Faces of Precarity

Joseph Choonara is Lecturer in the School of Business at the University of Leicester, UK. Renato Miguel Carmo is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal. Annalisa Murgia is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan, Italy, where she coordinates the ERC project SHARE.

1. Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Precarity and Precariousness ~ Joseph Choonara, Annalisa Murgia and Renato Miguel Carmo





Part I: Conceptualisations, Subjectivities and Etymologies


2. Précarité and Precarity: The Amazing Transnational Journey of Two Notions Unable to Form a Proper Concept in English ~ Jean-Claude Barbier


3. Conceptualising Precariousness: A Subject-oriented Approach ~ Emiliana Armano, Cristina Morini and Annalisa Murgia


4. The Experience of Precariousness as Vulnerable Time ~ André Barata and Renato Miguel Carmo





Part II: Class, Work and Employment


5. Above-Below, Inside-Outside: Precarity, Underclass and Social Exclusion in Demobilised Class Societies ~Klaus Dörre


6. Class, Classification and Conjunctures: The Use of ‘Precarity’ in Social Research ~ Charles Umney


7. The Problem with Precarity: Precarious Employment and Labour Markets ~ Joseph Choonara


8. The Social Foundations of Precarious Work: The Role of Unpaid Labour in the Family ~ Valeria Pulignano and Glenn Morgan


9. Precariousness in the Platform Economy ~ Agnieszka Piasna


10. An Epidemic-Related Turning Point: Precarious Work, Platforms and Utopian Energies ~ Patrick Cingolani





Part III: Experiences, Concretisations and Struggles


11. The Embodiment of Insecurity: How Precarious Labour Market Trajectories Affect Young Workers’ Health and Wellbeing in Catalonia (Spain) ~ Mireia Bolíbar, Francesc X. Belvis and Mariana Gutiérrez-Zamora


12. Precarity and Migration: Thai Wild Berry Pickers in Sweden ~ Charlotta Hedberg


13. Revisiting the Concept of Precarious Work in Times of Covid-19 ~ Barbora Holubová and Marta Kahancová


14. Precarious Workers and Precarity Through the Lenses of Social Movement Studies ~ Alice Mattoni


15. Organising and Self-organised Precarious Workers: The Experience of Britain ~ Jane Hardy


16. Afterword: A Pandemic of Precarity ~ Joseph Choonara, Annalisa Murgia and Renato Miguel Carmo