Precarious Work, Precarity

Este trabajo busca aportar elementos para una discusión acerca de la existencia de condiciones precarias de trabajo en los profesores de la educación superior en México, a partir del análisis del comportamiento de algunas variables de la Encuesta Nacional de Ocupación y Empleo (ENOE) del 2014. La precariedad laboral como categoría de análisis descriptiva tanto de una condición laboral como de la calidad del empleo, requiere aclarar qué variables pueden permitir describirlo estadística y cualitativamente, y por consiguiente, cómo son esas condiciones laborales. En la primera sección de este documento se establecen un conjunto de acotaciones conceptuales y empíricas con base en las cuales se enmarcan la aplicación del término precariedad, y se fundamenta su utilidad para el estudio de la condición de trabajo de los docentes de educación superior a partir de una revisión del estado del arte sobre el tema. En términos de su alcance y tipo, la propuesta de investigación es de tipo exploratorio, interpretativa y descriptiva; esto es así pues hasta ahora no se han documentado para el caso mexicano aproximaciones cuantitativas que exploren las variables de los estudios de la precariedad en este grupo de trabajadores docentes, de las cuales partir. Considerando la carencia de una base empírica previa y las características relativamente restringidas de los datos que fundamentan la exploración, en la segunda sección se realiza una discusión aproximativa a la precariedad laboral teniendo como base las variables de tipo de contrato, salario y prestaciones de los profesores de educación superior en México.

Rouge, the new low-cost subsidiary of Air Canada, recruits workers with the promise of a fashionable lifestyle, advertising stylish uniforms and layovers in far-flung destinations.  The airline explicitly aims to hire young, physically attractive people as flight attendants.  Those qualifications are evident in the “look book,” a document that describes Rouge’s grooming standards with photographs and written text. 

Despite the hip workplace that Air Canada markets, the policies described in the “look book” have been a contentious issue for rouge flight attendants. Many workers view the uniform and grooming standards as excessive, intrusive, and punitive. Some senior flight attendants at Air Canada mainline view the “look book” as a reversal to historic gains by flight attendants to be viewed as safety professionals rather than sexualized service workers. 

Rouge flight attendants are also critical of the methods the company uses to regulate their behaviour; methods that they believe erode their credibility as safety professionals. For example initial customer service training is delivered by the Disney Institute, and is heavily weighted toward use of techniques such as ``peer pressure`` to ensure conformity and the subordination of workers` personal needs and identity to customer satisfaction.  In other words, similar to the “look book”, initial customer service training favors fashionable customer service over a safe, economically sustainable workplace.

This paper is based on the results of a membership survey and a series of in-depth qualitative conducted by four member researchers recruited and trained by the senior research officer in the CUPE airline division.

The paper will:

• Critically assess the Air Canada rouge “look book” for flight attendants within the broader context of airline deregulation and cost-cutting, specifically the hiring of very young flight attendants and the increased emphasis on physical appearance and new forms of service delivery
• Outline the resistance and historical gains by unionized flight attendants against sexual objectification and related racist, homophobic, transphobic and ableist regulation of flight attendants’ bodies
• Explore possible actions that could be taken by the union to protect rouge flight attendants from excessive managerial control of their appearance and behavior.
• Analyze how unions could appeal to younger airline workers, and how they could connect the previous generation’s struggle against appearance regulations to newer workers’ effort to win better pay and working conditions.

It is common to hear about academics’ personal lives in terms of a lack. We know, for instance, that academics have fewer children, marry less, and work longer hours than those in other ‘professions’ (Mason et al. 2013; NTEU 2015). The growing population of precariously employed academics is understood as especially afflicted, with couples and families needing to move or separate for work, and living with low, irregular pay and limited or no leave. These issues disproportionately impact women, and particularly young women, as this group is overrepresented in precarious academia (May et al. 2013).

