ABSTRACT
Precarity is an effect of neoliberal practices in the workplace within a wider context of social turbulence as governments in countries of the Global North have sought to down-size the state through privatization and marketization. Precarity is a concept that links temporary, poorly paid, and insecure work practices with health and wellbeing. People who experience precarity are angry, anxious, and alienated. The concept has particular purchase in countries of the Global North where the expectation remains that hard work will result in economic and emotional security, ‘the good life’. The prevalence of precarity has risen to an extent that a new social class has emerged, the precariat. By rethinking class as a process of accumulating economic, cultural, and social capital, members of the precariat are diverse, though they share precarious work and its ill effects in common. Education has been caught up in this process, in many places to the detriment of students and teachers, while practices such as outsourcing and the development of ‘intrusive pedagogies’ have become commonplace in physical education. The capture of education by neoliberalism is particularly problematic if schools are to play a part in ameliorating the effects of precarity on young people.
