Precarious Workers and Collective Efficacy

Rachel Meyer

Working Paper from Harvard University OpenScholar

Abstract: Scholars of contemporary capitalism have argued that the rise of flexible accumulation and precarious employment has left workers disillusioned and adrift, experiencing an erosion of solidarities and human bonds. In contrast, this study uncovers a sense of collective efficacy where existing scholarship would lead us to least expect it: among workers who are, structurally, among the most marginal and vulnerable. The case examined is a Chicago living wage campaign which for three long years mobilized workers laboring outside of traditional employment relationships. Why would a sense of collective efficacy emerge when participants? ability to make change had remained in doubt for years? Why would workers who lack structural power come to feel so efficacious? Drawing on in-depth interviews with campaign participants, I argue that their understandings of power arose from their experience of collective action. The case sheds new light on our understanding of identity and subjectivity under contemporary capitalism.

References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://scholar.harvard.edu/rachelmeyer/node/403471
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://scholar.harvard.edu/rachelmeyer/node/403471 [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://rachelmeyer.scholars.harvard.edu/node/403471)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qsh:wpaper:403471

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper from Harvard University OpenScholar Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Richard Brandon ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).