Precarious everyday agency

Suspect agency

The concept of agency has a long and influential history. In social theory, agency has been invoked to bridge the gap between micro- and macro-level analyses, which has remained a perennial issue for classical sociology. Anthony Giddens (1976) famously noted this in his New Rules of Sociological Method, and in so doing proposed the essential pair of social theory: structure and agency. According to his reasoning, on the micro level, people are not free to choose what to do and when, but they nevertheless become attached to agency, which reproduces social structures and may lead to social change (Giddens, 1984). Similarly, Pierre Bourdieu (1977), beginning from An Outline of the Theory of Practice, sought to reconcile structure and agency by developing a theory of practice, based on the concept of habitus as an interlocutor between the two. Here, ‘external’ social structures become internalised in embodied, social, relational, daily practices, while individual actions become externalised, in social interaction, in relation to the structural fields (e.g. Bourdieu, 1990). Agency has therefore served as an important concept informing questions of concern in everyday life, for example, subjects living their lives through institutions; being supported by or suffering the power of structures; and ‘talking back’ or refusing to interrelate. In particular, feminist post-Bourdieuan theorisation has developed the concept of social agency as always embodied, of power as subtly inculcated through the body and of social action as generative (Adkins, 2004: 4–5; Adkins and Skeggs, 2004).

At the same time, agency as a productive tool in social analysis has been contested on several grounds. One stream of critique attacks the tendency to reduce agency to individual sovereignty. For example, the theory of reflexive modernisation (Beck et al., 1994) proposes that the old ideals, structures and institutions of modernity are in the process of being eroded, so that the former normative powers of society become porous. In this second modernisation process, agency becomes detached, in a state of perpetual free fall and associated with individuation and the increased reflexivity of the individual (Adkins, 2003). Liberated individuals need to continuously make, reflect and negotiate choice, an emphasis that tends to imply conscious, political or public action (like making commercial choices). Meanwhile, the theory may fall behind in dealing with minor, daily and habitual action. What then remains not theorised are the ‘ordinaries’ of daily life, often performed by women, the working class, children, people of colour, disabled people and queers, and consequently, agency as a term tends to remain androcentric and bourgeois (see Adkins, 2002; Skeggs, 2004). Moreover, the implicit idea of agency as individual sovereignty loses sight of the fragile whole of our lives (Honkasalo, 2009). As Lauren Berlant (2011) points out, there are scenes and conditions of being, whereby agency can be ‘an activity of maintenance, not making’, ‘fantasy, without grandiosity’ and ‘sentience without full intentionality’ (p. 100). People inhabit their lives even when worn out or feeling trapped, and there is no logical reason to exclude the minor formations of agency – a ‘small agency’ ¹ – from social analysis.

The idea of an individualised agency is challenged from another angle when the taken-for-granted boundaries between human agency and its ‘outside’ are contested. Haraway (1991) famously observed that developments in cognitive science and computation redefine the boundaries between non-human and human systems, agency and intelligence. Our machines are becoming more sophisticated and ‘intelligent’, and are ready to decode human capacities and to act with humans. Although the decoded agent may attribute ‘more’ agency to agents, this also generates potentially exploitable conditions with respect to contemporary (immaterial, cognitive) capitalism. Provocatively, Papadopoulos et al. (2008: 252) claim that capitalism is currently not at all interested in the links between subjects, agency and power – as it once was – but instead in dissecting and dissolving the working subject, and recombining it into new and productive virtual compositions. If this is true, contemporary capitalism also exploits what were referred to above as minor, daily or habitual formations of ‘small’ agency in constructing a ‘de-individualised recombination of skills, qualities, and capacities’ (Papadopoulos et al., 2008: 252).

Methodologically, as mentioned above, the notion of agency seeks to capture the oscillation between macro and micro. For example, the interview genre presupposes agency as it encompasses active, reflective, meaning-making, socialised individuals, who are able to reconcile themselves as individuals, separate from the environment and from other individuals. Here, the presupposed agency actually equals the definition of self in social theory (Hitlin and Elder, 2007: 173). It follows that the notions of self and agency are not always exclusive. Informants probably take for granted that they give an account of themselves as more or less coherent and contingent actors. Researchers then analyse how the variations of agency are constructed and told, and what agencies are possible and lived.

