This is a study into the impact of precarious work, defined as low-skill and low-pay
jobs, on workers in the South West of Britain. In it, I investigate the experiences of
three broad groups of precarious workers: migrants, care assistants (adult and
nursery) and employees working for ‘Cleanwell’, an international provider of cleaning
and catering services.
My approach identifies and occupies the central ground between two opposing
perspectives. Along with Guy Standing (2014; 2011), I acknowledge the existence of
employment structures which can be objectively described as lacking the security of
meaningful pay, tenure, access to training and progression. However, I reject the
reductive structural determinism, from structures of work towards working
experiences, which he implies. With Kevin Doogan (2015; 2013), I recognise the
opposing, ‘rising security’ argument which cautions against homogenous
classifications of precarious workers. Nevertheless, I view it as incomplete,
challenging only the extent of precarity conditions but not the inherently negative
experiences associated with them.
In my investigation, I distinguish between ‘precarity’, as the terms and conditions of
low-pay and low-skill work and ‘precariousness’, conceptualised as the corresponding
worker experiences. Grounding my study in a phenomenological paradigm of enquiry
and adopting a ‘meaning condensation’ method of analysis (Kvale, 1996), I seek to
understand whether workers can re-construct the negative impact of precarious
contexts. As a result, I present precariousness as essentially relational and not
absolute. Furthermore, the re-construction of the precarious experience draws on the
support of social groups and can lead to fulfilling professional identities. Lastly,
precariousness can be a pedagogic experience, both positive and developmental,
through which workers can follow the example set by parents and grandparents, as
well as serving as role-models themselves.
In the study, I challenge assumptions that precarious work has a predominantly
negative impact on workers, yet caution against arguments for worker collectivisation
and resistance. I argue that precariousness is a phenomenon neither fully determined
by low-skill, low-pay contexts, nor simply a psychological state manifested in isolation
from precarious work. Rather, it is the phenomenological ‘intending’ (Sokolowski,
2000) of precarious structures, that is, the conscious engagement of precarious
workers with low-pay and low-skill work through a range of attitudes, beliefs, views
and opinions. Defining it in such a way is a departure from conventional approaches
and through it, I show that precariousness offers a wider range of, both positive and
negative experiences. It is a means through which even the employment context of
precarious work can be re-constructed by individual workers who do not have
allegiance to a precariat class, whether actual, or ‘in-the-making’ (Standing, 2011).
Date of Award | 2016 |
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Original language | English |
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Awarding Institution | |
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Supervisor | Duncan Lewis (Other Supervisor) |
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- Precariat
- Precarious Workers
- Insecurity
- Social Identity Theory
- Precarity
‘PRECARITY AND PRECARIOUSNESS – A STUDY INTO THE IMPACT OF LOW-PAY, LOW-SKILL EMPLOYMENT STRUCTURES ON THE EXPERIENCES OF WORKERS IN THE SOUTH WEST OF BRITAIN
Manolchev, C. (Author). 2016
Student thesis: PhD