Abstract
As an employment relations (ER) scholar researching in the area of non-standard work, I was very pleased to have had the opportunity to review ‘Precarious Work’ by Kalleberg and Vallas (2018). Bourgeoning scholarly attention has been paid to the growth in, and impact of insecure, nonstandard, and unstable work on workers and society more broadly. This book is arguably essential reading for scholars in this area. While emerging from the sociological field, this book is equally as valuable to scholars in business schools whose primary focus is on organizational and human resource management issues, for example, many aspects of this book complement very well the emerging literature on sustainable HRM (see Ehnert, 2014; Kozica and Kaiser, 2012; Kramar, 2014). The book aims to provide an overview of the development and manifestation of original precarious work in various parts of the world, including the United States, Europe, Asia and the Global South through theory and original research.
The book opens with a chapter by the editors, ‘Probing precarious work: theory, research and politics’, which is a highly insightful and critical overview of the precarious work literature and research to date. Kalleberg and Vallas address some of the theoretical and conceptual ambiguities that remain within the research on precarious work in spite of the significant attention the topic has received from scholars, theorists and indeed policymakers. Thereafter, the book chapters are structured around four main themes. Part I focuses on theory and method in relation to research in the area of precarious work. Part II is more empirical in natures and centres on precarious work in the United States identifying its social, political and economic origins, its manifestations in the, and its consequences for personal and family life. This contrasts nicely with Part III which provides an account of precarious work form a variety of international perspectives. The concluding section Part IV illustrates the consequences of precarious work for workers both in terms of their labour market and career experiences, and more broadly the impact on workers personal and family lives. In reviewing the book, I read each chapter in the order that they appeared, and although linkages are present between various chapters, this is a text from which readers could just as easily choose to select a number of different chapters to read at a given time depending on their needs or focus.
The first chapter in Part I ‘Theory and method’ of the book is from Valeria Pulignano titled ‘Precarious work, regime of competition, and the case of Europe’. This chapter undoubtedly sets the tone for much of what follows in this book by unearthing and dissecting the very basis through which precariousness can be understood – power relationships. Pulignano expertly traces the first gradual, followed by more rapid divergence from the standard working relationship during austerity across European nations. From a scholarly perspective, the chapter provides a much needed discussion of what Pulignano refers to as ‘methodological nationalism’ by taking a European-wide approach exploring the transnational apparatuses that have emerged across different economies. One of the highlights of the chapter is the succinct yet comprehensive overview of the Social Europe model. While the chapter covers virtually all of the European countries, it would have been useful to see a little more discussion of the Anglo-Saxon economies within this given the very current issue of Brexit. The next chapter in Part I ‘Classification struggles in semi-formal employment and precarious work: lessons from inmate labour and cultural production’ takes the reader in a very different direction, both methodologically and also geographically, moving from Europe to the United States. Michael Gibson Light illustrates the findings from two in-depth studies of informal labour, one from the US prison system and the other from the culture industry. Drawing on Bourdieu (1984), the author explores trends in the data from those case studies to demonstrate how semi-formal workers engage in classification struggles. The chapter illustrates the problems that weak institutional structures leave in their absence. The worker voices captured in this chapter made for a fascinating read.
The third and final chapter in Part 1 comes from Anna Kierztyn, ‘Non standard employment and subjective insecurity: how can we capture job precarity using survey data?’. This chapter, I felt was one of the most important contributions to the book. The extant literature on precarious work indicates that lived experiences of nonstandard work are far from homogeneous. However, capturing the discernible difference between what makes work feel precarious or not is notably difficult. Here, Kierztyn sums up the essence of that problem particularly in light of the psychological coping mechanism and reference group status. The chapter also raises issues of the subjective and objective nature of precariousness. For scholars interested in this, from a broader ER perspective, this chapter would be of great interest to read in conjunction with John Godard’s (2014) paper ‘The psychologisation of employment relations’. Kierztyn utilized the European Working Conditions Survey (2010) data to excellent effect. This chapter would provide a good reference for researchers embarking on new quantitative data collection in this area.
