GUY STANDING AND THE PRECARIAT

It’s valuable to name the ‘Precariat’, focusing on that central experience of insecurity which defines lives on and beyond the margins.

One quick point, from a British perspective. I suspect that the isolation of Precarians risks becoming more intense.

Firstly because of a widening gap between the information-richness of much of society and Precarians’ information-poverty. Poverty, particularly when including bankruptcy/debt relief orders/eviction, tends to spell no web access and, as Guy Standing points out, libraries with their free internet terminals are closing. A large proportion of young people in particular, I understand, put topping up their mobiles before buying food, but a key purpose of mobiles is to communicate with one’s peer group. For mobiles to become a group’s primary source of information is to maximise their chances of living in a closed world whose fears and concerns, legitimate, partially informed and mythical, don’t interact with other worlds. None of us are immune from such quasi-ghettoised information, since Google et al now personalise the information they give us according to our track record and hence what they think we want to hear. But the intensification of experience – of insecurity, fear, suspicion – is at the heart of Standing’s concerns about a polarised Precariat and this could be part of that picture.

Secondly – and similarly – through the further erosion of mixed neighbourhoods. I’m baffled by the British government’s policy on social housing for vulnerable people – stripping away secure tenancies in favour of 2 year ones, so that the penalty of climbing out of extreme vulnerability is loss of one’s home. And by the policy on local authorities’ homelessness duty, which can now be satisfied by offering 2-year private lets anywhere in the country. And by housing benefit cuts/reforms which ensure that many poor people have to move to poor areas. Like the loss of Sure Start centres which, not being means-tested, used to bring together parents from a range of backgrounds, all these policies minimise the chances of cross-class communication.

It’s baffling because beyond the desire for a Disneyland or apartheid state which renders poverty invisible, it’s hard to see what end it achieves. It certainly doesn’t help people back into work. It’s clear enough what potential dangers – moral, social, political, economic – it runs. As articulated not least by Guy Standing.