#precarity — Public Fediverse posts

OnlineFirst - "Interstitial ecologies: Everyday cosmopolitics of pigeon-human cohabitation in the urban margins" by Aseela Haque:

#pigeons #more-than-humancohabitation #Karachi #precarity #urbanecologies

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486261459823

Loss - the belief in progress and the reality of experiences of loss.

* Grievance-fuelled violence at home and psychological harm reduction

"The family violence workforce is stretched in Western societies... 20 out of 38 reviewed cases of fatal family violence were "grievance-fuelled"...The Fixated Grievance Perpetrator Intervention Pilot brings together experts in forensic psychology and psychiatry, criminology, policing, perpetrator intervention and victim support."

World-first trial testing whether counterterrorism strategies can prevent domestic homicide >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-25/dv-new-trial-terrorism-domestic-violence-grievance-homicide/106658162
#violence #FamilyViolence #grievance #loss #ressentiment #precarity #masculinity #entitlement #resentment #anger #GenderBasedViolence #homicide #DV #terror #CrisisOfReproduction #crimes #HarmReduction #therapists #psychologisation

* The role of loss within society
Andreas Reckwitz 's book 'Loss, A Modern Predicament, The first comprehensive study of the role of loss within society", 2025 explains loss not only from a psychological perspective, but also from a sociological one.

"Loss has come to occupy a central position in late modernity – whether in the consequences of climate change or the entrenchment of negative expectations about the future, the ‘losers’ of post-industrial modernisation or the collective processing of ‘historical wounds’ and of who is acknowledged as the victims and perpetrators of these crimes, in a heightened psychological awareness of vulnerability, in political populism, a nostalgia for things past, or programmes of resilience."

"Loss is the bread and butter of populism." >>
https://res.cloudinary.com/suhrkamp/images/q_auto/v1742134247/151338/loss_9783518588222_sample_translation.pdf
#loss #progress #ProgressNarrative #improvement #credibility #modernity #stagnation #precariousness #experience #inequality #StatusAnxiety #SocialHierarchy #CollectiveExperiencesOfLoss #populism #nostalgia #socioanalysis #ClimateDisasters #PolyCrisis #WesternModernity #future #book

Help Is Not the Same as a Future

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 15, 2026

The Difference No One Warns You About

There is a distinction that matters more than most people realize, and it is one America is very careful not to teach explicitly. Help and a future are not the same thing. One can exist without the other, and often does.

I learned that lesson most clearly in Minnesota.

After Illinois, help felt like progress. Assistance existed. People noticed. Systems responded. Compared to what I had known before, that alone felt like a step forward. It took time to understand that help, by itself, does not change trajectory. It only stabilizes the present.

A future requires something else entirely.

When Assistance Works as Designed

Minnesota’s support systems did what they were supposed to do. Food pantries were available. Churches stepped in with grocery vouchers. State assistance existed and was accessible. None of it was humiliating or hostile.

This matters, and it should not be minimized. Compared to many states, Minnesota treats need as a condition rather than a moral failing. That alone reduces suffering.

But systems designed to alleviate immediate hardship are not the same as systems designed to produce long-term mobility. One keeps you afloat. The other gives you a direction.

Minnesota offered flotation. It did not offer direction.

Stabilization Without Movement

Once basic needs are met, the next question is obvious: what comes next? That is where the silence returned.

Work was available, but it clustered in roles that did not lead anywhere else. Security work. Overnight shifts. Positions that absorbed time and energy without building leverage. These jobs kept people alive, but they did not help them move.

Labor economists have noted that many regional economies rely on what are effectively “containment jobs”—roles that stabilize labor markets without creating upward mobility (Autor, 2019). They are not meant to be ladders. They are meant to be endpoints.

If you enter one of those jobs from the outside, you tend to stay there.

The Ceiling You Don’t Hit—You Just Reach

In more openly stratified states, ceilings announce themselves. Wages stall. Housing becomes impossible. You are pushed out.

In Minnesota, the ceiling is quieter. You simply stop rising.

You receive help. You survive. You do not advance.

There is no dramatic rejection. No explicit denial. Just a gradual realization that nothing is opening further, no matter how steady your effort remains.

