The new social division : making and unmaking precariousness

This volume addresses issues of precariousness in a broad perspective, examining socio-economic transformations as well as the identity formation and political organizing of precarious people. Bridging empirical research with social theory, this interdisciplinary collection illustrates how structural constraints and agency combine in the struggles over precariousness. The book approaches precarization as a globally orchestrated process which has deep impacts on human socio-economic conditions, living experiences and civic action. The category of the precariat is not taken as given but is comparatively problematized as an effect of processes of precarization which proceed in distinct patterns in different contexts. This contextual knowledge is important in order to understand the life experiences of people in precarious situations. The analysis of particular precarious situations, events and processes helps to capture the precariat's motives and aptitude for action. In the final section of the book, civic action by people in precarious positions is presented as a definite and novel political outcome of the precarization process. Linking these different analytic levels, The New Social Division offers both a detailed and a wide-ranging interpretation of precarization as a multifarious but unique process, which is too often either reduced to the static class notion of precariat or totally dismissed as a chimera.-- 1. The precarisation effect; Donatella della Porta, Sakari Hänninen, Martti Siisiäinen and Tiina Silvasti -- Part I -- 2. Precarity in the different worlds of social classes; Harri Melin and Raimo Blom -- 3. Precarity - minority condition or majority experience?; Kevin Doogan -- 4. A European analysis of subsistence precarisation and precarious risk; Erling Solheim and Håkon Leiulfsrud -- 5. Tests for the Underclass: The Social Effects of Activating Labour Market Policy in Germany; Klaus Dörre -- 6. The precarious status of migrant labour in Greece: evidence from rural areas; Charalambos Kasimis, Apostolos, G. Papadopoulos and Stavros Zografakis -- Part II -- 7. Precariousness in Academia - The prospects of employment in changing universities; Kirsti Lempiäinen -- 8. On the Roma precarious experience facing Pentecostalism; Ildikó Asztalos Morell -- 9. Giving up Farming as a Precarious Decision; Tiina Silvasti and Sakari Hänninen -- 10. Precarious Experience Denied?; Mikko Jakonen -- 11. Precarious Voice or Precarious Noise?; Lauri Siisiäinen -- Part III -- 12. Precarious Struggles in Italy; Donatella della Porta, Simone Baglioni and Herbert Reiter -- 13. The Many Frames of Precarious Condition. Some Insights from Italian Mobilization against Precarity; Alice Mattoni -- 14. The transformation of jobless' movement and the segregation of the unemployed in Finland since the 1990s; Martti Siisiäinen, Eeva Luhtakallio and Tomi Kankainen -- 15. Varieties of precarious workers' unionism: Greece and Italy compared; Markos Vogiatzoglou -- 16. The Making and Unmaking of Precarity: Some Concluding Remarks; Donatella della Porta, Sakari Hänninen, Martti Siisiäinen and Tiina Silvast