Introduction

Pierre Bourdieu (1998) insists that ‘precarity is everywhere today’. Bourdieu’s phrase reflects a widely reported sense that ‘standard’ employment relationships, with permanent contracts, regular hours, and decent pay, are under assault in contemporary capitalism. Popular and academic debates about the global rise of precarious work are increasingly widespread. Concerns about the possibilities for progressive politics in a context marked by declining union densities and the global growth of temporary, casualized, and ‘informal’ work are particularly pronounced. A number of authors have suggested that, because precarious workers are faced with a daily struggle to secure their livelihoods, they face a foreshortened ‘shadow of the future’ that inhibits their political mobilization; or worse, makes them vulnerable to dangerous forms of populism and demagoguery (Standing 2011; Bourdieu 1998). More nuanced perspectives certainly exist (e.g. Harris and Scully 2015; Lambert and Herod 2016), but political possibilities in the context of increasingly precarious work are subject to considerable debate and anxiety.