Breaking up the ‘precariat’: Personalisation, differentiation and deindividuation in precarious work groups

Constantine Manolchev, Richard Saundry and Duncan Lewis
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Constantine Manolchev: University of Exeter Business School, UK
Richard Saundry: University of Plymouth, UK
Duncan Lewis: University of Plymouth, UK

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2021, vol. 42, issue 3, 828-851

Abstract: Much-debated and researched, the subject of precarious work remains at the forefront of academic and policy discourses. A development of current interest is the reported growth of employment flexibility and increase in non-standard and atypical work, regarded by some as contributing to the emergence of a class-like ‘precariat’ of insecure and marginalised workers. However, this precariat framework remain largely untested and underexplored. Using in-depth narratives from 77 semi-structured interviews with workers from groups within the precariat spectrum, in this article the authors address this gap. The study finds that cohesion within and between these groups is overstated, and worker collectivisation far from apparent. As a result, this diversity of group dynamics, attitudes and experiences challenges not only negative conceptualisations of the precariat in the literature, but the theoretical validity of the precariat framework itself.

Keywords: Contact hypothesis; decategorisation; deindividuation; precariat; precarious work; social identity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:42:y:2021:i:3:p:828-851

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X18814625

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