The Precariat

As previously mentioned a developing analysis surrounding the state of wage labour and its particular effects on specific communities is that of the precariat (Standing, 2014:19):

“The precariat experiences the four A’s – anger, anomie, anxiety and alienation. The anger stems from frustration at the seemingly blocked avenues for advancing a meaningful life and from a sense of relative deprivation. Some would call that envy, but to be surrounded and constantly bombarded with the trappings of material success and the celebrity culture is bound to induce seething resentment. The precariat feels frustrated not only because a lifetime of flexi-jobs beckons, with all the insecurities that come with them, but also because those jobs involve no construction of trusting relationships built up in meaningful structures or networks. The precariat also has no ladders of mobility to climb, leaving people hovering between deeper self-exploitation and disengagement.”

84 The precariat is a concept that has grown out of the work of Bourdieu (Wacquant, 2013) and popularised in relation to the post financial crisis generation by Standing (2014). In essence it suggests we now have a globalised workforce beholden to the whim of free markets and the politics of flexibility. This flexibility inevitably engenders insecure labour relations and low pay with an assumption that this is the first generation for more than a century who cannot expect to enjoy a quality of life better than that of their parents (O’Connor, 2018). The prevalence of wage labour as the primary form of work owes much to the socio-economic factors which have also constructed the precariat. The wage labour paradigm has

consistently been referred to as a factor of a post-industrial age (Casey, 1995; Bell, 1999; Strangleman and Warren, 2008), but there is also an element that speaks to the fact we now live in a post-labour age. This is a time characterised by a growing service sector which now constitutes around 80 per cent of the UK economy (Partington, 2019) and a declining manufacturing industry, a situation which typifies the UK today, especially in a city like Glasgow.

Developments which have led to the precariat have created a less tangible economy which has by its very definition created a precarious relationship between national prosperity and job security. Gorz (1999:72) refers to this as an inherent failure ‘to distribute the wealth which is now produced by capital employing fewer and fewer workers.’ As a result the security of a guaranteed wage has become a matter of survival. In light of heightened levels of precarious employment it is now required of sociologists to look at not only the related socio-economic effects, but the actual social causes of remaining unemployed (Mooney et al, 2010). Unfortunately the notion of the precariat has largely remained of academic interest and to a broader extent to professional economists. Social attitudes perhaps suggest that individuals do not like to consider themselves to be in any sort of precarity, even if that is what the data suggests (Bourdieu, 1987) further evidence presented in this research and others suggests the social attitudes of young people are much more conservative than many assume (Grasso et al, 2017), which would suggest the notion of a precariat does not address cultural needs. This is of considerable importance in understanding one aspect of the theoretical basis for this research, the dual society, in so much as the expectation from the academic consensus is to see menial work as inherently negative and unfulfilling (Foster, 2017), or indeed as an example of a neoliberal mindset (Mendick et al, 2015; Franceschelli & Keating, 2018), yet the perception expressed by many young people is to see this kind of work as an identifier of place and progress on a potential path to better outcomes (Snee & Devine, 2018).

Standing (2014:11) refers to the problem of the precariat addressing the experience of ordinary people directly when he states “the evolution of the precariat as the agency of a politics of paradise is still to pass from theatre and visual ideas of emancipation to a set of demands that will engage the state rather than merely puzzle or irritate it.” This addresses fundamental concerns relating to alternative work forms as currently they remain abstract and feel unrelated to people’s everyday lives. The aforementioned is a

85 challenge for sociology that is not set to go away. The perceptions of what work is, and what work is

available is considered by some writers to be different for a young person arriving on the job market today than it was for their parents (Kalleberg & Marsden, 2019), but for others this disparity is a lot lesser than assumed (Parry & Urwin, 2011). As previously referred to, there is a perception that job opportunities are now arbitrary, and that any job is better than no job (Rose, 2003). People need opportunities for income, security, creativity and social contact and they therefore cannot do without work opportunities regardless of how generous benefits may wrongly be perceived to be, or poor wages are (Ransome, 1996:190). Yet this does not mean to say that what work is, and what work can become, should not be questioned. Rather that the quality of that work and its ability to provide an income or sustenance should be the primary focus. This conception of income opens up a critique of what are often described as emancipatory forms of work, many of which have been suggested in response to the precariat concept.