This is a subtler form of closure, and in some ways, it is more dangerous. It encourages patience where action might otherwise occur. It teaches people to wait.

Temporary Lives Become Permanent

When help replaces opportunity, lives become provisional. You do not plan long-term. You do not invest. You do not imagine permanence.

You tell yourself you are “getting through this period,” even when the period stretches into years.

Sociological research on precarity shows that long-term instability, even when buffered by assistance, erodes planning capacity and future orientation (Standing, 2011). People adapt to the absence of forward motion by shrinking their expectations.

That adaptation is rational. It is also corrosive.

Why Decency Is Not Enough

Minnesota is often held up as evidence that decency solves inequality. The logic is appealing: if systems are kind, outcomes will improve.

But kindness does not rewire labor markets. It does not dismantle closed networks. It does not create pathways where none exist.

Decency reduces harm. It does not redistribute access.

That is not a moral critique. It is a structural one.

The Emotional Cost of Waiting

There is a particular exhaustion that comes from being told, implicitly, that things are fine because you are being helped. Gratitude becomes an obligation. Frustration becomes inappropriate.

After all, the system is doing its part.

This dynamic silences critique. It frames dissatisfaction as ingratitude. It keeps people from naming the absence of a future because the present is tolerable.

I felt that pressure in Minnesota. I felt the need to justify leaving a place that had treated me decently—despite knowing I could not build a life there.

When Leaving Is the Only Honest Choice

Eventually, circumstances made the decision easier. My daughter returned to Texas. The reason I had come to Minnesota dissolved. What remained was a choice between staying static or moving on.

Leaving did not feel dramatic. It felt necessary.

That is often how exits happen in systems that offer help without futures. People do not flee. They drift away when they realize waiting will not change anything.

A National Pattern, Not a Local Failure

This essay is not an indictment of Minnesota alone. It describes a pattern visible across many “well-run” states and cities.

Assistance expands. Opportunity contracts. People survive longer without advancing further.

This is how inequality becomes normalized. Not through cruelty, but through containment.

Naming the Distinction Clearly

Help matters. It saves lives. It reduces suffering. It should exist everywhere.

But help is not a future.

A future requires access to networks, mobility, housing stability, and work that compounds rather than consumes time. Without those, assistance becomes a holding pattern.

Minnesota taught me that lesson clearly.

It showed me that survival and progress are not the same thing—and that confusing the two can cost you years.

References

Autor, D. (2019). Work of the past, work of the future. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 109, 1–32.
Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury Academic.

" There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

Leonard Cohen,1992, Anthem song

“He was just somebody who fell through all the cracks..."

A young man who came to Australia to study computer science died in the bushes near the bustling tunnel entrance to Sydney’s St James station. "Roughly 100,000 people went in or out of St James station during the time ..."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/19/bikram-lama-birdman-sydney-st-james-tunnel-homelessness-ntwnfb
#biopolitics #Sydney #education #housing #visas #homelessness #VulnerableHomelessness #precarity #cracks #SystemicFailures

The new uncomfortable normality
No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience (report): National security starts at the front door – not at the territorial borders.

"For most Australians, the 18-month research project revealed, national security starts at their front door – not at the territorial borders of the island continent. It showed they are worried the country is not prepared for the demands of a volatile 21st century in a polluted information ecosystem, where the rules-based international order is crumbling, economic precarity has become uncomfortably normal and trust is more fragile." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/29/surging-anxiety-australia-national-security-patriotism-ntwnfb

Report: No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience >>
https://nsc.anu.edu.au/research/no-worries-australian-attitudes-national-security-risk-and-resilience

#PublicAnxiety #anxiety #Australia #worries #trust #precarity #inequality #polycrisis #instability #safety #stability #participation #SocialIntegration #FarRight #SocialCohesion #belonging #HyperIndIvidualisation #UncomfortableNormality #climate #NationalSecurity #war

Report launch: «Sex Workers Navigating Gendered Poverty»

🗓 Monday 30th March
💻 Online 🕓 13:00–14:30 UTC
✍️ https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decrim-now-report-launch-sex-workers-navigating-gendered-poverty-tickets-1983265489467

> Next Monday 30th March, 2-3.30pm, we’ll be hosting an online event to discuss the findings of our autumn 2025 research report on why people go into sex work and remain in it, and what they’d like the government to do to support them.

