Challenges and Contradictions in the ‘Normalising’ of Precarious Work

TLDR

Precarious work is increasingly considered the new “norm” to which employment and social protection systems must adjust. The article investigates contradictions and tensions arising when social policies both decommodify and recommodify labour during the normalisation of precarious work. The authors present an expanded decommodification framework that maps how the standard employment relationship can be extended and flexibilised to cover precarious workers, illustrated with data from a recent six‑country European study. They find that decommodification processes are only partial and often coexist with activation policies that treat precarious work as an alternative to unemployment, thereby recommodifying labour, yet argue that a reformed SER offers greater inclusion than scenarios that abandon employer regulation and depend solely on state subsidies.

Abstract

Precarious work is increasingly considered the new ‘norm’ to which employment and social protection systems must adjust. This article explores the contradictions and tensions that arise from different processes of normalisation driven by social policies that simultaneously decommodify and recommodify labour. An expanded framework of decommodification is presented that identifies how the standard employment relationship (SER) may be extended and flexibilised to include those in precarious work, drawing examples from a recent study of precarious work across six European countries. These decommodification processes are found to be both partial and, in some cases, coexisting with activation policies that position precarious work as an alternative to unemployment, thereby recommodifying labour. Despite these challenges and contradictions, the article argues that a new vision of SER reform promises greater inclusion than alternative policy scenarios that give up on the regulation of employers and rely on state subsidies to mitigate against precariousness.