The Pragmatics of Precarious Work

Drawing on data collected in London's precarious labour market during the Covid-19 pandemic, this book explores how precarious work is pragmatically engaged with towards the production of simultaneous security and insecurity.

Krzysztof Z. Jankowski is a social theorist and ethnographer from Dunedin, New Zealand. His research interrogates the structuring of societal change through a range of focuses, including global mobilities, global consumer culture, urban morphology and, in this text, the instabilities of employment.

Introduction: The Precarious End to Fordist Security Part One: Being Contingent 1. The Consistency of Precarious Work 2. The Uncertainty of Precarious Job Offers 3. Denizens on the Contingent Landscape Part Two: Filling In 4. The Certainty of Temporary Workplaces 5. The Face of Precarity: When a Temporary Job Stabilises Part Three: Surfing 6. Transition as Norm: Surfing the Contingent Landscape 7. Continuing, Exit and Recursion: The Boundary of Precarity Conclusion: The Pragmatics and Categories of Precarious Work