Week 2 Turbulent Contexts The Socio-Political Environment of Precarity

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Week 2 Turbulent contexts: the socio-political

environment of precarity
Owain Smolović Jones
Introduction
Welcome to Week 2. To gain an understanding of what you will learn about this week, watch the welcome
video below.
Introduction to Week 2
This week you will develop the skill of finding and analysing information appropriate to this topic of precarity,
and you will be encouraged and supported to think about issues affecting the people who experience precarity.
Key questions
The key questions you will consider this week are:
What are the forces that have driven an increase in precarity, in the UK and around the world?
Who are the people primarily affected by precarity?

How can we better understand precarity through experience?
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WARNING: Please be aware, this week of study includes references to migrants, elderly and unwell
people, and men and women in precarity. If you are likely to find this distressing, please consider carefully
how you might want to engage with activities 2, 3, 4 and 5. You can find suggestions in the Studying
Emotive Topics guidance on the module Resources page. You might also want to check with your tutor at
this point to see how they may be able to support you.
Activity planner
To help you plan your studies this week, here is a table of the activities you will be working on. Remember that
these timings are approximate and you also need to allow time for reading the linking material and reflecting
on what you have learned.
Week 2 Activity planner
Activity Details Time
1 How did we get here? Listen to an audio and find information 90

minutes
2 Migrants in precarity Watch a video and answer questions 45

minutes
3 Elderly and unwell people in precarity Watch a video and answer questions 30
minutes
4 Men in precarity Listen to the audio and answer questions 15

minutes
5 Women in precarity Watch a video and answer questions 25

minutes
6 Understanding women in precarity Watch a video and answer questions 45

(optional) minutes
7 Young people in precarity Listen to an audio and make notes 45

minutes
Reflection on Week 2 Use Twitter to reflect on your learning for the 30

week. minutes
There is also an online tutorial scheduled during this week, so do check the details and sign up to attend.
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1 Defining precarity and its implications for leadership
Show description
We need to clarify what is meant by precarity and precarious work so that we can hold a little more certainty
about the challenges facing leadership. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to be precarious is:
to be vulnerable to the will or decision of others … dependent on chance or circumstance; uncertain;

