Precariat

In sociology and economics, the precariat is a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which is a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. Unlike the proletariat class of industrial workers in the 20th century who lacked their own means of production and hence sold their labour to live, members of the precariat are only partially involved in labour and must undertake extensive "unremunerated activities that are essential if they are to retain access to jobs and to decent earnings". Specifically, it is the condition of lack of job security, including intermittent employment or underemployment and the resultant precarious existence.[1] The emergence of this class has been ascribed to the entrenchment of neoliberal capitalism.[2][3]

The term is a portmanteau obtained by merging precarious with proletariat.[4]

Overview

The precariat class has been emerging in societies such as Japan, where it includes over 20 million so-called "freeters".[5] The young precariat class in Europe became a serious issue in the early part of the 21st century.[6]

The British economist Guy Standing has analysed the precariat as a new emerging social class in work done for the think tank Policy Network. In 2014, he wrote another book titled "A Precariat Charter" where he argued that all citizens have a right to socially inherited wealth.[7][8] The latest in the series is the titled Precariat: The New Dangerous Class[1][9] where he proposed basic income as a solution for addressing the problem.

The analysis of the results of the Great British Class Survey of 2013, a collaboration between the BBC and researchers from several UK universities, contended there is a new model of class structure consisting of seven classes, ranging from the Elite at the top to the Precariat at the bottom.[10] The Precariat class was envisaged as “the most deprived British class of all with low levels of economic, cultural and social capital” and the opposite of “the Technical Middle Class” in Great Britain in that instead of having money but no interests, people of the new Precariat Class have all sorts of potential activities they like to engage in but cannot do any of them because they have no money, insecure lives, and are usually trapped in old industrial parts of the country.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Guy Standing (May 24, 2011). "The Precariat – The new dangerous class". Policy Network.
  2. ↑ Lorna Fox O'Mahony, David O'Mahony and Robin Hickey (eds), Moral Rhetoric and the Criminalisation of Squatting: Vulnerable Demons? (London: Routledge, 2014), ISBN 0415740614 p. 25.
  3. ↑ Wacquant, Loïc (2014). "Marginality, ethnicity and penality in the neo-liberal city: an analytic cartography" (PDF). Ethnic and Racial Studies. 37 (10): 1687–1711. doi:10.1080/01419870.2014.931991.
  4. ↑ F. Lunning (2010). Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies. University of Minnesota Press. p. 252. ISBN 081667387X.
  5. ↑ Machiko Osawa and Jeff Kingston (July 1, 2010). "Japan has to address the ‘precariat’". The Financial Times.
  6. ↑ Press Europe: September 15, 2011: The "Youthful members of the full-time precariat .
  7. ↑ "http://www.bloomsbury.com/". Retrieved 23 November 2015. External link in |title= (help)
  8. ↑ Crocker, Geoff. "The Economic Necessity of Basic Income". Retrieved 23 November 2015.
  9. ↑ Who will be a voice for the emerging precariat?, The Guardian, June 1, 2011.
  10. ↑ Mike Savage and Fiona Devine (April 3, 2013). "The Great British Class Survey – Results". BBC Science. Retrieved April 7, 2013.

Bibliography

External links

Look up precariat in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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