"Η παρούσα εργασία επιχειρεί μια ανασκόπηση της ανάδυσης της έννοιας της “επισφάλειας” ή “επισφαλούς εργασίας” στον ακαδημαϊκό λόγο των κοινωνικών επιστημών. Εντάσσοντας την επισφάλεια σε ένα ιστορικό πλαίσιο μετασχηματισμού της εργασίας, εξετάζονται τόσο η λεξιλογική προέλευση της έννοιας όσο και η πορεία εξέλιξης της από την πρώτη χρήση του όρου από τον Bourdieu το 1963 ως τη πρώτη χρήση του από τον πρόεδρο της Αμερικάνικης Κοινωνιολογικής Εταιρείας το 2009. Παράλληλα καταγράφονται οι αντιρρήσεις για τη κοινωνική σημασία του όρου και οι σημαντικότερες κριτικές που εκφράσθηκαν από τη φεμινιστική ιστοριογραφία και την ιστορία του εργατικού κινήματος. Η Ελληνική εκδοχή της επισφαλούς εργασίας στη χώρα μας παρουσιάζεται μέσα από στοιχεία για τρεις συγκεκριμένες περιόδους: τα μέσα των δεκαετιών του 1990 και του 2000 σε αντίστιξη με τα δυο χρόνια της κρίσης  (2010 – 2011). Τέλος, η εργασία καταλήγει συζητώντας το πως οι θεωρίες της επισφαλούς εργασίας θα μπορούσαν να μπολιάσουν την πολιτική ψυχολογία.
H παρούσα έρευνα έχει συγχρηματοδοτηθεί από την Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση (Ευρωπαϊκό Κοινωνικό Ταμείο - ΕΚΤ) και από εθνικούς πόρους μέσω του Επιχειρησιακού Προγράμματος «Εκπαίδευση και Δια Βίου Μάθηση» του Εθνικού Στρατηγικού Πλαισίου Αναφοράς (ΕΣΠΑ) – Ερευνητικό Χρηματοδοτούμενο Έργο: Ηράκλειτος ΙΙ. Επένδυση στην κοινωνία της γνώσης μέσω του Ευρωπαϊκού Κοινωνικού Ταμείου. 

Λέξεις- κλειδιά: επισφάλεια, εργασία, πολιτική ψυχολογία, κρίση""

Στο βιβλίο αυτό επιχειρείται η πρώτη στην ελληνική βιβλιογραφία εμβάθυνση στη Γεωγραφία της Εργασίας. Η Γεωγραφία της Εργασίας αποτελεί ένα, σχετικά νέο, γνωστικό πεδίο και τομέα ερευνητικού ενδιαφέροντος που μελετά την αλληλεπίδραση και τους αμοιβαίους μετασχηματισμούς μεταξύ εργατικής δράσης και χωρο-κοινωνικών συνθηκών.

This book is the first Greek textbook about how workers shape the geography of capitalism and how the geography of capitalism shapes the possibilities for workers’ political and economic action. In the Anglophonic world such a focus upon the links between workers’ activities and the geography of capitalism has been termed ‘Labor Geography’.

The rise of creative, ethical entrepreneurship within the global garment industry promises new kinds of empowerment and mobility for Asian workers. ‘Ethical fashion’ brings alternative ways of valuing cultural commodities by imagining South Asian textile workers as potentially creative, entrepreneurial, and empowered. However, ethical fashion enterprise also brings particular forms of instability and risk. Through an analysis of two ethical fashion brands in Bangladesh – Aarong and Bhalo – this article demonstrates the disconnect between an idealized discourse of empowerment, and the material conditions of precarity and immobility that characterize fashion enterprise, especially in its ‘ethical’ forms. The apparent mobility of notions of ethics and empowerment championed by ethical fashion brands are shadowed by the ‘predatory mobility’ of global capital. While transnational flows of capital, creativity and ethics can bring about productive connections and exchange between designers, workers, and consumers in and around Asia, these take place in a context of ongoing economic insecurity.

An ethnography on early-career workers facing job insecurity at the United Nations.