liable to fail; exposed to risk, hazardous; insecure, unstable … subject to or fraught with physical danger
or insecurity.
(OED, 2019)
The above definition suggests that precarity creates two circumstances:
the notion of our own wellbeing and security being outside our direct control, subject to the organisational
decisions of others – of businesses or governments; or of accidents or illnesses rendering us unable to
fend for ourselves
the experience of danger and risk.
Precarity is a complex issue which can affect people both in and out of work, but the primary focus in this week
of study is upon pressures that push people into precarious work. Precarious work can be defined as
‘employment involving contractual insecurity; weakened employment security for permanent workers and non-
standard contractual forms such as temporary agency, fixed-term, zero-hour and undeclared work’ (Prosser,
2016, p. 950). Underlying this definition is once again the notion of powerlessness and the hardships such
powerlessness can bring. Also apparent is that temporariness is a defining characteristic of precarious work, of
not knowing what work you will be doing in a few months, or even a few weeks or days.
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Precarity holds severe implications for leadership practice and study. There is a growing body of research that
is establishing that being in precarious work leads to poorer health outcomes for people (e.g. Lewchuk et al.,
2008). Leadership should be a concept that gets us thinking about ways in which people can empower one
another to offer direction to an organisation, yet we know that precarity disempowers and that more and more
people are experiencing precarious work.
It is difficult to think of studies of leadership which take into account that people who are supposed to be
participating in leadership might themselves be leading precarious lives. Rather, the language used by
leadership writers is usually one of great possibility – of inspiration and participation. If only our leaders know
how to motivate and influence us through their values and words, great leadership will follow, we are told. Yet
what use is inspiration and influence if we are living precariously? Moreover, leadership is a concept that
seems to be everywhere – as something more of us need in our lives. A paradox emerges in relation to
leadership, therefore, which is that as the language of leadership increases, the capacity of people to
participate fully in their workplaces and lives outside work is degraded through precarity.
This is a strange phenomenon, since precarious living has ceased to be something that only a small minority
experience; you would expect leadership educators, researchers, policymakers and practitioners to reflect
increasing and intensified precarity in their research and writing. Yet such a focus is difficult to find. Making
ends meet while also living in insecure, unhealthy and expensive accommodation is a daily reality for many.
Estimates of people in work (not unemployed) living precarious lives stretches into the millions – between 7–
10 million, in the UK alone (Butler, 2017).
This week of study focuses on the context of precarious lives for two reasons. The first is that learning more
about the forces behind precarity and the range of experiences of precarious living are essential to
understanding contemporary organisational life. We need to understand the range of stresses and
commitments experienced by the people we manage. Conversely, if we are the ones being managed on
precarious terms, we need to learn from the experiences of others and reflect on what we can do to assert
more of a collective leadership voice. The second is that if we are to better understand the possibilities for
leadership practice, we need to take account of how leadership can both ameliorate precarity and find ways of
leading from positions of precarity.
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2 Causes of precarity
Show description
Precarious living and work are not part of some kind of natural state of affairs. Rather, they are the result of
certain policy choices. The end goal of these choices was probably not to deliberately create a group of people
who would struggle on a daily basis, and yet that is what has happened. In this section you will consider some
of the causes of precarity and reflect on the various aspects of precarity present in your lives, in work and
beyond.
In the following activity you will explore the causes of precarity and start to develop your information-finding
skills, which will help you when you come to the first TMA.
Activity 1 How did we get here?
Allow about 90 minutes to complete this activity
Part A
Listen to the following audio, from module team author Owain Smolović Jones, which unpacks some of
the causes underlying precarity. As you listen, make a note of the seven drivers of precarity in the box
below.
Seven causes of precarity
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Save Reset
Feedback
The seven causes of precarity are:
1. The global recession
2. Government policy
3. The weakening of trade unions

