Over the past couple of years, an intriguing new movement has been emerging from the chaos of Europe’s new left. Abandoned by unions and corporations, forsaken by the shrinking welfare state and increasingly vulnerable to the whims of the market, people have started to organize around the concept of precarity: the condition of living without stability or even the assurance of survival.
Both celebrated and vilified, precarity is a lifestyle created by the new reality of casual, flexible, temp and contract work. It has been brought on by the erosion of traditional safety nets—the dole, public healthcare, pensions, lifetime corporate jobs, unions, and so on. Most are forced into it. But still others choose to live precariously, rather than scramble to survive in the collapsing old system. To them, precarity is an identity, and they’re fighting— collectively—to make it work.
At least, that’s what’s happening in Europe and parts of South America, where precarity activists are building sophisticated networks of squats and collective housing co-ops, independent production and distribution networks, and worker-run factories. It’s all a means of protecting against the volatility and uncertainty of the system around them. In recent years, they’ve even organized massive days of action—paralleling traditional May Day protests to "activate new forms of social cooperation, new abilities to share skills, experiences and resources, in order to construct and live a new imagery of social radicalism."
So here’s the question: where is the precarity movement in the rest of the world? How about in the USA, home to some of the most insecure workers in the first world? Does America’s culture of individuality preclude a collective response? Have activists been beaten into submission by corporate dominance and the heavies in the White House? Or are we wrong? Maybe the US has an equivalent precarity movement under a different name. Or it’s nameless and waiting to be discovered.
We want your thoughts and insights, so join this forum and tune us in to the global precarity movement.
Further info: Global Project (Italian and English) EuroMayDay 2005
International solidarity - freedom of communication
