiento dentro de las coordenadas que marca la incipiente crisis del COVID-19.

Dlouhodobá nezaměstnanost bývá často interpretována jako důsledek neochoty jednotlivců najít a udržet si práci. Lidé, kteří v současné situaci obtížně nacházejí uplatnění na trhu práce, se však často potýkají s mnoha problémy, které jim brání získat a udržet si zaměstnání.
Bariéry ztěžující zaměstnání vznikají na různých úrovních a jejich účinky se vzájemně násobí. Abychom dovedli situaci těchto lidí řešit efektivně, musíme jim nabídnout podporu, která jim pomůže tyto bariéry překonávat.

Dentro de la Trilogía "Existencias al unísono"

Este epígrafe se puede citar del siguiente modo:

José Miguel Valle, Los sentimientos también tienen razón. El entramado afectivo en el quehacer diario, Editorial CulBuks, Sevilla, 2017, pp.132-134

The United States Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operates the largest confinement system in the country, no small accomplishment in the world’s largest prison system. This article analyzes the US immigration detention system as a series of spatial strategies through which state officials seek to manage and redirect transboundary migration. I argue that while detention works to confine, segregate, and categorize migrant bodies, detention is also a performance of state power. As such, it produces effects beyond deportation. The article will first outline how immigration detention both relies upon and extends the US criminal justice system to open up spaces of arbitrary administrative discretion. I then draw on my research on noncitizen detention and visitation programs to demonstrate how detention is more than a fixing of bodies in space; it is a process of isolation, criminalization, and marginalization. I argue that detention cannot be subsumed under or explained by deportation, and that it plays a key role in the production of migrant precarity in current US immigration and border control.

The South of Ireland never experienced the full impact of the Industrial Revolution but in 2005 was defined as the ‘most globalised economy in the world’ (IDA Ireland). Global companies, primarily North American, outsourced operations to the Republic, attracted by a skilled and flexible workforce where direct cost of employment is among the lowest in Europe and, what continues to be, the lowest rate of corporation tax in Europe.

The title of the project is inspired by a widely utilised flexible economic management system responsive to the needs and demands of the global market which is intended to be implemented not only at the level of the factory floor but critically, to extend to the nation state itself.

The Breathing Factory (2002-2006) addresses the role and representation of labour and global labour practices in this newly industrialised landscape. Global industrial practices are characterised by fleeting alliances, transient spaces as capital moves when and as required. In such an ephemeral, precarious and globalised context, the project focused specifically upon the Hewlett-Packard Manufacturing and Technology Campus, part of a cluster formation of multinational complexes, in Leixlip in the east of Ireland.

Having begun onsite in 2003, following nine months of negotiation regarding access due to the sensitive nature of this highly secure environment and completed over a 20 month period, each visit was pre-scheduled and pre-cleared, being accompanied at all times and thus, the policing of the project is a central concern. The outcome of a practice-led doctoral research project framed by ethnographic understandings in its undertaking, the full installation includes photographs, text-based work, digital video and sound archival material as critical re-representation.


The Breathing Factory (ISBN No. 3-89904-216-6) is a hardback edition with 180 pages & 69 colour photographs/interview excerpts/artefacts.  Essays have been commissioned by Sean O Riain, Chair of the Sociology Department, National University of Ireland, Maynooth and author of The Politics of High Tech Growth: Developmental States in the Global Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Martin McCabe, lecturer and Programme Chair of the BA Photography, School of Media and researcher within the centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice in the Dublin Institute of Technology.

In this article I focus on the fashion industry's relationship to vintage garments as design inspiration and product prototype. I analyse how appropriation of vintage is rationalized in standard industry practice and how ethical boundaries are drawn and maintained between 'appropriation' and 'inspiration' in the creative process. When talking with designers the discussion of inspiration and appropriation quickly becomes a personal and subjective discussion about the integrity of the design process and labour. So any discussion of creativity and industry practices has a responsibility to address the rank and file workers who bring artistic visions to life. Interns and employees in the industry were expected to knock-off other designs and designers while their own creativity was stifled and/or exploited. The central contradiction that emerges from this research is how an industry known for its creativity and ingenuity – notably an industry that polices copyright infringements around the world – routinely engages in practices of forgery that weaken both its claims to authorship and the lucrative status of designer-as-artistic-genius. I contend it is crucial to explore these issues through the situated and local everyday practices in the fashion industry in order to understand how these contradictions are navigated and even made profitable.