The aim of this article is to develop a notion of precarious everyday agency as a way to understand the logic and effects of contemporary capitalism. In developing this notion, I wish to avoid the traps of sovereignty and androcentrism, surpass the practical-analytical fusion of agency and self and acknowledge the complexity of ‘small agency’ and possible non-human elements of agency. By using the qualifier everyday, ² I want to make the habitual and ordinary basis of agency explicit. The adjective precarious, for its part, is intended to refer to the fragile and porous nature of human existence in general, but also, more specifically, to connect daily, embodied action to the historical, social, political and economic constellations. Theories of precarisation provide us with an understanding of formations of contemporary capitalism, but the concept of precarisation needs to be modified to incorporate small agency. In what follows, I will explain how this modification is made by concentrating especially on the role and logic of habits in precarisation. I draw on the empirical data comprising a series of group discussions conducted in North Karelia, Finland, among women who identified themselves as living in a precarious situation and who volunteered to provide information about their experiences. In the group discussions, they constructed descriptions of possible and factual forms of everyday agency. I use these group discussions as a jumping-off point to elaborate and highlight the notion of precarious everyday agency. The questions addressed here are as follows: What does it mean to make a living, and to make life liveable, in precarious conditions? How do the women inhabit precarisation, and what is the role of habits and habit-breaking in precarisation?

Precarisation as a mode of agency

The notion of precarisation is not a coherent theory or a single description but rather a bundle of arguments stemming from different trains of thought. For example, Berlant (2012) describes precarity as a ‘magnetizing concept’ and a ‘perfect storm of old stories and new orientations’ (pp. 165–166). She divides precarity into five aspects. First, precarity is an existential problem; all living is precarious because people are contingent beings. However, ‘precarity is distributed unequally’ and thus is ‘not simply an existential condition of individuals, but rather a social condition from which certain clear political demands and principles emerge’ (Butler, 2010: xvii, xxv). Second, precarity is an ongoing economic problem, indicating the link between uncertainty and the capitalist blooming. Capitalism thrives on instability, shaping bodies and minds. Third, precarisation is a problem of the reproduction of life: making a life has become more precarious both in fantasy and materially. The division between work and home life is no longer palpable. Instead, labour takes place as a project, and we must continuously extend our working time because of the precarity of employment. Fourth, precarity refers to the privatisation of wealth and the hollowing of the public sector and welfare institutions since the 1970s, supported by the fantasy of austerity as the new realism. Fifth, precarisation is a way to recognise and organise ongoing class/group antagonisms, by giving a name to political resistance such as in the case of the EuroMayDay demonstrations. ³

From another angle, the precarisation thesis can be divided into two approaches. The first one refers primarily to transformations in the labour market and precarious employment: employment that lacks standard forms of labour security (e.g. Vosko et al., 2009). Another approach regards precarisation as a general, but historically specific, process. In particular, the Italian tradition of post-operaismo (or autonomist Marxists) has given the term a more theoretical twist, claiming that contemporary capitalism is a radically novel version of the capitalism analysed by Marx and Smith. One way to understand this new situation is to call it precarisation, or the process of society as a whole becoming more precarious and basically destabilised, insecure and discontinuous (Berlant, 2011: 201; Jokinen et al., 2011: 7–8). This article adopts this wider post-operaist version of precarisation, and tries to develop it further by taking into account everyday life and habitual processes, which have often remained invisible in previous theorisations.