This ethnography focuses on the work and lifeworld at the United Nations in Geneva and Vienna. By emphasizing the perspectives of entry-level workers, this book addresses the increasing flexibility and job insecurity for those at the beginning of their potential UN careers. It explores questions such as: How do career aspirants reconcile their narratives with the organization’s image built over the past decades? How can we understand institutional power and individual agency through the lens of ritual theory and the theory of social orders? This study finally examines the entangled discourses around privilege and prestige on the one hand and the precarity and vulnerability of a growing number of UN workers on the other hand. It shows that these phenomena are not contractionary but two sides of the coin. Using the UN as an example, the study considers mechanisms of flexible and unstable work environments in times of cognitive and affective capitalism.

F*ck May 68, Fight Now: Exploring the Uses of the Radical Past from 1968 to Today

Session 1: History is a Weapon

June 8, 2018

Department of History, University of Liverpool

https://archive.discoversociety.org/2018/09/04/circumnavigating-the-past-foreclosing-the-future-commemoration-of-the-radical-past-in-the-amnesiac-present/

In the wake of US debt crisis a wave of protest swept through the advanced Capitalist countries and around the world bringing down governments in Tunisia, Egypt and challenging neoliberal centrist parties throughout the developed world. This ‘newest’ wave of social protests is distinct in its predominantly young social base, its leaderless organization structure and its media savvy tactics. Guided by the highly anti-capitalistic narrative these protests have developed, leading scholars in the field of social movements have begun to re-analyse the impact of economic and cultural structures and the role of class on the development of this newest wave of social movements. The present analysis builds on this research trend first theoretically by adding the insights of Marxist scholars on the nature of capitalism and the specifics of both normative, cultural and structural sources of grief and frames of action within neoliberal labour relations to an analysis of relationally based class location. The analysis focuses on the changing base for social movements within the west. Identifying a particular ‘latent’ class of young educated precariat the analysis uses models developed within the social movement literature to conduct an historical analysis to reveal the transformational process of class formation within these movements as they react to changing political and cultural events. This study then traces the development of this class consciousness through to the later more active forms of class consciousness seen in the Sanders and Corbyn campaigns. Rather than fading from view, this class-in-the-making is seen to evolve a more focused political consciousness during this period. Finally, a comparative analysis in done looking at the movement and party-politics of this precariat class in the wake of the crises brought on by the election of Donald Trump and the EU referendum.

RESUMO

A crise do trabalho formal intensifica a prática de ocupações informais desafiadoras à dignidade humana, como a catação de recicláveis. Estima-se que haja em Fortaleza oito mil catadores nas ruas. Reféns do desemprego e do discurso ambientalista, esses “refugos humanos” recorrem à catação como forma de sobrevivência e inclusão precarizante. Com baixa instrução, qualificação e história de vida e de trabalho marcadas pela exclusão, esses trabalhadores contribuem para uma indústria lucrativa e aviltante, que usa o crescente discurso ambientalista em favor de sua lucratividade. A pesquisa buscou compreender o trabalho dos catadores em Fortaleza, discutindo suas relações, condições e organização de trabalho, bem como os impactos dessa atividade em suas vidas. Metodologicamente, a pesquisa recorreu a estudos de documentos e bibliográficos e teve como ferramentas empíricas a observação etnográfica e entrevistas semi-estruturadas com catadores em dois locais de trabalho distintos, uma associação e um depósito. Os dados foram analisados com base em análise de conteúdo e subsidiados por dados do “Diagnóstico da situação socioeconômica e cultural do catador de materiais recicláveis de Fortaleza”, realizado pela Prefeitura Municipal de Fortaleza. Os resultados revelam uma pretérita situação de precariedade de vida desses sujeitos, marcadas por histórias de trabalho informal, e manutenção dessa situação pelo processo de precarização associado ao trabalho da catação. A atividade caracteriza-se pela falsa autonomia, extrema precarização, manutenção da precariedade, exploração, preconceito e intenso sentimento de exclusão e identificação dos trabalhadores com os refugos coletados. Não obstante, é possível observar sensíveis distinções entre catadores do depósito e da associação no que tange ao grau de precarização. Neste local, apesar de não se debelar a precarização laboral, um conjunto de elementos e ações concorrem para mitigá-la, em seus aspectos materiais e simbólicos, buscando conferir sentido ao trabalho e auto-reconhecimento dos trabalhadores como sujeitos de direitos.

Palavras-chave: Precarização do trabalho, Catadores de material reciclável, Reciclagem.