4. Poor housing
5. Automation of work
6. War
7. Climate change
Part B
To help you develop your information-finding and handling skills, use the OU library, or the internet more
generally, to find
one study from a reputable source that helps develop your knowledge of one of the causes of
precarity
two news reports which demonstrate how this cause of precarity is being debated and dealt with
publicly.
If you need extra help in getting started with your search you may find the following resources useful:
Introduction to Library Search; Searching the internet effectively using Google; Searching online
newspapers.
Ensure you save your material as you may need it for this week’s tutorial and TMA 01.
Reveal feedback
Now that you have learnt about some of the causes of precarity you will move on to consider the people and
groups who are most affected by it.
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3 Who is the precariat?
Show description
People have diverse experiences of precarity and the types of people who experience it are, likewise, also
diverse. Nevertheless, it is possible to note some likenesses in the experiences of people experiencing similar,
but also different, forms of precarity.
The term ‘precariat’ comes from the work of Guy Standing (2016), and is a play on Karl Marx’s term for the
working class, the ‘proletariat’. Standing makes the case that the precariat is a new and emerging class of
people, and attempts to identify some commonalities in the experiences of people in precarity in the hope that
developing an understanding of people’s experiences will enable the precariat to assert alternative working
relationships and modes of life. Traditional distinctions of socio-economic class focused on the working class,
middle class and upper class, categories created at a time when employment patterns – and social life in
general – were more stable.
Marx’s definition of the proletariat – workers who were systematically exploited through their labour, and
alienated from their own potential to flourish as rounded people – was underlined by assumptions from a
previous era. This was when men made up the majority of the salaried workforce, economic migration was
less normalised, people thought less about their identities and heavy industry and manufacturing were
dominant in western economies (1844/2009, 1867/2004). These might have been dirty, unhealthy and hard
jobs, but they were perhaps more predictable and stable. The shift in the UK and elsewhere to service work,
temporary, zero-hours contracts and management by software application, has made it harder for workers to
organise as a class. Standing argues that people in precarious work cannot be thought of as ‘working class’ as
they are less likely to be members of trade unions, to have collective forums in which to communicate and
organise and, indeed, will likely not hold a single job for very long.
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While it is never wise to generalise too much about ‘types’ of people, we do need to make sense of the various
experiences people have of precarity and to consider the effects. In practice, many people will experience a
combination of precarious experiences, an ‘intersection’ (Hill Collins and Bilge, 2016) of pressures or ways in
which they are made to feel their social identities. Intersectionality is a concept that emerged from feminist
theory and is a way of making sense of the various ‘cuts’ of oppression experienced by women – who might be
marginalised because, for example, they are women but also because they are members of an ethnic minority,
disabled, gay and so on. They experience several types of prejudice and oppression, in other words, which
feed into and can either exacerbate or ameliorate each other.
So, the argument runs, a white woman with disabilities will experience precarity differently from a black, non-
disabled woman who identifies as a lesbian. This is not to claim that certain people always suffer more intense
experiences of precarity than others, or form some kind of macabre hierarchy of suffering. Rather, because
many of you will experience a range of precarious conditions or will know people who do. Thinking of yourself
and others as occupying an intersection of identities and experiences may be helpful in trying to make sense
in your own research of how people experience precarity.
In the following sections you will consider in more detail the implications and experiences of precarity for
various groups of people. As you read bear in mind that you will have to conduct an interview for TMA 01. Your
interview will focus on one of the key themes from this block. Use the questions in the activities to help you
think about whether you would like to focus on a group in precarity for your interview, and to consider the link
between precarity and leadership.
3.1 Migrants
Show description
The word precarity does not quite do justice to the experiences of migrants trying to enter Europe. Many are
fleeing conflict, while others attempt to reach Europe to provide financial security for themselves and the
families they have left behind. Throughout 2015 to June 2018, 1.8m refugees and migrants arrived in Europe
(Henley, 2018). The Dutch NGO United for Intercultural Action estimates that 34,361 people have died trying to
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enter Europe since 1993 (United, 2018), the majority of whom perished after 2014 and the explosion of
violence in the Middle East. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported that in the first seven
months of 2018, 1500 people died trying to cross into Europe through the central Mediterranean alone
(UNHCR, 2018). The majority of deaths happen at sea but can also occur from suffocation in trucks or cargo
containers, through thirst, being attacked by fellow humans or hit by traffic. Migrants and refugees very easily
fall victim to ruthless smugglers, other criminals, hostile local populations and aggressive border guards, police
and security personnel.
If migrants do manage to make it to Europe they still face considerable hardship. In the UK, when people who
have fled arrive, they start their lives within the category of ‘asylum seeker’. Asylum seekers are entitled to just
£37.75 a week to pay for food, clothing and toiletries (HM Government, 2018). Once someone has been
granted refugee status they can work but have only 28 days before their asylum benefits are stopped. The
government target for processing refugee claims is six months, although in 2017 the number of people waiting
longer rose by 72% (Bulman, 2017). Given the complexity of the immigration system in the UK, the trauma
experienced by migrants, routine experiences of racism and hostility, the conditions many asylum seekers live
in, and the disorientation that accompanies being uprooted from one’s home surroundings, it is perhaps hardly
surprising that severe problems often ensue.
Life for immigrants can be highly insecure even when they have not fled a conflict zone. The UK immigration
