Precarious Work

Excerpted from the Editor’s Note

The focus on the gendered dynamics of precarious work in this volume foregrounds both the interpersonal and structural dimensions of work and labor under neoliberalism and global economic shifts. As guest editors Alyson Cole and Victoria Hattam elaborate in their introduction, this issue raises questions about the meanings, experiences, and materiality of work for feminist studies. Earlier essays in the issue provide insightful approaches to defining and engaging precarity as a framework for understanding raced, classed, and gendered experiences of survival and struggle in the context of legal, economic, and social insecurities. Later essays focus on the gendered kinship dimensions of labor and offer critical interventions in understanding workers’ struggles to contest and redefine the labor conditions, gender protocols, and affective demands of factory and domestic work. The final essays trace workers’ efforts to navigate the interwoven impact of state economic policies and gendered labor expectations in the global fashion economy, the waste and recycling economy of India, the “maker” movement, technology, and construction ranging across the world including Qatar, India, China, and Alabama. The essays are complemented by book reviews by Nichole Marie Shippen and Nicholas Fiori on recent work that theorizes precarity in relation to the quotidian impact of neoliberalism and digital economies. These essays and book reviews demonstrate the importance of solidarity in order to challenge continuing and new forms of alienation and exploitation.