The Precariat
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The Precariat Prelims.indb i 4/11/11 9:57 AM This page intentionally left blank The Precariat The New Dangerous Class Guy Standing BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Prelims.indb iii 4/11/11 9:57 AM First published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY, UK and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Copyright © Guy Standing 2011. This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher. For permission to publish commercial versions please contact Bloomsbury Academic. CIP records for this book are available from the British Library and the Library of Congress ISBN (hardback) 978-1-84966-352-6 ISBN (paperback) 978-1-84966-351-9 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-84966-456-1 ISBN (ebook PDF) 978-1-84966-454-7 This book is produced using paper that is made from wood grown in managed, sustainable forests. It is natural, renewable and recyclable. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, Bodmin, Cornwall Cover designer: MP Cover image: Construction Workers at Kings Cross by Colin Gray www.CGPGrey.com CC licensed www.bloomsburyacademic.com Contents Preface vii List of Abbreviations ix 1 The Precariat 1 2 Why the Precariat Is Growing 26 3 Who Enters the Precariat? 59 4 Migrants: Victims, Villains or Heroes? 90 5 Labour, Work and the Time Squeeze 115 6 A Politics of Inferno 132 7 A Politics of Paradise 155 Bibliography 184 Index 191 v Prelims.indb v 4/11/11 9:57 AM This page intentionally left blank Preface his book is about a new group in the world, a class-in-the-making. It sets Tout to answer fi ve questions: What is it? Why should we care about its growth? Why is it growing? Who is entering it? And where is the precariat taking us? That last question is crucial. There is a danger that, unless the precariat is understood, its emergence could lead society towards a politics of inferno. This is not a prediction. It is a disturbing possibility. It will only be avoided if the precariat can become a class-for-itself, with effective agency, and a force for forging a new ‘politics of paradise’, a mildly utopian agenda and strategy to be taken up by politicians and by what is euphemistically called ‘civil society’, including the multitude of non-governmental organisations that too often fl irt with becoming quasi-government organisations. We need to wake up to the global precariat urgently. There is a lot of anger out there and a lot of anxiety. But although this book highlights the victim side of the precariat more than the liberating side, it is worth stating at the outset that it is wrong to see the precariat in purely suffering terms. Many drawn into it are looking for something better than what was offered in industrial society and by twentieth century labourism. They may no more deserve the name of Hero than Victim. But they are beginning to show why the precariat can be a harbinger of the Good Society of the twenty-fi rst century. The context is that, while the precariat has been growing, globalisation’s hidden reality has come to the surface with the 2008 fi nancial shock. Postponed for too long, global adjustment is pushing the high-income countries down as it pulls the low-income countries up. Unless the inequalities wilfully neglected by most governments in the past two decades are radically redressed, the pain and repercussions could become explosive. The global market economy may eventually raise living standards everywhere – even its critics should wish that – but it is surely only ideologues who can deny that it has brought economic insecurity to many, many millions. The precariat is in the front ranks, but it has yet to fi nd the Voice to bring its agenda to the fore. It is not ‘the squeezed middle’ or an ‘underclass’ or ‘the lower working class’. It has a distinctive bundle of insecurities and will have an equally distinctive set of demands. In the early stages of writing the book, a presentation of the themes was made to what turned out to be a largely ageing group of academics of a social democratic persuasion. Most greeted the ideas with scorn and said there was nothing new. For them, the answer today was the same as it was when they were young. More jobs were needed, more decent jobs. All I will say to those respected fi gures is that I think the precariat would have been unimpressed. vii Prelims.indb vii 4/11/11 9:57 AM viii PREFACE There are too many people to thank all of them individually for helping in the thinking behind the book. However, I would like to thank the many groups of students and activists who have listened to presentations of the themes in the sixteen countries visited during its preparation. One hopes their insights and questions have fi ltered into the fi nal text. Suffi ce it to add that the author of a book like this is mainly a conveyor of the thoughts of others. Guy Standing November 2010 Prelims.indb viii 4/11/11 9:57 AM Abbreviations AARP American Association of Retired Persons AFL-CIO American Federation of Labor/Congress of Industrial Organizations BBVA Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria BIEN Basic Income Earth Network CBT Cognitive behavioural therapy CCT Conditional cash transfer CIA Central Intelligence Agency CRI Crime Reduction Initiatives EHRC Equality and Human Rights Commission (UK) EU European Union GCSE General Certifi cate of Secondary Education IMF International Monetary Fund LIFO Last-in, fi rst-out NGO Non-governmental organisation NIC Newly industrialising country OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development RMI Revenu minimum d’insertion SEWA Self-Employed Women’s Association of India UKBA UK Border Agency UMP Union pour un Mouvement Populaire ix Prelims.indb ix 4/11/11 9:57 AM This page intentionally left blank 1 The Precariat n the 1970s, a group of ideologically inspired economists captured the ears Iand minds of politicians. The central plank of their ‘neo-liberal’ model was that growth and development depended on market competitiveness; everything should be done to maximise competition and competitiveness, and to allow market principles to permeate all aspects of life. One theme was that countries should increase labour market fl exibility, which came to mean an agenda for transferring risks and insecurity onto workers and their families. The result has been the creation of a global ‘precariat’, consisting of many millions around the world without an anchor of stability. They are becoming a new dangerous class. They are prone to listen to ugly voices, and to use their votes and money to give those voices a political platform of increasing infl uence. The very success of the ‘neo-liberal’ agenda, embraced to a greater or lesser extent by governments of all complexions, has created an incipient political monster. Action is needed before that monster comes to life. The precariat stirs On 1 May 2001, 5,000 people, mainly students and young social activists, gathered in Milan’s city centre for what was intended to be an alternative May Day protest march. By 1 May 2005, their ranks had swollen to well over 50,000 – over 100,000, according to some estimates – and ‘EuroMayDay’ had become pan-European, with hundreds of thousands of people, mostly young, taking to the streets of cities across continental Europe. The demonstrations marked the fi rst stirrings of the global precariat. The ageing trade unionists who normally orchestrated May Day events could only be bemused by this new parading mass, whose demands for free migration and a universal basic income had little to do with traditional unionism. The unions saw the answer to precarious labour in a return to the ‘labourist’ model they had been so instrumental in cementing in the mid-twentieth century – more stable jobs with long-term employment security and the benefi t trappings that went with that. But many of the young demonstrators had seen their parents’ generation conform to the Fordist pattern of drab full-time jobs and subordination to industrial management and the dictates of capital. Though lacking a cohesive alternative agenda, they showed no desire to resurrect labourism. 1 Prelims.indb 1 4/11/11 9:57 AM 2 THE PRECARIAT Stirring fi rst in Western Europe, EuroMayDay soon took on a global character, with Japan becoming a notable centre of energy. It started as a youth movement, with educated disgruntled Europeans alienated by the competitive market (or neo-liberal) approach of the European Union project that was urging them on to a life of jobs, fl exibility and faster economic growth. But their Eurocentric origins soon gave way to internationalism, as they saw their predicament of multiple insecurities linked to what was happening to others all over the world. Migrants became a substantial part of the precariat demonstrations. The movement spread to those with non-conventional lifestyles. And all the time there was a creative tension between the precariat as victims, penalised and demonised by mainstream institutions and policies, and the precariat as heroes, rejecting those institutions in a concerted act of intellectual and emotional defi ance. By 2008, the EuroMayDay demonstrations were dwarfi ng the trade union marches on the same day. This may have gone largely unnoticed by the wider public and politicians, but it was a signifi cant development.