system can be complicated to navigate and it is often difficult to identify reliable immigration advisors. Also,
employing a lawyer to advise you can be very expensive.
Activity 2 Migrants in precarity
Watch the extract below from Exodus: Our Journey Into Europe and consider the questions that follow
(please note that the video contains some strong language).
Exodus
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Do you know anyone in this category who might be willing to have a conversation with you?
Can you find a single source of extra information that could enrich your understanding of the
experiences of refugees and migrants?
Do you have any thoughts about where practices of leadership might be visible amongst refugees
and migrants?
Save Reset
Feedback
I do not personally know any refugees experiencing precarity but gaining more knowledge of the
experiences of refugees and migrants is relatively straightforward. I found an article by a colleague of
mine, Jo Vincett, who is studying the experiences of women detained in the Yarl’s Wood facility in the UK
(Vincett, 2018). In this article, Jo draws out some examples of resistance and campaigns to gain justice
for these women – which could all be fascinating case studies in resistance leadership.
In the next section you will consider the experiences of elderly, disabled and unwell people in precarity.
3.2 The elderly, disabled and unwell
Show description
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The Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has found that ‘families with a disabled adult and a
disabled child will lose more than £5,500 a year as a result of tax and benefit changes (in the UK), or about
13% of their net income. Those with disabled children will lose an average of £3,300 a year’ (Butler, 2017). In
calling for the government to rethink plans, the EHRC chair, David Isaac, warned of a ‘bleak future’ (Butler,
2017). The media has also featured a number of cases of very ill people being told by the government that
they are fit to work – some of these people have been terminally ill or have suffered recent and life-threatening
illness
Government outsourcing of assessments of people’s entitlements to claim financial support for disability and
illness has no doubt exacerbated the problem (Tizard, 2018). While government spending on older people has
not reduced as much as in other areas, people the world over are now being told that they will need to work
longer and then retire on smaller pensions. One of the reasons for the squeeze is simply that in OECD
(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, people are living longer, although
counter arguments are often made that much of this squeeze is a political choice rather than a necessity.
Now watch a video interview with OU academic Victoria Cooper, who talks about some of the pressures
people with disabilities, chronic/terminal illnesses and the elderly have experienced in recent years.
Activity 3 Elderly and unwell people in precarity
Watch the video below with OU academic Victoria Cooper and consider the questions that follow.
Austerity and health
experiences of the elderly, disabled or unwell?
Do you have any thoughts about where practices of leadership might be visible amongst this
group?
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Save and reveal feedback Reset
In the next section you will consider the experiences of working-class men in precarity.
3.3 Working-class men
Show description
At the beginning of the global financial crisis, male workers were hit hard, leading to the invention of the
compound word ‘mancession’ (O’Connor, 2010). This was because the construction and manufacturing
sectors were among the first to suffer – areas of work still dominated by men. That said, as austerity grew,
more and more women were hurt and women remain more likely to live in poverty than men in the UK
(Women’s Budget Group, 2018).
Perhaps never before in recent times has the traditional masculine identity of the primary family earner been
more challenged. We can trace the decline of the ‘blue collar’ family-provider figure to the more general and
longer-term decline in manufacturing and heavy industries in Western countries over recent decades, as neo-
liberal economies in Europe and the US have tended to favour service industry, office-based and technology-
enabled remote work, and more casual and unstable jobs. The global financial crisis intensified this shift to
less secure work and it has understandably caused significant anger among a group of working-class people
who might in the past have had hard jobs but did have more security, a decent period of retirement and a
pension to look forward to.
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Now listen to the following audio, where I talk about what it means to be a working-class man in today’s
context of precarity.
Activity 4 Men in precarity
Listen to the audio and consider the questions that follow.
What it means to be a working-class man in today’s context of precarity
experiences of working-class men?
Do you have any thoughts about where practices of leadership might be visible amongst working-
class men?
In the next section you will consider the experiences of women in precarity.
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3.4 Women
Show description
As the effects of the recession and austerity spread, particularly with big government spending cuts in public
services, so women have been increasingly swept further into precarity. In fact, women on the whole are more
likely to be poor in the UK than men (Women’s Budget Group, 2018) and there is still a marked income
inequality between men and women in the UK (ONS, 2018). Around 22% of women are in low-paid work,
compared to 14% of men, according to the Resolution Foundation, and women are less likely to progress out
of low-paid work (D’Arcy, 2018). Women still tend, overall, to have more caring responsibilities than men,
which adds extra pressures. Women are also more likely to need state benefits – because of a mix of caring
responsibilities and lower wages – and have therefore been harder hit than men due to austerity and cuts in
welfare provision.
Now watch the following video, an interview with OU professor Jo Brewis, who reflects on some of the
pressures, some obvious and some hidden, faced by women in the precariat. In this video Jo speaks about the
additional pressures women often face regarding caring responsibilities.
Activity 5 Women in precarity
Watch the video and based on what you have watched and read make some notes in the box below on
the following questions:
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Women in precarious work
experiences of women in precarity?
Do you have any thoughts about where practices of leadership might be visible amongst women
in precarity?
In the next section you will consider the experiences of young people in precarity.
3.4.1 Women on the edge

