Abstract
This volume is the latest comprehensive overview of emerging and evolving scholarship on ‘non-standard’ arrangements of work in advanced capitalist countries. It does not shy away from highlighting the disagreements and gaps in the scholarship on precarious work. Indeed, it engages with them with a view to advance debates in the field. Organised into four parts – theory and method, precarious work in the United States, international perspectives on precarious work, and the consequences of precarious work – the volume delves into varied conceptualisations of precarious work, the difficulties (still) of defining and measuring precarious work, and advantages (and disadvantages) of different methodological approaches.
Drawing upon their previous work, Kalleberg and Vallas set out a definition for precarious work in the introduction: ‘By this term we mean work that is uncertain, unstable, and insecure and in which employees bear the risks of … benefits and statutory protections’ (p. 1, emphases in original). They emphasise that the consequences of precarious work are not limited to workplaces, but spill over into ‘non-work domains’ too. While the acknowledgement of the permeable boundaries between employment and home, family and health – that is, between labour and life (Millar, 2017) – is welcome, they do not query the categorisation of ‘work’ and ‘non-work’ activities despite feminist critique that has drawn attention to the inherently precarious nature of unpaid work (often categorised as ‘non-work’) at home done predominantly by women globally (Betti, 2016; Federici, 2006). This is reflected in the content of the chapters too – only the inclusion of home-based (paid) work in the chapter ‘Informal Employment in the Global South’ by Rogan et al. (pp. 307–334) slightly deviates from the otherwise consistent focus on work outside the home. Their succinct overview of theoretical foundations of ‘precarious work’, encompassing the scholarship of Giddens, Bauman, Beck, Bourdieu, and Butler, among others, is nevertheless useful for placing changing conditions and relations of employment in a wider context.
While Part I specifically focuses on ‘theory and method’, the diverse methodological approaches adopted by all the contributors are insightful. These include aggregate studies of regions (by Pulignano, Mai, and Rogan et al.) that seek to overcome ‘methodological nationalism’ (Pulignano, pp. 33–60); analysis of large and longitudinal data sets, including survey data (Kiersztyn, Wallace and Kwak, Branch and Hanley, Brady and Biegert, Sapkal and Sundar, Witteveen, and Lim) that are instrumental in developing micro–macro links between individuals, social demographics and institutional changes; as well as smaller scale in-depth interviews and ethnographies (Gibson-Light, Zukin and Papadantonakis, Williams, and Rao) that provide rich and incisive commentary on lived experiences of precarity. The contributions not only highlight the value of these diverse methodologies but also outline their limitations. The volume is, as such, successful in emphasising the importance of speaking to one another in progressing the scholarship on precarious work. It is also important to note that consistent across these diverse methodologies, the contributors engage with workers’ own sense of insecurity (in keeping with Kalleberg, 2009 ) to conceptualise precarious work as not restricted to low wages, contract, or part-time work. The chapters on ‘hackathons’ (by Zukin and Papadantonakis, pp. 157–182) and transnational contract work in the UN (by Rao, pp. 429–454) are particularly interesting in drawing attention to the skills, income levels and social lives of ‘precarious’ workers.
The value of this volume particularly lies in addressing criticism and concern regarding the ahistorical and gender- and race-blind discussions of precarious work. Indeed, all the contributions attempt some analysis of social demographics to understand the differential distribution of precarity, tackling the truism that we are all precarious (which we may be but the causes, processes and effects of precarity are deeply embedded in social inequalities). The chapter by Branch and Hanley (pp. 183–214) is useful for clearly setting out the parameters of using intersectional theory to analyse the racial-gender complex in non-standard employment. It is not surprising, but it is also not superfluous, that the chapters draw out the reproduction of inequalities in employment relations in the ‘new economy’.
Finally, although the volume primarily aims to understand precarious work in advanced capitalist countries, it includes two chapters – one on the ‘Global South’ (Rogan et al., pp. 307–334) and one on India (Sapkal and Sundar, pp. 335–361) – in Part III ‘International Perspectives on Precarious Work’. Both these contributions engage with the concept of ‘informal work’ and discuss similarities and differences with the concept of ‘precarious work’, highlighting scope for productive dialogue between emerging and continuing forms and conceptualisations of ‘non-standard’ work across geographical boundaries. As popular discourse poses precarity as a global challenge, it is important to cultivate global engagement on the issue. Further, if precarity is ‘new’ or even a ‘return’ in advanced capitalist countries ‘which have histories of social protections and where the idea of standard work still has some normative force’ (Kalleberg and Vallas, p. 13), regions where ‘standard employment’ is not the same may provide lessons on theorising such work.