ABSTRACT
This retrospective appraisal begins by recalling an activist-led research project based at a feminist squat in downtown Madrid in the early 2000s. This in-house inquiry studied the growing financial instability among youth in an urban setting. Out of this self-named “militant research project” known as Precarias a la Deriva, open access publications were released, whose depictions were inspirational for many. This intellectual production took place well before the concept of precarity gained popularity in the Anglophone academy. By calling it Precarious Thought, I contend that writings by precarity organizers constitute instances of social theory, advancing a necessary “knowledge turn” in the way we think of and study social movements. In fact, activist organizing initiatives taking place in Southern Europe at the turn of the century are yet to be recognized as the crafters of a complex and deeply ambivalent signification of precarity.