Now I invite you to engage with a clip from the Ken Loach-directed film I, Daniel Blake. The film tells the story
of a man who has suffered a serious illness but has also been denied sickness benefit and a young mother
who struggles to provide the basics of life for her family. The clip is intended to highlight how women suffer
precarity disproportionately to men, and to challenge the discourse of hostility to welfare claimants in society. It
will also help you understand the very real, emotional and visceral experiences of people, particularly women,
who are forced to use foodbanks. Foodbanks are not only used by people out of work – but increasingly by
people earning poverty wages in work. People you work alongside could be relying on foodbanks to survive
week by week.
You may find the video quite upsetting, so if you would rather not watch it, feel free to spend the time learning
more about foodbanks, the services they provide and the kind of situations that force people to use them. A
simple internet search will get you started.
Activity 6 Understanding women in precarity (optional)
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Allow about 45 minutes to complete ths activity
Watch the video below and make some notes addressing the questions that follow.
I, Daniel Blake
1. Can you detect some of the feelings that Katie experiences in the clip?
2. How did you feel when you watched the clip?
3. Can you spot any actions of leadership?
4. If you were working with someone (either in paid or voluntary work) who you discovered was in a
situation as desperate as Katie, what would you do?
Reveal feedback
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3.5 Young people
Show description
In the UK, the young are to a great extent worse off than the old and we can identify the primary cause as
austerity (Kontopantelis, 2018). The 2007–8 recession and ensuing austerity hit the young harder than the old
(ibid) and other, longer-term pressures seem to have matured and converged on younger generations.
Finding secure housing is a particular problem for the young. According to the Office for National Statistics in
the UK (ONS, 2018), a full-time worker in England and Wales can ‘expect to pay around 7.8 times their annual
workplace-based earnings on purchasing a home in England and Wales in 2017, a significant increase of
2.4% since 2016’. As Kontopantelis (2018) points out, the figure in 1997 was 3.6 times annual earnings. And
this is the figure for people in full-time employment. Yet we know that the boost in employment in the UK has
largely been fuelled by part-time, temporary, self-employed and zero-hours work.
Beyond housing, we also know that young people will need to work longer before they can retire. When they
do manage to retire, their pensions will be a pale imitation of those currently enjoyed by the baby boomer
generation. University tuition fees mean that students face the prospect of repaying significant loans. The cost
of raising a family is now also far higher than it used to be, with an ‘average cost of raising a child to adulthood
[rising] to a staggering £231,843 in 2016, up 65% from 2003’ (Kontopantelis (2018). The young will also need
to finance care for an older generation that lives longer.
Young people are now often expected to complete unpaid internships prior to entering paid work, and research
shows that the cost of pursuing an unpaid internship sits at around £1,000 a month in London and £827 in
Manchester (Weale, 2018). The effects of automation and artificial intelligence mean that paid jobs could
become even less secure in the future. Perhaps it is no wonder that young people, in the UK but also
elsewhere, are increasingly voting for political parties at both ends of the political spectrum that propose more
radical forms of social and economic change.
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In the following activity you will consider the situation of a young person in precarity, and also begin to think
about how the concept of precarity relates to paid work.
Activity 7 Young people in precarity
Listen to the following audio interview with ‘Ava’ (a pseudonym), a young person who works a number of
temporary, zero-hours jobs. As you listen to the interview, make a note of some of the main pressures
Ava experiences in and between work.
Ava
