This chapter investigates the precarious arrangements embedded in the systems and processes of migration management across three different country contexts: the UK, Germany, and Australia. The country comparison shows how precarious workplace/worker and societal arrangements have been woven into the systems of migration management (Paret and Gleeson ; Vosko ). The examination employs an historical methodology to show how approaches to migration management create a racialised precarity in the destination country generally; and more specifically in the destination country labour market where different groups of migrant workers are channelled into and toil in the least favourable areas of the labour market. Accordingly, we shed light on the rules underscoring and the implications of the process of migrant worker acceptance, settlement, and integration in a new land and labour market.

Existing research on the rise of precarious forms of employment has paid little attention to gender and diversity challenges. Yet precarious work has damaging effects for vulnerable demographics, with women, ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities more considerably affected. This volume unpacks this research and offers insights into the role of organisations in fostering inclusive change.

This chapter presents case studies of female janitorial workers, working on a contractual basis, in a public sector organization in Pakistan where the typical employment format is full-time and permanent. Drawing on these cases, the chapter seeks answers to three interrelated research aims: (1) to study the gendered aspect of precarious work in Pakistani organizations, (2) to identify the intersectionality of gender, social class and religion in relation to precarious work, and (3) and to understand the various dimensions of precarity in specific reference to the intersectionality of gender, social class and religion. The findings offer insights into conceptualizing precarious employment and present a taxonomy that divides precarity into three distinct categories: (1) precarity in terms of job security and continuance of employment, (2) precarity in terms of financial stability, and (3) systematic precarity that affects certain groups more than the others. Findings reveal that these categories have distinct effects on different categories of individuals.

Existing research on the rise of precarious forms of employment has paid little attention to gender and diversity challenges. Yet precarious work has damaging effects for vulnerable demographics, with women, ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities more considerably affected. This volume unpacks this research and offers insights into the role of organisations in fostering inclusive change.

This chapter explores the gendered biopolitics of the COVID-19 pandemic through an analysis of the UK’s marketized higher education sector. Theoretically, we combine feminist political economy with labour market segmentation theory to develop a novel meso-level biopolitical analysis. We use this framework to compare how major labour market institutions – employers, the trade union, and the Government – responded to the pandemic. The analysis reveals that, as a consequence of the actions and interactions of these labour market institutions, different segments of the higher education labour market experienced the pandemic precarities in different ways, resulting in gendered outcomes. The analysis extends our understanding of the genesis of gendered pandemic precarities within the marketized employment system studied.

This chapter examines how precarity affects the experiences of low skilled dirty workers – a group characterised by stigma and devaluation. Utilising Axel Honneth’s ideas of mutual recognition and the normative significance of work for identity, we explore how precarious working conditions affect self-understanding at the intersection of class and gender. Drawing on ethnographic data from street cleaners and refuse workers across four London boroughs, our findings demonstrate lack of secure employment has resulted in experiences of self-doubt and diminished sense of self-worth. Additionally, our findings highlight how secure employment and the ability to provide for one’s family is imperative to these workers, due to the heavy reliance on working class masculinity norms for affirming identity. Thus, we argue the centrality of work for a positive sense of self remains classed and gendered. We also show how the increasingly precarious nature of work is perpetuating feelings of vulnerability and therefore undermining opportunities for class solidarity through collective action in the face of moral injury for working class men.

The chapter explores the experience of late career self-employment. We adopt an intersectional perspective to theorise the precarity experienced by older self-employed women and provide insights into the societal and organizational structures and norms that shape ageing in employment and everyday life. We illustrate our arguments through three biographical cases of older self-employed women in the United Kingdom. Finally, we discuss the implications of age, gender, and self-employment and conclude with a call for inclusive policy to tackle precarity in self-employment.