ABSTRACT


The standard labour crisis intensifies the development of informal employment that challenge the human dignity, like waste picking. The data estimates that in Fortaleza there are eight thousand waste pickers. Hostages of unemployment and ambientalist rhetoric, these “human refuses” turn over to garbage as a way of survival and precarizating inclusion in the labour world. These unskilled workers are characterized for exclusion of life and work stories and contribute to a profitable and degrading industry that uses the increasing ambientalist rhetoric to grow their profits. This research had attempted to comprehend the work of the waste pickers in Fortaleza, discussing their relations, conditions and organization, as well as the impacts of this activity in the workers’ lifes. Methodologically, the research based on documental and bibliographic studies has utilized as empiric tools the ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews with wastes pickers of two distinct work places, a workers’ association and a warehouse. The data was analyzed by content analysis method and compared with data of the “Diagnosis of the cultural and socioeconomic situation of Fortaleza’s waste pickers”, made by the City Hall, in 2006. The results reveal a previous precarious situation of these agents – whose life is scared by stories of informal work – and maintenance of this situation by the precarization process associated with the waste picking work. The activity of waste pickers is characterized by false autonomy, extreme precarization, maintenance of the precariousness, exploitation, prejudice and intense feeling of social exclusion and of identification with the garbage collected. Nevertheless, it’s possible to notice sensible distinctions between waste picker linked to warehouses and those of associations concerning precarization intensity. In the association, although the work precarization isn’t eliminated, a gathering of factors, material and symbolic, alleviate this process, by material and symbolic aspects, seeking to permit another sense and the self-recognition of the workers as subject of rights.

Key-words: Work precarization, Waste pickers, Recycling.

We have all heard the phrase 'publish or perish' but what does perishing actually look like? Are you publishing and still perishing? In this article, Vossen probes into the complexity of academic publishing from her perspective as both a poor PhD student and the editor-in-chief of Game Studies publication First Person Scholar. Vossen argues that academic publishing (examining both journal articles and academic manuscripts) exploits the labour of grad students and contract workers by encouraging them to publish their work without compensation in the hopes of attaining tenure-track employment in the future. This 'work for exposure' method is dependent on the optimism of young scholars, the majority of whom will not attain tenure-track positions. Vossen focuses specifically on how academic journal articles function as both currency and commodity, devaluing alternative forms of research sharing (such as the work published in First Person Scholar) which is seen as 'academic waste' that doesn't 'count'. Academic journal articles are intrinsically linked to an academics 'worth' both culturally and financially and therefore, many untenured academics feel they can't take the financial risk of publishing outside of traditional venues for fear of furthering their descent into debt and poverty. Vossen and the staff of First Person Scholar have attempted to remedy the system in their field of Game Studies by both paying academics for their writing and firmly rejecting opportunities to become an academic journal to instead be considered a 'middle state publication'. Lastly, Vossen discusses opting out of the publish or perish game as a grad student and what you lose when you decide not to play.

Marked by the centrality of communicational, affective and relational aspects in direct value generation, cognitive capitalism is characterised by ambivalences that are expressed in new forms of control and exploitation and by the way that it has overcome several distinctions that shaped Fordist industrial labour. This article aims to observe how, in the transition to cognitive capitalism, precarity is constituted as an existential condition of contemporary labour. Furthermore, it seeks to demonstrate how this reality, while introducing risks and vulnerabilities, creates a terrain for new possibilities of resistance and invention.

This article investigates the political potency of 'precarity' as an organising axiom in contingent workers' grassroots organisations. It studies a nationwide network of precarious researchers in Germany and deploys Frame Analysis to illuminate how the Network articulates diverse criticisms as parts of a coherent struggle against precarious academic work. Empirically, the article substantiates the postulate of 'precarity as a mobilising source' by depicting the construction of precarity on strategic, organisational and individual levels, drawing on protest campaigns, coordinative work and in-depth interviews, respectively. On a theoretical level, it contributes to the literature by proposing a refinement of the concept of 'master frame'. Arguing that 'precarity' creates a broader class actor with branches in different sectors, to which the contingent academics link their struggle by derivatively describing themselves as the 'academic precariat', the article proposes the novel category of 'class-formative frame' in difference to operational (diagnostic/prognostic) or relational (supportive/oppositional) frames.