A primary focus stemming from that consideration has been on institutions with a cooperative structure, possessing as little hierarchy as possible, which have stemmed out of the New Left tradition of political formations (Roussopoulos, 2007). Such formations are often based around the idea of economic communities. Harvey (1996) states that a fixation on strict barriers to defining a community actually detracts from the potential to form them based on geographical, mainly urban, boundaries. These

approaches are challenged by many commentators and academics as utopian and unrepresentative of the capitalist modes of production which are enacted on a global scale, despite some notable examples such as Mondragon in Spain finding success, despite the corporation’s move towards a more globally focused position over the last decade (Erasti et al, 2003). Cooperative attempts to remodel capitalism are regularly critiqued for holding back progress and innovation (Brass, 2017; Bhowmik & Chakraborty, 2019), but they have received renewed interest from scholars of the left as a bulwark against the excesses of capital despite Fukuyama’s (1992) classic aphorism that we have seen the end of history and capitalism is its culmination.

The problem with community based approaches as Lees (2004:86) states is that in the search to have someone speak for that community it immediately becomes removed from the group, and reverts to a figure head approach. For young people with little social or economic capital such an outlet is difficult to imagine. The precariat concept according to some writers has fallen into this trap (Jørgensen ,2015; Wright, 2016) and in other cases claims that this represents a new class formation have been questioned (Frase, 2013). Given the precariat as a concept has no tangible movement and behind it no obvious community from which to draw conclusions it has struggled to move forward and create a robust theoretical proposition for the reality young people entering the world of work find themselves in.

86 3.2.6 Conclusion

In this section the theoretical underpinnings of the problematisation of work have been elucidated. In particular the problematic notion of wage labour, its adherents and its opponents, have been critically considered with an understanding that in relation to the working class this is a system that has not worked for all. These concepts are not without their problems and it is clear that in the case of ideas such as the precariat and the resistance to wage labour they have suffered without a cohesive campaign or philosophy behind them. As part of this critical reflection it is important to understand the individual need for

expression, through craft or skill, in the work of young people as they are becoming economic actors in society. Within that process however is the consideration that transitions are fraught with risk and it is evident we have constructed our economy around the need to overcome that risk or face the prospect of failure. As Daniel Bell and Stephen Graubard put it (1997:xii):

‘The economy may be a “system” but the polity is not. It is an “order”…in which diverse individuals and groups compete for advantage, or for the implementation of their interests and values, through the political rules and mechanisms of a society.’

Competition of the kind referred to above does not suit the start in life that many young working class people experience, leaving a distinct period in which their pursuance of progress is much more focused on catching up than ultimately succeeding. This leaves less room for the development of skill and craft, enacting a considerable outside force on their working life which is further exacerbated still by the period of austerity they are living under. Through the lens of the dual society and Sennett’s understanding of craft the foundational theory of what is required to experience a meaningful transition has been introduced, primarily requiring a personal sense of meaning, societal value, and the utilisation of skill and craft.

Highlighting such an understanding is of particular importance in research dealing with the recent period of economic austerity where a sense of anomie is only on the rise. A factor perhaps best exemplified by a survey detailing that 37 per cent of British workers felt their job was meaningless (Dahlgreen, 2015).

The literature evidenced in this section clearly points towards that gap in our academic understanding of this deficit between transitions of the sort discussed in Chapter 2 regarding what the reality of work is for young people today and the realisation of meaningful work. In order to better understand how that divide can be crossed, we must also understand the future of work.

87 3.3 The Future of Work

In the following section the threat of automation and what that might mean to the world of work for young people is addressed. The debate concerning automation is of particular importance to the research as automation is widely seen as the catalyst that will gradually begin to end work as we have known it

(Celentano, 2018; West, 2018). With particular reference to the development of technology as both a force for emancipation and indeed a factor in the promotion of unemployment, a variety of theoretical

approaches are critically considered and how they might apply to the employment futures of young people in an economy like Scotland. The theoretical standpoints of André Gorz and Ivan Illich in particular are considered as advisory positions from which to consider the future manifestation of work and resistance to that change, and indeed how this relates to the consumerist society that has been created around us.

When considering the theoretical framework of this research an approach which develops new theories about work and youth transitions necessarily has to look towards the future and not simply assume the class conflicts and economic disputes of the past will predominate as time moves on. In doing so, the theoretical ideas about the approach of automation will be considered in conjunction with questions arising from the earlier review on UBI.