ABSTRACT
What has become of the blue-collar worker? Starting from an analysis of surplus population and the generalized spread of economic precarity in contemporary capitalism, this chapter argues that the working class encounters a labour market in which dislocations from paid work, social ties, and communal solidarity are the norm. Within this context, we can best understand the ways that workers experience capitalism’s recent transformations not in terms of whether they are employed or unemployed per se, but rather how disengaged they are from the previous regime of formal, regulated, long-term employment – that is, where exactly they stand within a complex structure of stratification that we call the division of non-labour. We explore how this condition of modern working-class life – a perpetual exposure to varying grades of insecurity and uncertainty – produces forms of trauma in these communities across a range of financial, psychological, and social dimensions. We conclude with a discussion of the sorts of political, economic, and cultural transformations that might alter this situation.
