[Reader-list] On Preacarity

[s0metim3s]

Hello Monica, all,

I'm not sure who you mean by 'we', but 'precariat' is a
highly-contested concept. For my part, I think the concept
is ambivalent, opening up a space for what might is an
important debate and discussion, but not I think for
pursuing an identity. http://linkme2.net/2h

Aside from the links you sent here, there is also a
discussion paper written by the Frassanti Network (which
might be of interest).  I'll also append a fragment of a
debate on precarity from the euromayday list, and a link to
an article by Franco Berardi (for those who can read
Italian).

best,
Angela


// Info-Lavoro e Precarizzazione [Franco Berardi]
http://rekombinant.org/article.php?sid=2578


// Precarious, Precarization, Precariat? Impacts, traps and
challenges of a complex term and its relationship to
migration {Frassanito Network]

I. Precarious literally means unsure, uncertain, difficult,
delicate . As political term it refers to living and working
conditions without any guarantees: for example the
precarious residence permission of migrants and refugees, or
the precarious everyday life as a single mother. Better
known was the term Since the early 80s the term has been
used more and more in relation to labor. Precarious work
refers to all possible shapes of unsure, not guaranteed,
flexible exploitation: from illegalized, seasonal and
temporary employment to homework, flex- and temp-work to
subcontractors, freelancers or so called self employed
persons.

II. Precarization at work means an increasing change of
previously guaranteed permanent employment conditions into
mainly worse paid, uncertain jobs. On a historical and
global scale precarious work represents not an exception. In
fact was the idea of a generalization of so called
guaranteed working conditions a myth of a short period, the
one of the so called welfare state. In the global South, in
eastern Europe as well as for the main part of women and
migrants in the north all together the big majority of
global population precarious working conditions were and are
the norm. Precarization describes moreover the crisis of
established institutions, which have represented for that
short period the framework of (false) certainties. It is an
analytical term for a process, which hints to a new quality
of societal labor. Labor and social life, production and
reproduction cannot be separated anymore, and this leads to
a more comprehensive definition of precarization: the
uncertainty of all circumstances in the material and
immaterial conditions of life of living labor under
contemporary capitalism. For example: wage level and working
conditions are connected with a distribution of tasks, which
is determined by gender and ethnic roles; the residence
status determines the access to the labor market or to
medical care. The whole ensemble of social relationships
seems to be on the move.

III. Precariat an allusion to proletariat meanwhile is used
as an offensive self-description in order to emphasize the
subjective and utopian moments of precarization. Through the
mass refusal of gender roles, of factory work and of the
command of labor over life, precarization has really a
double face: it is possible to speak indeed of a kind of
flexibilisation from below. Precarization does not represent
a simple invention of the command centers of capital: it is
also a reaction to the insurgency and new mobility behaviors
of living labor, and in so far it can be understood as the
attempt to recapture manifold struggles and refusals in
order to establish new conditions of exploitation of labor
and valorization of capital. Precarization thus symbolizes a
contested field: a field in which the attempt to start a new
cycle of exploitation also meets desires and subjective
behaviors which express the refusal of the old, so called
fordist regime of labor and the search for another, better,
we can even say flexible life. However, we think that
precariat as a new term of struggle runs in an old trap if
it aims at a quick unification and creation of a dominant
social actor. Precariat gets even into a farce, if the
radical left tries to legitimize itself as main force in its
representation because of the increasing involvement of
leftist activists in precarious labor and life conditions.
But the main point is that taking into account the
hierarchies which shape the composition of the contemporary
living labor (from illegalized migrant janitors to temporary
computerfreaks), the strong diversity of social movement and
respective demands and desires, nobody should simplify
precarization into a new identity. We are confronted here
with the problem of imagining a process of political
subjectivation in which different subject positions can
cooperate in the production of a new common ground of
struggle without sacrificing the peculiarity of demands
which arise from the very composition of living labor. In
these conditions, we think that precarization as complex and
contested process - can offer a frame,

- to bring the different subjects into an intensified
exchange, on a social as well on a political level; - to
mediate contradictions and even concurrences within the
respective realities; - and to pick out comprehensive
questions as common themes.

We are thinking of process which bases on the autonomy of
the various struggles, which fosters the communication
between the struggles, which invents new forms of
cooperation and which opens new fields.

IV. Particularly because migrants experience all mentioned
forms of depreciation and precarization of nowadays work,
and particularly because mobility is their answer through
and against the borders and identities, they show in their
subjective conditions all the main characteristics which
shape modern labor as a whole: in their subject position a
common ground of the existence of social labor today finds a
peculiar expression. To talk about migrants labor means to
talk about a general tendency of labor to mobility, to
diversity, to deep changes, which is already affecting
although with different degrees of intensity all workers.
Because of the possible extension of these conditions we
speak of a political centrality of migrants work. The
position of migrants represents the social anticipation of a
political option to struggle against the general development
of labor as it will be extended to the whole society and the
whole life of all people. At the same time, we are aware
that migrant labor as well as precarious labor doesnt
represent an homogeneous subject: the process of
subjectivation we were talking about is a process which must
go through migrant labor itself, and which can be fostered
by an increasing communication with other struggles and with
the demands of other sections of contemporary living labor.


// euromayday discussions

Alex Foti's [European Lobby] response to the paper, the one
from the Frassanito Network: "I must say the document is
frankly biased and mysteriously hostile to net/flex/temp
workers as
being central subjects of the labor process today and
potentially of a new, radical, european politics. ... we
have to embody a subject in order to be effective."

Dimitris Papadopoulos: "Foti's response to the ideas sent
earlier about connecting the 2nd Day of Action and the
EuroMayDay sounds like a desperate attempt to subsume all
various social and political actors under a single generic
political subject (to come). Foti argues from
the standpoint of (European) law, while migrational
movements argue from the standpoint of the struggles and
reveal the permeability and instability and corrupt, racist
character of Europe."

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