The Precarious Concept of Precarity

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-446
Author(s):  
Joseph Choonara
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Temporary Employment ◽  
Radical Theory ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Labor Power ◽  
Employment Tenure ◽  
Radical Political Economy ◽  
Sociological Discourse

This paper traces the roots of precarity as a concept emerging from French sociological discourse, then permeating through networks informed by Italian autonomism, before re-emerging in the writings of figures such as Guy Standing and Arne Kalleberg. It is shown that, despite the claims of the literature, precarity in employment is not typical in the United Kingdom. Here, temporary employment remains the exception and employment tenure remains stable. This can best be explained by radical political economy. Capital is not interested simply in engendering precarity; it is also concerned with the retention and reproduction of labor power, leading to contradictory imperatives. The resonance of the narrative of precarity, in spite of this, reflects a long retreat from class within radical theory and the insecurities present in working life.

scholarly journals Towards a Political Economy of Charging Regimes: Fines, Fees and Force in Uk Immigration Control

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 579-599
Author(s):  
Jon Burnett ◽  
Fidelis Chebe
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
The Political ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Distinct Form ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Immigration Control ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Financial Power

Abstract Charging regimes and the extraction of revenue are integral components of immigration control in the United Kingdom. However, while these have been analysed in their individual guises, to date, there has been little substantive analysis bringing these regimes together and locating them at the centre of its enquiry. Drawing on data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this paper consequently examines the functions of charging regimes as a distinct form of statecraft, focussing its attention on UK Visas and Immigration fees and charges, carrier sanctions, charges related to accessing services and civil penalties administered though immigration enforcement. Analysing their historical roots and their contemporary prevalence, it suggests that they contribute to the political economy of financial power, which has significant implications for understandings of criminalization and immigration enforcement.

scholarly journals Government as Institutional Entrepreneur: Extending Working Life in the UK and Japan

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW FLYNN ◽  
HEIKE SCHRÖDER ◽  
MASA HIGO ◽  
ATSUHIRO YAMADA
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Older Workers ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Light Touch ◽  
Institutional Entrepreneurship ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Institutional Entrepreneur ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk

AbstractThrough the lens of Institutional Entrepreneurship, this paper discusses how governments use the levers of power afforded through business and welfare systems to affect change in the organisational management of older workers. It does so using national stakeholder interviews in two contrasting economies: the United Kingdom and Japan. Both governments have taken a ‘light-touch’ approach to work and retirement. However, the highly institutionalised Japanese system affords the government greater leverage than that of the liberal UK system in changing employer practices at the workplace level.

scholarly journals Producing Working-Life Histories in the UKHLS and BHPS

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liam Wright
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Working Life ◽  
British Household Panel Survey ◽  
Panel Survey ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Working Lives

The document describes a Stata algorithm for producing working-life histories for participants in the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS). It also describes in detail questionnaire items related to working lives from the two studies.

Free Trade and State Formation: The Political Economy of Fisheries Policy in Britain and the United Kingdom circa 1780–1850

2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 288-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Gambles
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Policy ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
State Formation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
British State ◽  
The Relationship

It is striking that historians of the early nineteenth century have been relatively reluctant to consider relationships between economic policy and the consolidation of the British state. In today's context, the economic and political challenges posed by both European integration and resurgent nationalism have generated hotly contested controversies on the political economy of state formation. From the perspective of the United Kingdom, the prospect of political and administrative devolution has forced us to address the implications of political decentralization for regional economic development (and vice versa) and to consider in turn the impact of these dynamics on the political integrity of a multinational state. For Britain, the period between circa 1780 and 1850 was characterized by unprecedented economic growth, imperial crisis and acquisition, and political consolidation. In a metropolitan sense the most dramatic feature of this process was, of course, the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1800. Insofar as historians of early nineteenth-century Britain have examined the relationship between “state formation” and economic policy, however, they have tended to focus on the ideas, politics, and pressures surrounding the retreat of the state from economic intervention. Thus in more general accounts it became axiomatic that the nineteenth-century state shrank progressively from social and economic intervention, liberating commerce, and resting the fiscal system on secure but modest direct taxation.More recently, the relationship between the concept of “laissez-faire” and British state formation has been dramatically revised and refined by Philip Harling and Peter Mandler.

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