> We’ll be joined for a panel discussion by colleagues from the English Collective of Prostitutes, National Ugly Mugs, BASIS Yorkshire and Amnesty International UK. We’re looking forward to discussing the current situation for sex workers’ rights in the UK, as well as how the cost of living crisis could be contributing to driving more people, especially women, into sex work.

— 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/decrimnow.bsky.social/post/3mhsr5uoqfk2h

❤️‍🔥🤩❤️‍🔥

#SexWork #DecrimNow #UK #Precarity #Poverty #ECP #NUM #BASIS #AmnestyInternational #Online #2026W14

This is understatement. Read the article, it's incredible. #precarity

More families in Southeast Asia sinking into debt

Across Southeast Asia, households are taking on debt just to cover basic needs. Analysts warn that the region's growing dependence on borrowing risks triggering wider financial stress and long term economic harm.
https://www.dw.com/en/more-families-in-southeast-asia-sinking-into-debt/a-76430757

Similar to my own work on #affectivePolarisation, @[email protected] comments on how the producers are actually doing OK economically, but they feel their horizons have shrunk, and complain there is nothing at the end of the month. It seems to me this #precarity may also come from upselling… 3/3

Valeria Guarneros-Meza reflects on her work alongside Barnsley's Educational Learning Support Hub, and highlights the multi-layered ways that precarity stifles community organisations. She argues that solidarity between different social groups is key for overcoming its debilitating effects.

https://interregnum.ghost.io/barnsley-my-story-unpacking-precarity-in-times-of-austerity-racism-poor-working-conditions/

#precarity #Barnsley #barnsleynorth #labour #work #uk #migrants #England #community #Organize #CommunityDevelopment #communityorganizing #migrantworkers #migrantlabor

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 81/n From Foreign Correspondent to Uber Driver

This is an incredible, moving personal perspective on this system that we are all entangled in, that shifts money to the few away from the rest of us at accelerating rate.

Having also experienced #Redundancy not too long ago and still very much in the doldrums of short term, part time jobs, this resonates deeply. So many are going through this, we need to help each other. #Precarity

https://open.substack.com/pub/stevescherer/p/my-journey-from-foreign-correspondent?r=4ug8&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay

"Invisible labellers’ toil has allowed self-driving cars to recognise pedestrians and chatbots to speak in natural-sounding sentences.

For a generative artificial intelligence system to learn how to write an autopsy report, human workers must sort and annotate thousands of crime scene images.

The precarious work of training AI, which generally pays just a few dollars, has sparked a movement for better wages and conditions stretching from Kenya to Colombia.

“You have to spend your whole day looking at dead bodies and crime scenes… Mental health support was not provided,” Kenyan national Ephantus Kanyugi told AFP.

Labellers “need to spend time with these images, zoom into the wounds of dead people” to outline them so they can be fed into the AI, the 30-year-old added.

Kanyugi, who has worked on image labelling since 2018, is the vice-president of the Data Labelers Association (DLA), an 800-strong labour group based in Nairobi.

The DLA plans to unveil a code of conduct this month aimed at major labelling platforms, calling for improved conditions for workers."

https://www.dawn.com/news/1949310

#AI #GenerativeAI #AITraining #DataLabeling #Precarity #Kenya

Pluralistic: "Flexible labor" is a euphemism for "derisking capital" (10 Nov 2025)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/10/zero-sum-zero-hours/

#AcademicVenting #Redundancy #Precarity 🧵good; especially learning wise. I know i am incredibly lucky in so many ways. But it’s hard work, many humiliations (lower grade etc) and also: no central identity. Apart from no time that’s been the main reason why i don’t post here much anymore. So: shoutout here to everyone juggling several insecure jobs: it’s hard, and it really changes, hardens you. Less outward looking, sense of agency, hope. Deeply worrying that majority of us live this way.

"Wray proposes a detailed series of recommendations to unions for things they should demand in their contracts to maximize their chances to capitalize on the opportunities afforded by the Platform Work Directive, such as establishing a "governance body" within the company "to govern data formation, storage, handling and security issues. This body should include shop stewards and all members of the body should receive data training."

