Security Capital in the Field of Work: A Bourdieuian Perspective on Precarity and Social Inequality

Abstract

Drawing on Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital, this article proposes the concept of security capital for a better understanding of precarity in the field of work. Three indicators are put forward to characterise the level of precarity – employment-based security capital, citizenship-based security capital and embodied security capital. Additionally, the notion of security capital stresses the reproduction of precarity, an important case of precarisation, and this article provides two important mechanisms underlying this process – the embodiment of precarity and the conversion between security capital and other forms of capital. Moreover, the Bourdieuian perspective on the state and its relations with security capital sheds light on how people can mobilise the state to shift neoliberal policymaking and safeguard labour security.