Care-tizenship: precarity,social movements,and the deleting/re-writing of citizenship

A series of activist efforts across Europe have been organizing under the umbrella concept of precarity, with a long trajectory of movements facing flexibilization policies, austerity programs and migratory restrictions. The rise of precarity activism in Spain has worked at the intersections of increasing vulnerability and mobility producing a prolific body of activist literature and rich repertoire of strategies. This paper explores how alternative concepts of citizenship have developed within debates among precarity organizing prior to and after the financial crisis in Europe. Concretely, feminist precarity collectives in Spain came up with the play-on-words of ‘Care-tizenship’ to evoke a different notion of political belonging with updated collective rights. The original Spanish term is arguably the result of a typo: an accidental switching of the order of vowels in the word ciudadanía resulted in cuidadanía, which totally changed the root word: from city to care. Caretizenship suggests a community of practice forged by ties of caring relationships, mutually attending to basic needs in a context of increasing vulnerability among local, migrant and emigrant populations. While far from a working institution, this activist theorization provides a ‘horizon’ to work toward constituting an opening of political imagination.     

‘We Could be Rich’: Unemployment,Roadblocks and the Rhythms of Hydrocarbon Work among the Guaraní of the Argentine Chaco

In the Argentine Chaco, indigenous Guaraní lives are deeply entangled with the oil and gas industry. In response to the hydrocarbon sector's shifting dynamics, unemployed Guaraní have found innovative ways to make claims and mobilise for temporary employment. This article emphasises the perspectives of these mobilised populations and describes the political difficulties that precarious labour forces confront. It also draws attention to the temporalities of extraction and to the accompanying rhythms of flexible employment. In doing so, it extends the concept of precarity to highlight continuities between the impermanence of employment and the instability of mobilisation.     

Leveraging liminality: how San Diego taxi drivers used their precarious status to win reform

ABSTRACT

Using a case study in San Diego, California, we explore the complexities of precarious employment for taxi drivers. We seek to answer the following question: how do the ambiguities of taxi drivers’ status as independent contractors shape drivers’ work conditions and opportunities for resistance? Our study is based on 331 surveys, 20 in-depth interviews, participant observation, and policy analysis over two years. While drivers were objectively disempowered by the independent contracting designation, lacking both the protections granted employees and the prerogatives of ownership, they were empowered by the alliances this duality facilitated. Drivers used their marginal identities as workers and as entrepreneurs to their advantage in their campaign for reform. This case presents an alternative narrative to previous research, which generally highlights how independent contractors either accept their status in exchange for flexibility or resist by claiming misclassification. The immigrant taxi drivers in our case study actively resisted, not by pursuing recognition as employees, but rather by successfully seeking the full rights of business owners.     

Lithuanian men’s struggles with precarious life: unemployment,working identities,and strategies of survival

Using semi-structured interviews with young unemployed Lithuanian men, this article examines three distinct male working identities associated with ways of coping with unemployment and a sense of precarity: “desperate conformists,” “liberated dreamers,” and men “lost in work transition.” The interviews demonstrate that unemployment stigmatizes men, particularly those with lesser professional and social competencies crucial to efficient participation in the labor market. Therefore, the respondents’ incessant attempts to search for a job or their dreaming about it can be regarded as a way of resisting stigmatization and precarity.