In an attempt to conceptualise capitalism, precarisation captures the transformation from the Fordist to the post-Fordist model of production, that is, from mass production and mass consumption to the ‘economy of variety’ (Boyer, 2004) and to a world of small series production. Linked to this, precarisation also addresses the degradation of the welfare states in the Global North and the diminished influence of the political left and labour unions (see Berardi, 2005). At the level of everyday life, precarisation entails people being more exposed to social forces than they were during the ‘thirty glorious years’ of post-war economic growth in the Global North (e.g. Moulier-Boutang, 2011). In particular, the power of paid labour as a safety mechanism, a guarantee of social security and of resources to buy services has significantly abated (e.g. Castel, 2003). Precarious employment means diminished labour security and paid work, characterised by limited social benefits and statutory entitlements, job insecurity, low wages and a high risk of poor health (Vosko et al., 2009: 2). A major dimension of precarisation is the changing place of affects and other relational human capacities. In Fordism, these were kept outside production, and out of factories and offices; in post-Fordism, immaterial, relational and cognitive capacities are at the core of the production process (e.g. Hardt, 1999; Veijola and Jokinen, 2008). Precarisation is inhabited and becomes liveable – even habitual – in multiple ways in the materiality of everyday life. It is a mode by which people live, and it is a way to become a worker and subject (Precarias a la Deriva, 2004). Precarisation is a subjective interface in the contemporary situation, and a dynamic force connecting social beings and the circumstances into which they were born.

Precarisation manifests itself differently in different localities – nations, states, regions and territories. I draw in this article on a project carried out in North Karelia in Eastern Finland during 2009–2011. ⁴ The project investigated how people make their lives liveable in a peripheral region with characteristic social problems, such as unemployment caused by the regression of industry and primary production, and with a weak economy dependency ratio, that is, more than 150 persons outside the labour force per 100 persons in the labour force (Official Statistics of Finland (OSF), 2014). At a general level, precarisation in North Karelia has given rise to multiple contradictory social forces. For example, regional policies, which in Finland have been a major tool for generating equality and social cohesion (e.g. Moisio, 2012), have been replaced by workfare politics, which, in a place where not many jobs are available, often means a proliferation of work-try-outs, job coaching, working on a pay subsidy and encouragement of entrepreneurship or self-employment. Many people feel that they should move away in search of work and a better life, but at the same time they want to stay, fearing that life would be even more uncertain, and expensive, elsewhere (Jokinen et al., 2011). The role of education is especially interesting. The North Karelia region is relatively well served in terms of education opportunities, and many people, both unemployed and employed, try to make life less precarious by re-educating themselves. However, this strategy is often undermined by the inflation of education (Vähämäki, 2011:163).

The data were collected from two sets of focus group discussions (as well as by less formal means), one in Finnish and one in Russian. There were six and eight meetings, respectively, each lasting from 2 to 4 hours. The groups comprised 15 women in total and 1 man (in the Finnish group). Out of these participants, 2 were researchers who acted as facilitators. In total, there were 6 participants in the Finnish-speaking group and 8 in the Russian group. All participants had fragmented and dispersed education and employment histories, such as temporary jobs; unemployment; grant periods; re-education for a new profession, language or other skills; and periods of entrepreneurship or freelance employment. All participants were relatively well educated, all having at least an upper secondary education, and they were between 30 and 65 years of age. The discussions were organised as free flowing conversations, covering a range of topics suggested by the research group, such as work history, North Karelia, social networks, sociality, dwellings, forces and choices, income, the functionality of service systems, cars, pets and the future. In the first meeting, the notion and argument of precarisation were also explained and discussed.

Inhabiting precarisation

In the following excerpt, from the Russian-speaking group discussion, women converse around the theme of education and, more specifically, how education as a means of having a good life has become complicated and ambivalent. One of the research participants explains,

I always tell my girls [her daughters] that they should trust their own abilities. You have to study, to get an education. You need to speak languages […]. This is self-evident in order to maintain the possibility of getting a job in ten different places. If there is no work here, then you go to another place. If there is no work there, you go to still another place. There are no alternatives. What can you do? Since one has to stay afloat […]. We talk about this topic so much because I also said that the most important thing is the mind and what you put into your head; that no one can take away from you. It does not burn or disappear. It will all follow you. But finding your way is always pretty difficult; in fact, it is very difficult to find. (Participant 14)

