The world of work is changing rapidly, although there is one constant: the widening gap between meaningful, well-paid, and socially prestigious jobs, alongside a large number of precarious, temporary, low-paid, and exploitative jobs. The expansion of control technologies (algorithms, platforms, GPS, etc.) makes this situation more complex. Job insecurity and high unemployment rates, alongside the weakness of the welfare state and the erosion of social ties, contribute to the growing exclusion of regular citizens. And probably such a trend has worsened because of the pandemic crisis. At the same time, in our modern, liberal, and democratic societies, there is a strong pressure for individuals to achieve full autonomy and self-sufficiency (Caldwell, 2004: 3).
Following Sennet’s (2006), Allison’s (2013) and Butler’s (2004) insights, we would like to explore the way in which such job insecurity filters through and expands into daily relationships, today ephemeral and fragmented. We wonder how these fragile, unstable, deplorable labour relations impact social, affective, and emotional relationships.
The suffering and hopelessness derived from precarious lives may generate existential emptiness, substance abuse or massive consumption of anxiolytics. However, beyond material precariousness, these new ways of earning a living structure people's behaviors, social arrangements, values, or expectations. What is the narrative of the people who suffer from it? Where and how do they get the strength to carry on? What imaginaries are generated from these realities? How does all this affect citizen participation?
