Abstract
Guy Standing,
The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class
, London and New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011; 192 pp., AU$29.95 (pbk).
Since 2004, EuroMayDay marches and other protest events have been graced by the presence of San Precario, visual symbol and ‘rhetorical device’ (Tari and Vanni, 2005) for the precariat – with, indeed, his own ‘back story’. While this subversion of traditional Catholic tradition is of recent – and, naturally, Italian – origin, the first use of the term ‘the precariat’ is unclear. In this book, Standing suggests that it was ‘first used by French sociologists in the 1980s’ (p. 9), but in 1952, Catholic Worker Movement co-founder Dorothy Day cited a letter from ‘a saintly priest from Martinique’ who used the term (Day, 1952). One wonders what Day and her correspondent would have thought of this new ‘saint’.
Etymology aside, Guy Standing has produced a work that appeals to a broader audience without being overly populist. It is a major task to write a book on ‘big’ and somewhat difficult issues for a broad readership. It is not particularly an academic book, although it is a great read for academics and students. Rather, it is a work of popular social science – that avoids being ‘pop’ social science – for a wide audience.
Building on work he has done over more than two decades, Standing characterises ‘the precariat’ as a global but highly fragmented set of class formations characterised by multiple forms of insecurity, including but not limited to job insecurity. The term ‘dangerous’ is used with irony. On the one hand, there appears to be little threat of such a diverse group turning into a powerful social movement any time soon (‘Occupy’ and other protests across the world about various issues notwithstanding). On the other, however, the presence of a large and growing group of ‘have nots’ whose life chances have been short-changed is a visible, if as yet impotent, threat to many vested interests.
The notion of the precariat is useful in creating a (highly contested) concept around which to base debate and social change. Standing distinguishes it clearly from ‘the proletariat’ whose lives, however hard, were/are characterised by stable labour. Not only is the precariat in unstable labour, but there is little hope for the future and, for many, things can only get worse.
There are some very incisive chapters, written with great sympathy. The chapter on migrant labour is particularly powerful. Standing, with characteristic stylistic verve, calls this group ‘the light infantry of global capitalism’ (p. 113) and demonstrates how, in myriad ways, migrants are a core element of the precariat – openly used by states everywhere to plug labour market gaps by having few options other than low-waged and short-term work. Standing uses the concept of ‘denizen’ – counterpointed to ‘citizen’ – to describe the many varieties of migrant: from asylum seekers, through undocumented residents, to temporary residents, to long-term residents (although full citizenship rights may still be denied even them). A denizen in common law was not a full citizen and was barred from certain aspects of a country’s life, such as politics. Standing teases out this concept to fully unpack the various types of migrant experience. The various examples from around the world show how shape-shifting are the methods countries use to undermine rights and standards. India, for example, has set up a parallel system of welfare for overseas Indian workers, essentially a form of subsidy to employing countries. Western countries, including Australia, attract skilled migrants with a points system and a list of in-demand occupations, but there is then little support for job-seeking and such people often quickly suffer downward occupational mobility, creating a highly educated class of taxi drivers, child care assistants and security guards, with all that means for health, self-esteem and life chances: a ‘status frustration’ (p. 114) effect. With a proposed new regime for asylum seekers arriving by boat, too many to be housed in asylum centres, Australia will soon have increasing numbers of inhabitants who will live in the community but neither be allowed to work nor be eligible for welfare: the lowest denizens of all. Local variants of the precariat are everywhere.
Standing draws together many familiar employment relations concepts. He examines the ‘time stress’ of the precariat, characterising the time squeeze as leading us to ‘thin democracy’ as well as impoverished family and leisure lives. Issues related to gender and youth also fall under the umbrella. Young people are encouraged, indeed, required, to pursue increasingly ‘commodified’ credentials, but with less chance than in the past of landing a job that measures up to their qualifications. At the same time, they are paying for the pensions of yesterday’s workers, while the value of tomorrow’s state benefits diminishes. All this underlines the point that the precariat is a varied phenomenon, with different degrees of insecurity and attitudes towards it: the ‘grinners’ and the ‘groaners’ as Standing puts it (p. 59). The precarity trap lies in wait, and the precaritised mind starts to become habituated to precarity. So the concept of the precariat is not just a revised view of class relations. It also describes a changing pattern of social relations not limited to work, as the effects of precarity spill over into other aspects of life.
There are strengths and weaknesses in Standing’s approach. The concept of the precariat is so all-encompassing that the reader might be tempted to ask: ‘Who is not in the precariat?’ And the strengths of Standing’s analysis as against a more traditional class analysis are not totally clear to me. Considerably more work has to be done on ‘filling out’ the precarity paradigm. But Standing himself makes no claims to have written any ‘last’ or ‘defining’ word on the subject. His book has a broader political and social purpose: to open up debate. The precariat is us (or our children, our parents, our students and the person down the street) and in Standing’s hands we have a voice rather than remaining an abstract concept. Standing leads us to question what kind of society we really want. This is a humane book written with passion and empathy. As the cover says: ‘Buy [it]… . Or nick/borrow it.’