This research participant describes a very contemporary situation, in which there are many options and alternatives in life. In her view, people, and perhaps young women in particular, need to be prepared for all of them, and that they should therefore not stick to anything in particular because: ‘One has to stay afloat’. At the same time, she trusts in accumulating knowledge and skills, but also acknowledges that ‘finding your way’ is very difficult. This account points to an essential mechanism of precarious everyday agency, that is, to the multifaceted and contradictory role of habits in everyday life. In social theory, habits have been described as one of the main attributes or modalities of everyday life (e.g. Felski, 2000) and, following this reasoning, everyday agency can be seen to engender a process of habituation. However, the research participant quoted above suggests that, besides habituation, precarious everyday agency also involves floating, being ready to move and turn – and, above all, being able to endure disorientation.

Bourdieu’s concept of habitus suggests a more complex way to conceptualise habits and agency. Habitus refers to a durable, yet still changeable, disposition, consisting of different social arrangements and possibilities. Habitus moulds actions and feelings, and integrates experiences; it creates a lasting but flexible orientation to action (Bourdieu, 1977: 83). Habitus is not action, but guides action much like a compass, giving one a sense of a coherent self. Habitus is embodied history, internalised as a second nature and forgotten as history (Bourdieu, 1990, 56). Habitus materialises in a ‘feel for the game’, a pre-reflexive level of practical mastery (Bourdieu, 1990: 52). ‘Feel for the game’ is a form of knowledge that is learnt by the body but cannot be explicitly articulated. Bourdieu often uses an example of a tennis player to demonstrate the logic of ‘feel for the game’: her strokes assume a spontaneous and relatively unpredictable form in a match, although they are consciously and mechanically practised (McNay, 1999: 100). When one practises a lot, the game runs smoothly and one can play so that it looks like a natural talent.

Bourdieu’s theory of habitus has been criticised for its limited notion of temporality that mainly limits itself to the past. The layered habitus on the body is a sediment – just as the research participant describes education above. However, she also makes a point about the lasting, but flexible, orientation to action when she says, ‘but finding your way is always pretty difficult’. Adkins (2008) points out that in order to analyse agency, it is necessary to theorise the future as well. McNay (2005) argues that Bourdieu underestimates the autonomy of the agent and aims to return symbolic relationships to predictable social relations. She reminds us (McNay, 1999: 100–101) that the notion of habitus should be seen as a generative structure. Habitus has certain limitations tied to the field, but it generates an infinite number of forms of behaviour, thought and expression that are ‘relatively unpredictable’ and ‘infinitely complex’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 55). Habitus, then, has a temporal structure: it creates and enables. Action is a temporal (and corporeal) intent that both expresses and anticipates temporal structures. Practice engenders the agent’s time. Time passes when an action is carried out (Bourdieu, 2000). McNay (1999: 102–103) stresses that this notion of time reveals uncertainty in even the most routine practices, and so habitus, or everyday agency, is not merely the history or hierarchical system of a society that has been poured over or inscribed on the body. Every moment entails the possibility of innovation and creative action. Repetition makes anticipation possible. In precarisation, every moment also seems to activate the possibilities of innovation and creative action (and floating). Every moment has the potential to intensify anticipation. Rather than ‘a feel for the game’, one often needs to attend to various overlapping games simultaneously. This idea is succinctly formulated by the research participant quoted above when she commented,

You need to speak languages […]. This is self-evident in order to maintain the possibility of getting a job in ten different places. If there is no work here, then you go to another place. If there is no work there, you go to still another place.