Platform work has received considerable critical attention in the media, in policy debates and increasingly in academic literature. Until recently much of this attention has been focused on the personalized service industry, namely Uber and other ridesourcing platforms. Uber’s arrival in Australia in 2012 underscores a diffusion of risk and responsibility in a weakening labour market. In this article, we argue that these problems are not coincidental, but that they are emblematic of the growing de-standardization of work in Australia and other countries. We explore literature on platform work, the de-standardization of work, and Uber in an Australian context, and discuss socio-legal and regulatory responses. We argue that the legal and policy considerations about the future of the personalized transport industry need to address the broader socio-economic landscape, that is eroding the rewards of paid work.

The precarity-based organising that followed the millenium has strongly dwelled on creativity. With the social, financial and ecological crises culminating ten years later, social movements face new challenges and precarity too is entering a new phase: multiplying across contexts of austerity and disaster and gaining discursive resonance far beyond the EuroMayDay networks. This text analyses some features and problems of precedent struggles around precarity, in focussing on the way that care interacts with those. What may the discourses and practices of care bring to analysis and struggle around precarity? Beyond ensuring survival, indeed care acts as an important counterforce to the neoliberal subjectivity that precarity-struggles attempt to decode and subvert. In tracing some moments of early precarity organising and their innovative use of creative techniques and networked organising, this text eventually argues that a politics around precarity now requires some more thoughts on reproduction, interdependency and collective constitution. Care as shared political practice consists in the turning back upon oneself as collectivity, inventing practices of the common that base themselves around bodies, territories and everyday relations. How may we think heteronomy within our ideas of autonomy? Putting care at the heart of struggle means not just to ensure sustainability and meaningful interdependence, but also to question given notions of subjectivity as founded in citizenship, rights-based-discourse and productivist economics. Creativity and care are co-constitutive in the face of the enabling vulnerability that we want to accentuate across precarity, and in the face of the collective becomings it can give rise to.

https://www.ilibridiemil.it/images/Image/Emil_Ricerca/2012/Mappedellaprecarieta2.pdf

A number of recent studies have responded to neoliberal understandings of entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation in the cultural and creative industries, and beyond. Although in recent years, the features of working life in this sector have been well-documented, little research seems to have looked at the psychosocial impact on the working lives of individuals.

Fantasy, Neoliberalism and Precariousness draws on the results of an original empirical study of independent musicians based in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Portland, Stockholm and Paris, and considers how experiences of precariousness and insecurity under conditions of neoliberalism threatens the well-being and self-realisation of aspiring musicians. Vachet examines anxiety, narcissism, recognition and self-esteem from a sociological perspective, considering them through the lens of social class and gender.

Contributing to debates within cultural studies, sociology and the political economy of communication about working lives in the cultural and creative industries, Vachet answers to-date unexplored questions around the psychosocial impact of precariousness and other problematic features of work in the cultural industries.

Bu çalışma, çalışma yaşamında güvencesizleşme, belirsizlik ve korku üzerine kimi notlar düşmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Çalışma yaşamının bileşeni olan bu üç unsurun, günümüz kapitalizminde işçi sınıfının içerisinde bulunduğu koşulların açıklayıcı kodu olduğu söylenebilir. Bu üç boyut, birbirini içeren ve yeniden üreten bir ilişki ağı içerisinde, kapitalizmin tarihsel işleyiş eğilimleri ile birleşmiş ve küresel kapitalizmde emeğin sermaye karşısındaki göreli konumu zayıflatan kritik bir işlev üstlenmiştir. Çalışma bu zeminde, güvencesizleşme, belirsizlik ve korku üzerine kimi düşünceler ortaya atarken, yazarın işçi sınıfı üyeleri ile yaptığı derinlemesine görüşmelerden de beslenmektedir.


Anahtar sözcükler: güvencesizleşme, belirsizlik, korku, çalışma yaşamı, kapitalizm, işçi sınıfı.

