The New Social Division Making and Unmaking Precariousness

by Della Porta, Donatella; Hänninen, Sakari; Siisiäinen, Martti; Silvasti, Tiina

• ISBN13: 9781137509338
• ISBN10: 1137509333
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-10-14
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Donatella della Porta is a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute, Italy, where she directs the Centre on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos). She also directs a major ERC project, Mobilizing for Democracy, on civil society participation in democratization processes in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.

Sakari Hänninen is a Research Professor at the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland. As well as articles in scientific journals he has written or edited twenty books (mainly in Finnish) on political theory, power analytics, welfare politics, social law and social exclusion studies.

Martti Siisiäinen is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He has been involved in and led various research projects dealing with social movements, voluntary associations, participation, forms of capital, hegemony and political sociology.

Tiina Silvasti is a Professor of Social and Public Policy in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has studied the social consequences of structural change in agriculture, and her current research interests focus on food system studies, particularly First World hunger.

Table of Contents

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 Silvasti