Ava’s experience is widely shared by people all over the UK and the rest of the world. In the next section you
will expand on what you have learnt about the relationship between precarity and work, and how this impacts
leaders and leadership.
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4 Precarious lives in and between work
Show description
This is primarily a module about leadership at work and in organisations, so it would be helpful to spend a little
more time unpacking some of the experiences of people with precarity in and between work. In this section we
will establish in more detail and in a more systematic way the pressures people face in precarious work. Two
contemporary phenomena are worth highlighting at the outset – the zero hours contract and the practice of
ambiguous self-employment – as they are increasingly becoming two dominant ways in which precarious work
is operationalised.
Zero-hours contracts
The zero-hours contract is one where an employee agrees to work for an organisation but where the hours of
work are left unspecified. This means that employees can find out how much they will work, and therefore how
much they will be paid, at relatively short notice. Zero-hours work can lead to significant insecurity as the
amounts of money people earn can vary week by week. In addition, these contracts can make life less
predictable in terms of being able to plan ahead, which can be especially significant when people have caring
responsibilities. These kinds of contracts do not usually come with some of the normal conditions one might
expect in relation to holiday pay and sick pay, let alone pension contributions. They are often also minimum
wage jobs. Some people say they value zero-hours work as it can offer more flexibility, for example retired
people who want to top up their pensions and people with partners already earning good money. For the
majority, however, zero-hours contracts contribute significantly to precarious conditions.
‘Ambiguous’ self-employment
The wording of this heading is deliberately cautious, and some might have relabelled this phenomenon ‘false’
or ‘fake’ self-employment. Whichever adjective you choose, the issues remain the same. Some organisations
effectively employ people but insist that these workers retain the status of being self-employed. This status
again means an erosion of rights such as sickness and holiday leave and pensions. More insidiously still is the
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phenomenon referred to by Harvey et al. (2017) as ‘neo-villeiny’. Neo-villeiny is a term adopted to refer to
organisations demanding that their self-employed non-employees invest their own time and money in ways
which benefit the organisation but not them as individuals. Fitness instructors working in gyms are good
examples of this, as they often have to pay gyms a fee for association and promotion, even if they are not
getting much, or any, work. The courier and delivery firm City Link went bust on Christmas Day in 2014. Its
drivers were not officially employees but were classed as ‘service delivery partners’. They had made their pre-
Christmas deliveries but were left without pay when the company announced its immediate closure, during this
expensive time of year. Drivers at the company did not get sickness or holiday leave, and had to pay for costs
such as van hire, fuel and insurance themselves. In fact, workers were fined for missing work due to illness
(Rankin and Butler, 2015).
Precarity through experience
Focusing on being between work as much as being in work draws attention to the great effort required of
people searching for jobs in the first place. Almost everyone reading this will have had experience of searching
for work and for many of you the process of doing so will be all too familiar – stressful and often tedious. The
rise of precarious work means that we spend far more time searching for work and preparing ourselves for it
than we did in the past. Such experiences can be especially acute for certain groups of people – for example,
transgender people, who tend to change jobs frequently and are more likely to become self-employed because
of workplace discrimination (Unison, 2013), or young people such as Ava who are increasingly required to hold
down several jobs.
5 Is precarity the future for most of us?