The meteoric growth of the platform economy, its economic underpinnings as well as the accompanying human practices, have provoked academic debates as well as shone a light on its praxis. In this gig economy, the conditions of work have significantly changed from what used to be relatively stable markets, moored self- and work identities, with predictable technological cycles, established jobs in which individuals were ‘tied’ into roles and their organisations-of-employ, sufficient income during work and non-work periods, and with substantive protections through employment rights and social protection – also known as the standard employment relationship (SER). The gig economy has introduced efficiencies in engaging customer segments and supply chains, however its non-standard forms of employment (NSFE) which includes part-time, temporary, and zero-hour contracts and dependent self-employment, has brought with it: low pay, insufficient and variable hours, short-term contracts, and limited social protection rights (Rubery, Grimshaw, Keizer & Johnson, ). The majority of employees, migrants and foreigners, remain dependent on in-country structures to grant them SER rights – in many countries, though, they do not have the power to engage with those structures and no way to build on and improve their rights. The emerging story of the gig economy divides scholars, particularly in relation to the distribution of the economic and social benefits of this ‘new economy’, as well as international relations (IR) scholars in that race and indigeneity, and its intersections, have been missing in many of the debates. The challenge remains to upend the coloniality and neoliberal nature of work, and create a more democratic and inclusive labour market, in which more of the economic benefits are fairly distributed among those who participate in the gig economy and not just for indigenous citizens exclusively.

Existing research on the rise of precarious forms of employment has paid little attention to gender and diversity challenges. Yet precarious work has damaging effects for vulnerable demographics, with women, ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities more considerably affected. This volume unpacks this research and offers insights into the role of organisations in fostering inclusive change.

Despite the central role of employment for integration, refugees are particularly vulnerable to under- and unemployment, and are more likely to find themselves in precarious working conditions compared to host country residents. Frequently discussed reasons for this are, for example, legal restrictions, health issues, and non-recognition of qualifications. We draw on the concept of intersectionality and the psychology of working theory and use data that we have collected with women and men refugees in Turkey and in the Netherlands. We use narrative accounts of four refugees to show how refugees’ gender relates to their vulnerability towards precarious work and how this relationship is further complicated by refugees’ economic status in their home country as well as by the societal expectations and protection in the host environment. By discussing these relationships and their relevance in the larger context of economic and societal upheaval, we suggest several avenues for future research.

This chapter presents three empirical studies on disabled individuals who use their disability strategically as they navigate the labour market. In our first case, we reveal that disabled employees in France reflect on factors on societal, organizational, and individual levels. More specifically, they determine whether the quota system can be used to their own advantage, decreasing their precarious position in the labour market. In the second case study, we draw on 257 qualitative surveys with individuals with mental health conditions in a variety of countries and outline how these individuals make their career choices. More specifically, we show how they self-select into sectors in which the characteristics related to their mental illness can be turned into an advantage. The third case presented highlights that disabled individuals use social comparison based on the characteristics of their disability when determining how they compare with other disabled workers. When they feel their disability characteristics are less stigmatizing than that of others, they tend to use this strategically, enhancing their own employability, securing less precarious employment. Through these three cases, we show the inequalities that exist within the population of disabled workers. More specifically, individuals with a disability in countries with less constraining disability legislation and individuals whose disability is more stigmatizing in nature are more likely to end up in employment that is characterized by low wages, few career development opportunities, little autonomy, and unstable or hazardous working conditions. Practical implications and avenues for future research are provided.

Precarious work characterised by low pay, inadequate and variable hours, and short-term/temporary contracts refers to the employment conditions that include the situations of uncertainty’, ‘instability’, and ‘insecurity’. Precarious work arrangements skyrocketed in the 1970s as a result of the worldwide recession and the weakened power and forced reduction of organised labour. As a result, considerable power shifted back to employers who steadily repeal employment protections whenever possible. This chapter seeks to shed light on the missing link between diversity and precarious work from the viewpoint of sexual and gender identity minorities whose voices have been silenced and marginalised in mainstream discussions. Due to the long history of legalised discrimination and the stigmatisation they experience, LGBTQ+ employees are overrepresented in precarious work arrangements. Since LGBTQ+ employees are already a vulnerable population, the adverse effects of precarious work arrangements are exacerbated. We adopt an institutional approach to explore the challenges LGBTQ+ individuals face in precarious work concerning macro-institutional factors (e.g., social, organisational, political, legal, and economic) and micro-level factors (e.g., interpersonal discrimination, exclusion, incivility within organisations). Through case studies from Turkey and the United States, we demonstrate the political and social mechanisms that legitimise and proliferate precarious work arrangements for LGBTQ+ individuals. We conclude the chapter by highlighting research questions that scholars should pursue further to uncover the unique challenges LGBTQ+ individuals endure in precarious work arrangements.