Part II of the book begins with a chapter by Michael Wallace and Joonghyun Kwak ‘Bad Jobs in a troubled economy: the impact of the great recession in Americas metropolitan areas’. This chapter is probably as of much interest to economic geographers as it is to ER experts. The section describing the deindustrialization of the past six decades is worth of note in particular, this in contrast with the analysis of ‘college towns’ in relation to low pay highlights so well the educational and class divide that underlies much precarious work. In its own way the next chapter by Sharon Zukin and Maz Papadantonakis ‘Hackathons as co-optation ritual: socializing workers and institutionalizing innovation in the new economy’ aligns with the previous chapters regarding the role of not only an individual’s education level but psychological associations in the experience of precarious work. The chapter details with great clarity the rhetoric of employer led hackathons where talented tech workers are invited to take part in innovation building and networking events where the rewards for involvement are arguably ambiguous at best but are framed in such a way that the events are attractive to participants making unpaid work appear a form of self-investment and promotion. The next chapter in Part II focuses on racial and gendered aspects of precarious work. Scholars interested in intersectionality or cumulative advantage theory will find the chapter on a racial-gender lens on precarious nonstandard employment very informative. The final chapter by Christine Williams, through the use of gendered organization theory, explores the treatment of female scientists during a period of layoffs in the oil and gas industry. This is another excellent illustration of the portrayal of worker voice in this book. This chapter while still centring on precarious aspects of employment would also be of strong interest to diversity and inclusion scholars and indeed practitioners.
Part III of the book brings together a collection of international perspective on precarious work beginning with an account of the rise of precarious employment in Germany, a state often associated as bearing all the hallmarks of a strong coordinated market economy in which workers enjoy high levels of employment security. In this chapter, Brady and Biegert examine the dualization that has occurred within the German economy resulting in inequality and precarity for some groups of workers. The next chapter by Quan Mai links very well with the earlier chapter by Pulignano by examining cross national differences and institutional determinants of work precarity across European countries employing both Varieties of Capitalism (VoC)and Power Resource Theory (PRT) frameworks. While the chapter makes a very strong empirical contribution, a greater discussion of critiques of the VoC framework in light of convergence across European nations would have been welcome. The chapter on ‘Informal employment in the Global South: globalization, production relations and precarity’. The data drawn from the focus groups with workers from Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and South and East Asia illustrate very effectively the role that global production networks play in shaping both formal and informal work in the global south. The chapter offers a thought-provoking conclusion through setting out a clear future research agenda, which would have been beneficial for future scholars. The final chapter in Part III by Sapkal and Sundar presents empirical data from India. Again, the treatment of labour within global supply networks and export industries emerges as a significant determinant of precarious work.
The final section of the book illustrates the consequences of precarious work bringing together three chapters each that explores differing variants of the impact of precarity on workers including career and marriage impacts. Dirk Witteveen provides an interesting account of risk patterns of exposure to precarious careers focusing on the first 4–5 years of an individual’s career where human capital levels are lower given reduced work experience. This chapter would be very interesting to those involved in wither research or policy making related to educational attainment. The second chapter in Part IV explores the topic of precarious work and transition to marriage. Sojung Lim highlights some very interesting sociological findings in this regard, particularly with regard to men’s entry to marriage. The chapter highlights the interaction of two important social issues, declines in both job quality and increasing retreat from marriage. The book concludes with Aliya Hamid Rao’s exposition of the impact of contract work on the personal lives of international early career professionals. The chapter diverges from other additions in the book in that its focus is on a relatively elite group of workers, thus illustrating the breadth of precarious work. The chapter aligns very well with the earlier issues of subjectivity and objectivity in Kierzytn’s chapter from Part I.
Overall, I found this book was very well executed in both writing and structure. One of the key attractive features of the book is that each chapter, taken as a stand-alone text, could be included as recommended reading across a number of undergraduate or postgraduate topics on a range of courses, including labour market economics, the sociology of work, organizational psychology or ER. Indeed, Part II of the book would be a superb addition to reading lists on a research methods course in one of these areas. Taken as a whole, however, the book is an invaluable resource for PhD students and early career researchers in this field considering applied research in the areas of precarious work and job quality.