He also sets out technological tactics that unions can fund and capitalize on to maximize their use of the directive, such as hacking apps to allow gig workers to increase their earnings. He writes warmly of "the sock-puppet method," where many test accounts are used to place and book work through platforms to monitor their pricing systems to detect collusion and price rigging. This has been successfully used in Spain to create the basis for an ongoing lawsuit over price collusion.

The new world of algorithmic management and the new Platform Work Directive offers many opportunities to organized labor. However, there is always the possibility that an employer will simply refuse to follow the law – as Uber has done, after it was found guilty of violating data disclosure work and was fined €6,000/day until it came into compliance. Uber's now paid €500,000 in fines and has not disclosed the data that the law and the courts require of it.

With algorithmic management, bosses have figured out new ways to evade the law and steal from workers. The Platform Work Directive gives workers and unions a whole suite of new tools to force bosses to play fair. It's not going to be easy, but the technological capacity workers and unions develop here can be repurposed to wage all-out digital class warfare."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/25/roboboss/#counterapps

#EU #PWD #PlatformWorkDirective #AlgorithmicManagement #Roboboss #GigEconomy #Precarity

😱 #HigherEducation #philosophy #precarity

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:odjxkglmyg4db5baebj5d4q3/post/3lw4bilggok22

"Uber received a report of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the United States almost every eight minutes on average between 2017 and 2022, sealed court records show, a level far more pervasive than what the company has disclosed.
Listen to this article with reporter commentary

Publicly, the ride-sharing service proclaimed it was one of the safest options for travel, with aggressive media campaigns and polished reports on its website about the rarity of serious attacks.

Inside Uber, teams of data scientists and safety experts spent years studying the problem. The company tested tools that proved effective at making trips safer, including sophisticated matching algorithms, mandatory video recording and pairing female passengers with female drivers.

Still, Uber delayed or did not require its drivers to adopt some of the most promising programs, nor did it warn passengers about factors it linked to attacks, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees, internal documents and court records. Hundreds of the records have been under seal as part of large-scale sexual assault litigation against Uber.

Uber’s decisions about safety came as it prioritized growing its user base, avoiding costly lawsuits and protecting its business model, which classifies drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, the records show.

The distinction is important to Uber. Contractors are much cheaper than employees because the company does not need to pay benefits or overtime, and it also means drivers are minimally supervised and not subject to the same labor rules as traditional employees."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/business/uber-sexual-assault.html

#Uber #RideHailing #GigEconomy #Precarity #USA

A collection of talks, media appearances and articles by Interregnum's Panos Theodoropoulos that relate to the publication of The Precarious Migrant Worker: The Socialization of Precarity (Polity Press, 2025).

https://interregnum.ghost.io/the-precarious-migrant-worker-around-the-world/

#book #booklaunch #migrant #migrantworkers #solidarity #precarity #politics #podcast #workers #sociology

"We are kidding ourselves if we expect the private sector to solve the long - standing and structural problem of economic #precarity, and we shouldn't be surprised when businesses seek to profit from that economic precarity instead - that's #capitalism, baby!"

-- Hilary Allen, Fintech Dystopia #q

Speaker Panos Theodoropoulos will discuss major themes in his research, drawing from his immersive ethnographic research inside the UK’s warehouses, factories and kitchens. He explores how precarity shapes migrant lives — and how resistance to neoliberal systems still emerges from the ground up. Reflections on the intersection of migration, #Precarity , borders and organising.

https://www.3cr.org.au/sticktogether/episode/precarious-migrant-worker-panos-theodoropoulos

#3CR #CommunityRadio
#labormovement #migrantworkers #organize #solidarity #unions

Walking through the Chapel Market in Islington, I saw the door to what presumably had been a residence that had since been aggressively subdivided, and next to it, a wall of #Airbnb key lockers. They were laid out haphazardly, almost organically, looking not so much like a planned system but more like the eggs of some predatory insect.

#precarity #RentalCrisis #London #UnsubtleMetaphor #capitalism #trypophobia https://pixelfed.social/p/acb/852805043673574856