Unedited longer version of article published in Public Seminar Garland, C. (2018) ‘The Unfolding Welfare Crisis in the UK’ in PUBLIC SEMINAR Informing debate by any means necessary

http://www.publicseminar.org/2018/12/the-unfolding-welfare-crisis-in-the-uk/

What is well established in the literature is that diversity and innovation are interlinked. There is also literature that argues that spatial concentration of diverse individuals increases personal interaction across economic sectors, which in turn generates new ideas, new products and new processes. However, in South Africa we often have people geographically displaced along ethnic/racial lines, as well as other intersectional markers. The spatial distribution makes collaboration both difficult and, when interaction does occur, such collaboration can be complex. So special effort needs to be made to bring people together in meaningful ways. Even when achieved,
it is difficult when diverse people are eventually put together, because they do not naturally “hang out” with each other on a day-to-day basis, and so when confronted with ‘others’, their interactions are awkward, loaded with conscious and unconscious power differentials, defensive and reactionary.  This is true across regions and provinces of South Africa where you have completely different ethnic/racial groups,
and when ethnic/race groups in a region also have to engage with foreigners (where local South Africans are often more open to White Europeans and Americans, who tend to reside close to city centres or suburbs close to the CBD, and less open to other Black Africans and Asians, who often live further from such centres).

Precarity is becoming the paradigmatic description of the work conditions for young people in Greece, in times of crisis. This article draws on interview data on the work experiences of young adults, native Greeks or second generation migrants. Drawing on insights from critical discursive social psychology, analysis focuses on the ways in which informants use language in action to speak about working in precarious jobs. It is indicated that, in the local context of the interaction, participants discuss the regime of precarious labour in Greece on accounting for changing jobs. In particular, they rhetorically construct a banal youth regime of precarious labour while orienting themselves to a dilemma of stake and accountability and position themselves as effortful citizens. The discussion considers the need to bring into the scope of discursive social psychology the specific nuances of precarious labour, in contrast to un/employment, as articulated by the working young people themselves and opens up questions of individualism, citizenship, and social inclusion in the face of precarious labour.

A response is needed to the numerous issues spurred by the expansion of the gig economy, where flexible patterns of employment prevail in contrast to permanent jobs. In this context of the exponential growth of the digital economy and underlying business models the largest nationwide study of its kind into the impact of the working conditions in the UK music industry ‘Can Music Make You Sick?’ has been conducted by MusicTank/University of Westminster.

This research suggests the need to consider the future of work not only from an economic or employment law perspective but from a mental health one too. What are the psychological implications of precarious work and how are factors such as financial instability, the feedback economy and personal relationships reflected in mental health outcomes or connected to the business relationships most musicians and other gig economy participants work under?

Authors Sally-Anne Gross, George Musgrave and Laima Janciute consider which policy measures may help or harm gig economy workers including the taxation of self-employed workers, a universal basic income, education around mental health issues and access to mental health support.

Les témoignages qui suivent ont été reçus suite à un appel à témoins lancé par DICENSUS en janvier 2019. Ceux-ci ont été anonymisés comme DICENSUS s'était engagé à le faire. Ils ne sont qu'une sélection des très nombreux retours reçus. Les témoignages couvrent la diversité des statuts de vacataire ainsi que plusieurs composantes.

The present paper is a result of a two-year intensive ethnography of an intercultural Japanese company. While most of the literature on the anthropology of work in Japan regarding foreign workers tend to focus mainly on two types of experiences - those of global companies in which foreign workers and expats take up on international careers in Japan; and those of low-skilled jobs in which foreign migrants usually take up undesirable occupations in Japanese society - this ethnography, however, focuses on a middle level company, in which white collar workers in precarious contracts seek for visa guarantees and some small income to help them sustain their lives in Japan without much chances of a career development. By situating this type of experience within the current discussions on precarity, 24/7 capitalism, and Japanese internationalization efforts, the present paper provides results that both confirm some of the assumptions embedded in these discussions, informs new pathways for potential developments, and challenges some mainstream images about foreign employment and labor in Japan.

