The introduction to this special issue of Critical Sociology offers an interpretation of recent debates in the precarity literature and the role precarity plays in a wide range of disciplines’ scholarship. It makes the case for a broad conceptualization of precarity, one that recognises many dimensions and sites of precariousness in contemporary life. In addition to providing grounded examples of precarity experienced in this broad sense, this collection of articles focuses on responses to precarity and strategies that individuals, collectives and institutions are taking to address an increasingly precarious life. The collection focuses on Australia, where the authors are based. This affords readers an opportunity to observe the particularities of precarity in Australia, where some elements of the neoliberal welfare state have cushioned, and others have sharpened, people’s experience of volatility and uncertainty.
AlbertiGBessaIHardyKet al. (2018) In, against and beyond precarity: Work in insecure times. Work, Employment and Society32(3): 447–457.
2.
AndersonB (2010) Migration, immigration controls and the fashioning of precarious workers. Work, Employment and Society24(2): 300–17.
3.
BarbierJC (2002) A Survey of the Use of the Term Précarité in French Economics and Sociology. Working Document No. 19, CNRS/Centre d’études de l’emploi, November.
4.
BeckU (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE.
5.
BigliaBMartíJB (2014) Precarity. In: TeoT (ed.) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. New York, NY: Springer, 1488–1491.
6.
BourdieuP (1963) Travail et Travailleurs en Algérie [Work and workers in Algeria]. Paris: Mouton et co.
7.
BremanJ (2013) A bogus concept?New Left Review84(November–December).
8.
BrodkinEZMarstonG (eds) (2013) Work and the Welfare State: Street-Level Organizations and Workfare Politics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
9.
BryanDRaffertyM (2018) Risking Together: How Finance Is Dominating Everyday Life in Australia. Sydney: Sydney University Press.
10.
ButlerJ (2011) For and against precarity. Tidal: Occupy Theory, Occupy Strategy. 1(December).
11.
CampbellIBurgessJ (2018) Patchy progress? Two decades of research on precariousness and precarious work in Australia. Labor and Industry28(1): 48–67.
12.
CampbellIPriceR (2016) Precarious work and precarious workers: Towards an improved conceptualisation. Economic and Labor Relations Review27(3): 314–332.
CastlesFG (1988) Australian Public Policy and Economic Vulnerability: A Comparative and Historical Perspective. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
15.
ChunJJ (2016) The affective politics of the precariat: Reconsidering alternative histories of grassroots worker organising. Global Labour Journal7(2): 136–147.
16.
ClementWMathieuSPrusSet al. (2009) Precarious lives in the new economy: Comparative intersectional analysis. In: VoskoLMacDonaldMCampbellI (eds) Gender and the Contours of Precarious Employment. London: Routledge, 240–255.
HackerJS (2006) The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and Decline of the American Dream. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
19.
HallPASoskiceD (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
20.
HumphrysECahillD (2016) How labour made neoliberalism. Critical Sociology43(5): 669–684.
21.
JørgensenMB (2016) Precariat – what it is and isn’t – towards an understanding of what itdoes. Critical Sociology42(7–8): 959–974.
22.
KallebergAL (2011) Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarised and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s to 2000s. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
