The Pragmatics of Precarious Work: Security and Vulnerability in the Pandemic Economy

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Krzysztof Z. Jankowski

The Pragmatics of Precarious Work

Security and Vulnerability in the Pandemic Economy

Krzysztof Z. Jankowski

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English

Routledge
21 August 2025

Social theory; Sociology: work & labour; Employment & unemployment

Series: Routledge Advances in Sociology

Drawing on data collected in London’s precarious labour market during the COVID- 19 pandemic, this book explores the pragmatic actions of precarious work that produce simultaneous security and vulnerability.

The analysis spans the full scope of precarious working: procedures of job searching and applying, conducting duties and becoming acclimatised to the workplace, and exercises of chaining precarious jobs together or planning an exit into permanent and full- time work. These are brought into discussion to show how the flexibility of job searching interacts with the confinement of workplace activity.

This book is a valuable contribution for scholars and students in the fields of sociology of work, and of social stratification, that has important implications for our understanding of employment in late modernity. Its ethnographic data regarding the practicalities of precarious work is highly relevant to social work, social policy, management and business. The application of that data to debates over the nature of capitalism is relevant to theoreticians across the social sciences including sociology, geography, anthropology and organizational studies.

By: Krzysztof Z. Jankowski
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 490g
ISBN: 9781032851426
ISBN 10: 1032851422
Series: Routledge Advances in Sociology
Pages: 170
Publication Date: 21 August 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction: The Precarious End to Fordist Security Part One: Being Contingent 1. The Consistency of Precarious Work 2. The Uncertainty of Precarious Job Offers 3. Denizens on the Contingent Landscape Part Two: Filling In 4. The Certainty of Temporary Workplaces 5. The Face of Precarity: When a Temporary Job Stabilises Part Three: Surfing 6. Transition as Norm: Surfing the Contingent Landscape 7. Continuing, Exit and Recursion: The Boundary of Precarity Conclusion: The Pragmatics and Categories of Precarious Work

Krzysztof Z. Jankowski is a social theorist and ethnographer from Dunedin, New Zealand. His research interrogates the structuring of societal change through a range of focuses, including global mobilities, global consumer culture, urban morphology and, in this text, the instabilities of employment.