Los usos de la temporalidad del cine de Robin Campillo ponen en escena un tipo de precariedad producido desde un lapso condensado en las figuras del trabajo y la muerte. Las películas de este cineasta cristalizan escenas que engendran una deformación de la promesa de inclusión social y ponen en evidencia la “crisis del sueño europeo”. Estos desplazamientos recuperan la subjetividad de los migrantes, los ancianos, los enfermos, los homosexuales como aquellos sujetos que permiten imaginar ficciones comunitarias e iluminan zonas poco exploradas por las producciones mainstream del capitalismo contemporáneo. Articuladas con la noción de fin del sueño, generan fugas simbólicas por medio del uso de representaciones que constituyen un horizonte político opuesto a la amenaza de los movimientos de extrema derecha y dan cuenta de Europa como continente de desplazamientos migrantes. Los procedimientos de estos filmes generan imágenes políticas que producen un llamado a despertar.

Special Issue, The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches Co-edited by Agnoletto, S. and Palmieri, C. http://zapruderworld.org/journal/archive/volume-3/overcoming-barriers-to-voluntary-servitude-positive-thinking-and-self-help-the-post-political-ideology-of-workfare/

A reconfiguração do mercado de trabalho e de emprego que se observa há mais de duas décadas tem sido campo fértil para controvérsias sociais, políticas e académicas, às quais não é obviamente alheia a Sociologia do Trabalho e do Emprego. Um dos argumentos de discussão, de cariz marcadamente (neo)liberal, refere-se à rigidez do mercado de trabalho (e de emprego), classificando-o como principal fator bloqueador da competitividade da economia e do aumento do emprego, pelo que é colocada a tónica na desregulação das relações de trabalho e de emprego, bem assim como na flexibilização dos seus eixos tradicionais. A problemática deste ensaio consiste em conceptualizar a noção de flexibilidade competitiva, estabelecendo a sua conexão com o conceito de precariedade laboral, no contexto do desenvolvimento atual do regime capitalista, também chamado “capitalismo flexível”.

In general, amateurism in sport evokes sports activities based on purely sportive spirit with no pay. However, the situation in Turkey amateur football league, represents an exception of the general definition since 1950s. This "paid amateurism" practice became known to the public for the first time in 2020 following postponement of amateur football leagues due to Covid-19 pandemic by the Ministery of Youth and Sports of Turkey. Eight months after the decree, amateur football players held a protestation at the gate of Turkish Football Federation for the leagues to begin. The banner they carried at the protest, which was an unprecedented event, first in the Turkish sport history were telling that 70 thousand amateur football players had been in starvation for 8 months.

The paper aims to discuss the "precarity" phenomenon among Turkish Amateur Football Leagues in terms of both amateur players’ public manifestation and historical development of football in Turkey. The ampirical data of the study were compiled from local and national newspapers, comments of football players published in internet forums and social media sharings. As a result, study reveals that playing amateur football in Turkey is considered as waged work either in the form of fulltime or supplementary, rather than a purely leisure time activity. The most crucial problem for football players is the lack of secure job, public social security due to the lack of "written employment contracts", as is apparent during the Covid-19 epidemic process. Like the fractions of the working class working informal, a-typical and/or with temporary status amateur football players in Turkey too are highly vulnerable, invisible and deprived from an organized power.

Recently, the leitmotif of much anthropological writing became that of the virtue of precarity: the belief that people continue to exercise their ethical imagination in the most trying circumstances. While refreshingly non-deterministic, the Foucauldian approach to freedom that guides this vision neglects those situations in which people see their ability to be moral as irreparable, and structurally compromised. Such is the case of a Serbian firm selling spare car parts, where policies of financing unprofitable employment gradually involved workers in everyday, ritualized performances of productivity for the state – what I call mock-labour. Unable either to meaningfully fulfil or to renounce the ethos of work, workers remain in an affective blend of nonchalance and failure, experiencing mock-labour as both a source of material security and an abandonment of their creative capacities – a mocking of moral self. I call for a reconciliation of the anthropologies of ethics and precarity through the notion of demoralization, as a state in which the deficits of structural agency and the limits of reflective freedom overlap.