In a precarious situation, the temporality of the present is important (cf. Berlant, 2011: 4–5). One of the research participants puts this informatively when she discusses the difficult and happy moments in her life since coming to North Karelia in the late 1980s. She describes the stamina required to endure tough periods:

So that’s the kind of ‘feel for the situation’, for what life is about, like you don’t carry the whole world on your shoulders, you live according to the situation at hand. That is when and if you have a happy moment, then you see things working out, ha. Like, that burdensome things might otherwise get too lively. (Participant 3)

According to this account, one way of engaging with a life situation, which is potentially ‘too lively’ or where ‘your own way’ is difficult to find, is to ‘live according to the situation at hand’. Here, the Bourdieuan notion of a ‘feel for the game’, or several simultaneous feels for several games, often transforms into a ‘feel for the situation’ at hand. This raises questions about the relation between the notion of habitus and the present time. Bourdieuan habitus is successful in explaining why customs, habits or routines are so slow to change. There is the inertia of habitus, as the already self-evident becomes another skin and moulds agency in most mundane everyday settings (see Adkins, 2003). In this vein, habitus keeps people in their old ways and acts as a shelter against the challenges of precarisation. The following excerpt illuminates this layer of precarious agency, as the Finnish group discusses living in North Karelia instead of moving and seeking a job in a more prosperous area in southern Finland:

In the next meeting, the theme is expanded upon:

In precarisation, a rational analysis of the situation (it’s possible to live here comfortably), an emphasis on social ties (family, friends, children’s friends and hobbies) and an identification of the logic of habit are intertwined with feelings of must and becoming stuck. These feelings bring forth yet another temporal aspect of precarious agency, where the linearity from past experiences via present to various types of anticipation breaks down. The present is dominating, providing here not a feel for the situation, but a feeling of guilt and negatively marked feeling of being stuck and being not eager to move. The logic of habit does not function effortlessly or smoothly, but people can and are forced to actively create it again and again in the present. In this way, every moment has the potential to intensify anticipation, and the present is often felt as lively, even too lively. In her study on work and precarious agency, Åkerblad (2014) points out that the insecurity of labour markets increases people’s need to predict and secure the future, and makes it difficult to focus on the present, which leads to restlessness. In this way, essentially the same precarious situation may engender several (possibly contradictory) formations of agency. Habits do keep people on the track, but it seems that people need to constantly reflect where and to what extent the habits should be broken. I will discuss this issue in detail in the next section.

Habits and habit-breaking

In the following excerpt, one of the research participants describes her move from Russia to Finland. Her account gives further information about the contours of precarious agency and the role of habits in it:

I was 36 at the time [when moving]. I had already lived half of my life and I had to start over from scratch. Wherever I turned, the answer was always ‘Oh no’. I was a trained secretary and I was working […] but there were no jobs for secretaries available here in Finland. I was told they had 200 secretaries queuing for a job as a secretary. Besides, working as a secretary in Russia and in Finland are two completely different things. Here they have technologies and computers that we (Russians) have never even seen. We moved here in 1992, and there were computers everywhere. Thus, I had to start from scratch. It was difficult. (Participant 8)

In this case, the participant could not lean on the inertia of habitus, and her educational habitus in particular ‘vanished’ in the new situation. Starting from scratch was a common expression among the Russian participants, identifying an essential element of everyday precarisation. It is not just a question of habitual living, and being able to question it by having a feel for the present simultaneously in several games, but also about breaking habits. Indeed, it might be about making a habit of tolerating habit-breaking. Indeed, Virno (2004: 85) has argued that one of the principal requirements of today’s worker is to develop the habit of not developing habits. This formation of precarious agency was often described in the Russian group discussions. I will come back to this theme after I have first described more variations of agency in situations where habit-breaking was seen as necessary:

Like, I’ve done almost everything. Like, it’s so frustrating, when you always have to throw in a new profession, and start over from scratch, all over again. And yet, the pay is so bad. Like, I’m beginning to freeze a bit; I don’t have the strength anymore. (Participant 2)

This research participant suggests that one form of everyday agency, when facing the normative force of getting into the habit of not developing habits, is a feeling of ‘beginning to freeze’. The participant is in her 40s, she has three qualifications – one upper secondary education qualification and two higher education degrees – and she has worked as a substitute, a freelancer and a temporary worker, but has never had a permanent job. She has probably had a feel for the situation, and experienced some optimism regarding new phases of education, but this feel begins to be replaced by frustration and a sense of losing strength. Another participant describes an everyday precarious agency as ‘rotten’:

