Challenges and Contradictions in the ‘Normalising’ of Precarious Work

By J. Rubery, D. Grimshaw, A. Keizer, Mathew Johnson. Work, Employment and Society, 2018

217 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Precarious work is increasingly considered the new ‘norm’ to which employment and social protection systems must adjust. This article explores the contradictions and tensions that arise from different processes of normalisation driven by social policies that simultaneously decommodify and recommodify labour. An expanded framework of decommodification is presented that identifies how the standard employment relationship (SER) may be extended and flexibilised to include those in precarious work, drawing examples from a recent study of precarious work across six European countries. These decommodification processes are found to be both partial and, in some cases, coexisting with activation policies that position precarious work as an alternative to unemployment, thereby recommodifying labour. Despite these challenges and contradictions, the article argues that a new vision of SER reform promises greater inclusion than alternative policy scenarios that give up on the regulation of employers and rely on state subsidies to mitigate against precariousness.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Political Science and International Relations, Public Administration

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/49753ca32cda5d93774b54550fa320b002865e53

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In General Health Professions

  1. A. Veen
  2. T. Barratt
  3. Caleb Goods
  4. Emmanuel Josserand
  5. Sarah Kaine

In Political Science and International Relations

  1. A. Veen
  2. T. Barratt
  3. Caleb Goods

In Public Administration

  1. A. Veen
  2. T. Barratt
  3. Caleb Goods

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