UC Berkeley

The closing decades of the 20th century were devastating for the working class. Across the globe the widespread embrace of free markets led to growing capital mobility, flexible and informal employment, and union decline. A key result of these shifts was the expansion of the precarious working class: insecurely employed, low-income, and non-unionized segments of the urban working class. Scholars have increasingly highlighted this transformation, but they have paid little attention to collective struggles emerging from the precarious working class. Members of the precarious working class are instead commonly dismissed as too weak or fragmented to engage in politically relevant action. We thus know very little about their political orientation: what do members of the precarious working class struggle for, who do they struggle against, and from where do they derive power?

This dissertation is a study of precarious politics, which refers to the political content of collective struggles by members of the precarious working class. The study focuses on two groups that were actively engaged in collective struggles during the late 1990s and 2000s: low-wage noncitizen workers in California, United States; and poor citizen communities in Gauteng, South Africa. The two groups shared a common structural position based on insecure employment and livelihood. But they also reflected the uneven development of the precarious working class across the world system. Low-wage noncitizen workers in California were prototypical of the precarious working class under advanced capitalism, which was increasingly organized around insecure formal sector employment and international migration. Poor citizen communities in Gauteng were, in contrast, prototypical of the precarious working class under peripheral capitalism, which was increasingly organized around high unemployment, informal economic activity, and "internal" rural-to-urban migration.

In both cases precarious politics were rooted in demands for recognition, dignity, and respect. Given their marginalization, recognition was an important end in itself for members of the precarious working class. But it was also a source of symbolic leverage, enabling them to compensate for their detachment from unions and lack of economic leverage. Symbolic leverage was, in turn, crucial for achieving more concrete ends. Given the economic insecurity of the precarious working class, economic struggles for basic survival were central. But economic struggles in both places fed into and overlapped with citizenship struggles around official inclusion in the political community, broadening the terrain of precarious politics.

Beyond this basic similarity, precarious politics in California and Gauteng were very different. Oriented towards participation, low-wage noncitizen workers in California sought to increase their access and leverage within the economy and society. Their economic struggles were organized around an Equal Opportunity politics, which sought access to the labor market and basic labor protections, while their citizenship struggles were organized around a Membership Inclusion politics, which sought official legal status and freedom from criminalization. Oriented towards protection, poor citizen communities in Gauteng instead sought to protect themselves against the ravages of the market. Their economic struggles were organized around a Collective Consumption politics, which sought state delivery of basic public goods, while their citizenship struggles were organized around a Membership Exclusion politics, which sought the expulsion of noncitizen outsiders. Precarious politics in California and Gauteng thus ran in opposite directions as they moved from economic struggles to citizenship struggles. Whereas low-wage noncitizen workers in California sought to broaden the political community, poor citizen communities in Gauteng sought to contract it.

Labor responses to precarious politics tended to reinforce the divergence. Understanding the struggles of low-wage noncitizen workers as crucial to their own revitalization, unions in California embraced precarious politics as part of a broader labor movement. This fusion affirmed the recognition of the precarious working class, reinforcing their struggles for participation. Focused on negotiating with the state and protecting their own privileges, unions in Gauteng treated precarious politics as separate from the labor movement. This separation isolated the precarious working class from broader struggles, reinforcing their struggles for protection.

The concept of precarious politics provides a new lens for examining working class struggles in an age of marketization and insecurity. Using this lens, the two case studies show that a common precarious politics is emerging in very different parts of the globe, but that it takes very different forms depending on where the precarious working class is located within the world system.