Precarity: A Genealogy of a Concept Maribel Casas-Cortes + Sebastian Cobarrubias Post-Doctoral Fellows Geography Department, UNC-CH

Prewhat? Precarity > to pray, to plead Precarious literally means unsure, uncertain, difficult, delicate. Instead of the neutral sounding “flexible labor”, precarity has a critical connotation referring to living and working conditions without guarantees.

It is a term of everyday usage in a number of European countries, where it refers to the widespread condition of temporary, flexible, contingent, casual, intermittent work, brought about by the neoliberal labor market reforms that have strengthened the right to manage and the bargaining power of employers since the late 1970s. Precariedad Précarité Precarietá

Precarity is a general term to describe how large parts of the population are being subjected to flexible exploitation or flexploitation (low pay, high blackmailability, intermittent income, etc.), and existential precariousness (high risk of social exclusion because of low incomes, welfare cuts, high cost of living, etc.) The condition of precarity is said to affect all of service sector labor in a narrow sense, and the whole of society in a wider sense, but particularly youth, women, and immigrants

Precarity: analysis & politics Critical analysis of current trends in the new economy, Political rethinking of heterogenous class formations. Precarity is used both as an analytical tool and as a strategic point of departure to produce political subjectivities and re-invent different alliances and ways of struggle. “ Precarity is a political proposition more than a sociological category” MayDay organizer

Conceptual developments 1. Worsening of Labor Conditions 2. Qualitative Transformations of Labor 3. Labor and Migration 4. Vulnerability in Everyday Life

Cartography of the conceptual development of precarity & European precarity struggles Loss of labor rights Qualitative transformations of labor Labor and Migration Vulnerability in Everyday life

The use of the term precarity emerged as response to the legalization of temporal, part-time and training contracts. The generalization of these atypical types of contracts were associated with an unstable labor relationship, normally a lower salary and lessened protections against firing. Precarity means increasing loss of labor rights historically won by historical workers’ movements in certain European countries. Including quantitative transformations in labor conditions and labor contracts such as: from full-time to part-time, from permanent job to temp job, from full labor protections to less acquisitive power, less security measures, easier layoffs or less unemployment benefits. This loss includes other welfare protections such as health insurance.

worksite based struggles against flexplotation: general strikes, anti-privatization, interns & unemployed movements Defensive struggle to prevent the erosion of labor conditions and welfare rights New demands of free services

Loss of labor rights Qualitative shifts of labor Labor and Migration Everyday vulnerability While the first bubble focuses on precarity as insecurity, as a quantitative deviation that workers should fight to correct back; this second round of responses looks at precarious labor as qualitatively different, with distinct characteristics, that will make it spread as a general tendency beyond workspaces. This conceptual wave advanced two new qualities of labor: 1) intermittency and 2) immateriality.

1. intermittency: Temporary work as permanent condition 2. immaterial labor: Growing use of communicative, affective and intellectual skills during production

Loss of labor rights Qualitative shifts of labor Labor and Migration Vulnerability in Everyday Life Special vulnerability of undocumented workers The becoming migrant of labor: mobility as fundamental trait of all laborers

Loss of labor rights Qualitative shifts of labor Labor and Migration Vulnerability in Everyday Life A general tendency that affects the overall everyday existence (questions of care, body, city, etc...)

Towards a Precarious Workers Day

CHAPTER 6. PRECARITY: TOWARDS A GENEALOGY OF A CONCEPT I. Precarity as Loss of Labor Rights a. The arrival of garbage contracts b. Legalizing Temporary Job Agencies c. The decline of traditional union organizing d. Efforts by current grassroots unionism e. Spanish Labor Reforms and the European Economic Policies d. Flexibilization and the European Union Extension #1: Welfare as social wage Extension #2: Utopias of no-work Los Lunes al Sol Re-appropriation of services and goods II. Precarity as qualitative transformation of labor a. From mall consumer to chain worker b. From McDonalds’ Strikes to MayDay Parades c. From San Precario to Bio-sindicalism d. Intermittent work as current labor paradigm e. Precarity as Immaterial Labor f. Struggles of the Cognitariat Extension #1: Free Culture & Copy Left Copy Left Licenses Copy Left and Immaterial Labor Fighting for the New Commons Actors in Dispute Towards a Hacking Pragmatics The Politization of Sharing Free Culture logic in Global Justice Movements Extension #2: Updating Demands Flexicurity Commonfare Basic Income III. The Intermingling of Precarity & Migration Intro: Call for Madrid MayDay 2008 by PD Migrant and Autochthonous workers unite! The Becoming-Migrant of Labor Speaking from the Border: the Biopolitics of Precarity Militant Cartographies of the Border Extension #1: Freedom of Movement IV. Precarity as Uncertain Lives Spaces of Reproduction Feminization of Labor Precarization of Life Precarity & Care Precarity and Body Precarity and the City: Metropolitan Cartographies Extension #1: Reorganization of Care Work V. Archipelago of Cross-Crossing Bubbles: New Social Rights Intro: Precarity as a Platform of new social demands A Conference on, by and for The Archipelago of Criss-Crossing Knitters Social Rights Offices and Agencies for Precarious Affairs Towards Social Movements’ Institutions [Parenthesis for Theoretical/Methodological Speculations] Bubbling as Method Social Movements as Meaning Makers Possible shortcomings of the concept Precarity travels to the USA

Precarity in Asia? M Text Call for Mayday 2008 in Tokyo