[I’m] being pushed toward working as a freelancer, and that’s the entrepreneurship there, but then you lose your earnings-related allowance. Like, it’s neither this nor that […]. So it’s quite rotten. (Participant 5)

The dimension of habits and habit-breaking was linked to life as a ubiquitous project, that is, work as a project, social relations as projects, career and entire life as subsequent projects – the whole society as structured by the logic of projects. Making ends meet from project to project engenders a typically ambivalent and normalised precarious everyday agency. A project-based life entails breaking one’s habits all over again; it also exposes individual lives to social situations where everyday sexism and discrimination may abound and even be considered legitimate. For example, one of the research participants had faced the following situation:

I saw NN [a representative of the organisation channelling her project’s funding] in the street and explained the situation. He told me to come and chat with him […]. I called him, and we made an appointment. And when I went there, he said ‘you’re no good’. Why didn’t he say that in the street or on the phone? Like, he wanted to see me burst into tears. (Participant 5)

The incident provoked many similar stories and comments in the group. Other participants had also been insulted and lied to, or had heard stories about humiliating incidents, leading them to feel demoralised, frustrated and frozen, and stressing about having a job and not having a job. One of the research participants elaborated on this theme:

Well, in that sense, it feels like you’re privileged for not having to exhaust yourself. Although, of course, it is stressful when you don’t have a job, or you have a temporary job, or your periods at work alternate with periods of no work, because there’s no continuity. But still, it’s not like that. Perhaps you get used to it, when you’ve done it for a while already, so you don’t take it so seriously. (Participant 4)

One of the modes of precarious everyday agency, then, and of getting used to habit-breaking and discontinuity, is not to take things too seriously. On another occasion, the Finnish focus group discussed various courses offered to the unemployed, such as courses on leadership, career planning and internationalisation and ‘employee training’, which entail not education for a certain task or occupation, but a course producing general employee skills. One participant also brought up profile training, that is, courses dedicated to training which is supposed to meet employees’ and employers’ needs. This led the group to invent a novel course on ‘profile training with a lack of view’. After a good laugh, the facilitator of the group commented: ‘But you seem to see humour in them?’ to which one of the participants answered: ‘Well, we must see the humour; otherwise, we would already have blown our brains out’. Thus, humour provides a shelter against precarious conditions. However, humour is not just there to be taken, but it is actively built and collectively shared.

Coming back to the theme of the oscillation between habits and habit-breaking, the Russian-speaking group discussed their life in North Karelia as follows:

In theory, precarious everyday agency is about being flexible, free, floating and employable for multiple types of jobs; being eternally involved in educating oneself; not getting attached to houses or places; and getting into the habit of not developing habits. In practice, it is about embodied ambivalence and considerations about ties and one’s ‘own life’ that oscillate between habits and breaking them. In the following and last excerpt, a participant of the Russian group recalls the latest phases of her working history in Finland:

In fact, at first I rested [after receiving notice from a private employer] for a couple of months, but later on I began to feel like I should do something. And so slowly […] in the employment office they do have this transition assistance, and although I was told that I had plenty of opportunities, and however much they promised to assist me, to be honest I must say I did not get any help. And when I went to the employment office, I told them they could send me anywhere to train, to give me an opportunity to advance in that field […] I even participated in the practical nurse’s training and studied there for a year […]. And then it occurred to me that it was somehow frustrating to re-study what I had already learnt [she was trained as a midwife in the former Soviet Union], and I quit the course. In the employment office I asked, ‘Could I translate somewhere?’, and people in the office shyly said that they actually needed a translator. So I worked there as a translator. I was there as a trainee for a couple of months. […] Then one girl came in and said that she was looking for somebody to work at a holiday resort […]. [I’ve] been there for a year already […]. I work as a receptionist there. I’m also a cook. I can clean and I go to the travel expos. In addition, they send me to factories to interpret. (Participant 7)

