The Precarious Concept of Precarity

Precarity has become a buzzword and, as is usually the case with buzzwords, if someone asks you for an immediate and brief formulation of its meaning, you often find yourself at a loss for words, making it seem as if you’ve pulled out this clever-sounding, foreign word without actually understanding it or, even worse, perhaps without it actually meaning anything at all. Although precarity is not an empty term, it does lack a single meaning. Over the course of its development, it has been used by social movements, the academic sphere, media, and public institutions – spheres whose workings are often in mutual tension, if not downright conflict. The term had barely existed before the year 2000, and was only included in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018, but its use has immensely expanded in academic literature. Google Scholar lists 71 texts which include the term ‘precarity’ for the year 2000, 565 texts for the year 2010, and as many as 18,700 in the year 2022. How then should one make sense of the term today?

Etymologically, precarity comes from Latin (precor = to pray; precarius = received by prayer). In French, the word précarité acquired a specific meaning in the 1970s, when it denoted the situation of those households that had trouble making ends meet, although its members were working (which was hard to explain from a class perspective). The word was adopted from French into Italian and Spanish, gradually making its way into international institutions such as the International Labor Organization, where ‘precarity’ started to be associated with non-standard working hours. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu managed to capture the gradually changing zeitgeist of the late 1990s in his short commentary in French entitled “Precarity Is Everywhere Now.” Bourdieu used the term précarité as early as the 1960s in his texts focusing on Algerian workers. Although in this 1997 commentary his point of departure was that of non-standard working hours, he also comments that precarity now touches everyone, as it has become a “mode of domination” based on a “generalized and permanent state of insecurity.” The text was translated into English a year later as “Job Insecurity is Everywhere Now,” and we can assume that today the translation would favor the term “precarity.”

At this time, the concept of precarity was also being used in the sphere of social movements. Massive protests were organized against the summit of the World Trade Organization in 1999 in Seattle. These actions also created connections between social centers, student movements, autonomous unions, and art collectives, culminating in the EuroMayDay, or May Day parades. Groups such as Precarias a la deriva, Precarious Workers Brigade, and Chainworkers Crew did not understand precarity as a problem of the “job market” to be addressed through political solutions, but rather as a perspective through which people could come together despite their differences and think about possible alternatives to the organization of society. They were building on the older tradition of the “refusal of work,” which played a central and strategic role in Italian Operaism and later Autonomism of the 1970s. Such a perspective was similar to the critique leveled by artistic circles in the French sphere against capitalism, which it understood as a form of social organization that stands against the freedom and self-realization of individuals, as described in a book by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello. From this perspective, the exit from standard working hours was not precipitated by employers but rather by the desire to work less and more freely – this pressure from below apparently preceded the top-down “flexibilization of labor.” For the most radical groups, precarity was then a potential state which ought to be actively embraced and accepted as a source of knowledge about the dynamics of power. Improvisation and its connection to a wide group of people, tricks, and infrastructures which were only indirectly connected to paid labor, all that was supposed to provide an exit from the relationship of capital and work, as well as the lifestyle erecting a divide between work and “free” time.

It is paradoxical that the moment when such movements disappeared due to the 2008 crisis, the term ‘percarity’ was discovered by mainstream media and the academic community, transforming it into a sociological category and a synonym for uncertainty. The dynamic of self-organization was also muted in the oft-quoted 2011 book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class by Guy Standing, which most likely became the main source for the topic in the anglophone world (and which was also picked up by Czech media and the public space in in the second decade of the 21st century). Standing understands the precariat as a new class composed of people facing vastly different life situations but sharing the uncertainty of work. However, he also regarded the precariat as being very much passive. The precariat must then be offered progressive politics based on social security and distributive measures such as universal basic income, otherwise it will turn into what Marx called the lumpenproletariat – an essentially problematic surplus category. The ideal would be found in the models of Fordism and a welfare state.

So how should we understand the concept of precarity today? It seems counterproductive to refuse a term just because it has so many meanings attached to it – this is a strength rather than a weakness. Perhaps it resonates with something deeper. But that does not mean that it isn’t necessary to incorporate it into wider contexts. Firstly, the increase in precarity cannot be measured by transformations in the job market. The prognoses that predicted that non-standard work hours or part-time occupations would become the norm also in the Global North have not come to pass. Many countries experienced a sudden increase in the 1980s and 1990s (perhaps a bit later in Czechia), but their figures have remained the same since then. Such predictions were based on a misunderstanding of the fact that employers in most sectors generally have an interest in a stable source of labor power, and too much uncertainty can easily become a risk threatening their profits. And secondly, in its attempt to wrest itself from the dominant logic of the system, the Autonomist tradition underestimated the significance of “big” politics, from unions to the welfare state. With the arrival of the economic crisis in 2008, the individual problems that members of such movements faced were so vast that the movement lost its dynamism despite the networks it had built up in the years leading up to it.

It then seems that precarity is the common denominator and also the point of departure for a certain sense of powerlessness – a sense that a person is, in the last instance, always “alone against the world” and in constant competition with others. A badly paid freelancer or an employee unable to come together with their colleagues – leaving them no way of fighting against their employer apart from leaving (if they can even afford to look for a new employer) – certainly have a right to feel that way. The movements that understood precarity not as a stigma but as theory in action showed that the only way to resist is to self-organize and build coalitions. But this process needn’t repeat the mistakes of undervaluing the infrastructures already built. After diligent analysis of conditions at particular workplaces, it is possible to make use of unions and the capacities of collective bargaining, although they may be severely restricted. Pre-figurative movements such as the environmental movement can also help – after all, most people feel powerless against the onset of climate catastrophe.

An interesting example of facing multi-layered precarity without the need for employee status comes from the art sphere, where the SNAP French artists’ union or the Italian Doc Servizi union promote the self-organization of freelance workers. Much like in the Czech context, such organizations often focus on the conditions for a better legislative environment. Their organizational infrastructure, however, allows them to enter into wider interdisciplinary coalitions which strive to make culture, education, and even healthcare more accessible. If precarity is a symptom, living theory and the organizational principle mean self-organizing both at the workplace and outside of it. We ought not reduce the complexity of caring for our, in the words of Judith Butler, “precarious life,” to achieving success on the job market, and neither ought we call for security and certainty which would, in the last instance, be guaranteed by the nation state.

Illustrations: Adéla Bierbaumer