A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to CitizensThis book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Guy Standing's immensely influential 2011 book introduced the Precariat as an emerging mass class, characterized by inequality and insecurity. Standing outlined the increasingly global nature of the Precariat as a social phenomenon, especially in the light of the social unrest characterized by the Occupy movements. He outlined the political risks they might pose, and at what might be done to diminish inequality and allow such workers to find a more stable labour identity. His concept and his conclusions have been widely taken up by thinkers from Noam Chomsky to Zygmunt Bauman, by political activists and by policy-makers. This new book takes the debate a stage further, looking in more detail at the kind of progressive politics that might form the vision of a Good Society in which such inequality, and the instability it produces, is reduced. A Precariat Charter discusses how rights - political, civil, social and economic - have been denied to the Precariat, and argues for the importance of redefining our social contract around notions of associational freedom, agency and the commons. |
Contents
The precariat grows | |
Confronting the utilitarian consensus | |
Towards a Precariat Charter | |
Redefine work as productive and reproductive activity | |
Promote associational freedom | |
Stop classbased migration policy | |
Remove poverty traps and precarity traps | |
Stop demonizing the disabled | |
Regulate payday loans and student loans | |
Make a bonfire of subsidies | |
Share capital via sovereign wealth funds | |
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27 September accessed agencies austerity banks bargaining basic income become benefits capital cent charity citizens citizenship claim claimants commodification commons corporations costs David Cameron debt deliberative democracy democracy denizens disabled due process Economist elite emerging empathy employers employment firms flexible labour Foxconn funds global global market system groups growth Iain Duncan Smith industry inequality insecurity institutions internships investment jobseeking labour market labourist Liam Byrne living means-testing migrants million neo-liberal occupational OECD OECD countries paid parties payday loan pension people’s plutocracy political politicians poverty trap precariat precarity traps principle proficians profits progressive quantitative easing salariat September 2013 social democrats social income social policy social protection social rights society sovereign wealth funds subsidies tax credits tests unemployed unions University unpaid utilitarian wages welfare workers workfare zero-hours contracts