This impressive story ⁵ brings us to the heart of individual agency in contemporary capitalism, and to the argument proposed by Papadopoulos et al. (2008: 252) mentioned at the outset. Instead of governing and using the link between subjects, agency and power, contemporary capitalism tends to dissect the working bodies and deal with a de-individualised recombination of skills, qualities and capacities. Some parts of the embodied capacity of the research participant quoted above were ‘cut out’ from the prevalent formation of precarious agency, most notably her language skills, but also her naturalised ‘female’ capacities of cleaning, cooking and catering. At the same time, other parts like her education and professional knowledge were misrecognised or rejected. Most of the research participants told similar stories about the misrecognition of their education, acquired capacities, accumulated resources or an overall sense of capable individuals.

Disorganised and recombined everyday agency

The interview accounts illuminate the inhabited contours of precarisation, including configurations of labour and education (project work, temporary work, on–off work, freelance work, start-up small entrepreneurship, unemployment, re-education, starting from scratch); a sense of the situation (snappiness, readiness to do anything, of not taking things too seriously) and an ambiguous relationship with geographic mobility (not getting attached to houses, feeling stuck or guilty if not moving). Investigating precarisation as an everyday interface, and as a mode of making room for oneself and living together with others, reveals the complexity of the logic of habits. According to the conventional as well as the sociological understanding, habits are tools which help people to manage their daily life, and to learn to be as if they were at home. At the same time, habits are social and relational and bind people together. The Bourdieuan notion of the ‘feel for the game’ that habitus engenders is, in precarisation, accompanied and even replaced by the ‘feel for the situation’, which may need several modulations during a single game. Furthermore, this feel is often called for in several games simultaneously, and so habits are generative and contingent. However, in precarisation, habit-breaking also becomes so common and ordinary that it challenges the ‘natural’ generativeness of habits, and people experience embodied reactions such as feeling frozen, rotten or humiliated. In situations of valuing ‘labour market qualifications’, the pressure to be able to habitually break one’s habits becomes a norm.

The sense of the present is intensified in precarious agency. What happened yesterday, or last year, or during half of your life, might not be relevant today. Experiences do not necessarily accumulate into one’s habitus. One option is to live in the moment, but orientation might not be easy. People sense that they should be prepared, but are unsure for what. The whole logic of anticipation is perhaps in transformation. Then again, the ‘old’ capacity of habit to resist change that is too rapid is still there to be put to work, if life gets too hectic and disorienting. Also, when things get too lively, one can rely on humour and not taking things too seriously.

In the (Fordist) sociological imaginary, capitalism tends to be thought of as something that organises people’s everyday lives. At the factory whistle, workers pour out of the workplace and head towards home; they may have some free time to recover from work and socialise, look after children, and dream about and inhabit the good life. When feminist critiques of this imaginary added women into the picture, they showed that capitalism is unable to organise everyday life without gendered power systems. However, as Berlant (2011: 8–9) states, in the present condition, we need a perspective that also recognises the ways in which capitalism disorganises everyday events and daily ordinaries. Moreover, as Papadopoulos et al. (2008) suggest, we need to be able to capture possibly dissected and dissolved subjects and ‘broken’ or recombined forms of agency (p. 252). Disorganisation, dissection and dissolving often happen at the level of everyday life and its ordinaries: as one of the participants in this research aptly put it: I can cook, clean, translate and go to travel expos.

Most urgently, we need a view that recognises that disorganising, dissection and dissolving not only signify a mess, but also offer possibilities to re-organise and de-organise. Contemporary capitalism needs people – or their parts and their compositions – to survive, but it also needs people to be free, afloat, vital and capable to act. For this reason, precarious everyday agency may open up more freedom, innovation, autonomy and rebellion than former modes of agency. Precarious everyday agency also may dissolve the old hierarchies and orders of gender, age, class, capabilities and sexualities, but this does not happen without political interventions and struggles. The key question is whether people have the resources to make use of the new options, and whether they feel and are able to attach themselves to novel formations of precarious agency.