Precarity offers a vital backdrop to understanding some of the pressures and possibilities for leadership now
and in the future. It is a difficult topic and no doubt many of you will have found yourselves being a little upset
at times while learning about the experiences of other human beings in precarious situations, usually through
no fault of their own. While preparing this material I had my own moments of feeling quite helpless since I
could not think of more ways of making life in general less precarious. But I also felt energised and inspired, as
I unearthed incredible stories of people working together in leadership to overcome or ameliorate precarity. If
you have or do experience a form of precarity, I hope that as you proceed through the module you will find
ways of helping yourself and others fight back against precarity to foster work and lives that are more
satisfying and secure.
We need to better understand precarity because it is becoming an increasingly common experience in all
societies and if current trends continue – erosion of rights at work, cuts to welfare and public services,
privatisation, increasing debt, climate change, hostility to migrants, more workplace automation – more and
more of us will find ourselves dragged into the growing precariat. Precarity is already a more common
experience than relative security is in many economies around the world (e.g. Swider, 2015), and today’s
reality for someone in, say, China, could easily become our reality tomorrow. In my own sphere, academics
face a continuous battle to guard against the creep of casualisation and outsourcing of our work and it might
not be too much longer before some of this work can be undertaken through algorithms and apps.
This week has been concerned with trying to plant some of the seeds about how conditions of precarity may
shape leadership practice moving forwards. In many ways, of course, precarity makes leadership far more
challenging. As someone in a formal leadership position in an organisation, it is more difficult to engage in
leadership with others if they are stressed, unwell or only in the organisation for a short period of time. If you
are in a position of precarity, you may find yourself wondering whether it is worth the effort to become involved
in collective forms of leadership if you do not feel you are being treated well, or if you think you will likely be in
a different job very soon.
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But none of this means that leadership from a position of precarity is impossible. In some ways, experiences of
precarity can help us see how much we need other people in order to thrive – we are all dependent on others
and precarity can help us see the necessity and potential vitality of our relationships with colleagues,
institutions, collaborators, friends and family. Experiences of precarity can also make it easier to see how
leadership can be targeted at resisting injustice, not just something to do with finding ways of being more
effective or efficient at work. Perhaps never before has the need to connect, collaborate and mobilise in
leadership been more pressing than in these times of precarity. That the world inevitably becomes more
precarious for most of us is not a given, not an inevitability. And perhaps one of the key ways in which we can
try to build a different future is through developing leadership practice that resists and pushes towards a more
hopeful and generative future.
Summary
The focus this week was on understanding a key context for leadership rather than leadership practice itself.
Through engaging with the material you will hopefully have gained a richer appreciation for a group of people
(the precariat) who are an increasingly important part of leadership practice, yet who are rarely written about
by leadership academics.
In terms of the first question, precarity has been caused by a mix of political choices and economic events.
Some of these have been mapped out for you and you explored one of these in more depth yourself. In terms
of the second question, the young, immigrants, the sick, disabled and women are disproportionately harmed
by precarity, although working-class men also now experience the dangers of non-secure employment and
you learned about the context of these people through a range of stories. You also focused on the experiences
of the precarious lives of people in work, a contemporary and disturbing phenomenon.
In terms of the third and final question, you were supported to learn more about precarity through the
experiences of others such as Ava and through your own reflections and information searches.. Unfortunately,
you do not have to look too far to find experiences of precarity, but people’s experiences can help us
understand and build a more compassionate, transformative and inclusive form of leadership.
Key points:
At the beginning of this week you were presented with three key questions to be addressed in the learning,
which you should now be able to answer. You have learned that:
Precarity has been caused by a mix of political choices and economic events throughout the UK and the
rest of the world.
Young people, immigrants, the sick, disabled and women are disproportionately harmed by precarity,
although working-class men are also adversely affected.
We can better understand precarity through the experiences of others, such as Ava, and through our own
reflections.
Reflection and sharing

In this final section of Week 2 you will spend some time reflecting on what you have learned. You will share
your ideas and compare them with the thoughts of others.
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Reflection on Week 2
Allow about 30 minutes to complete this reflection
Part A
Ask yourself the following questions:
What have I learned this week which is particularly important or relevant?
How does this impact on my understanding of precarious living in relation to practising

leadership?
Write one or two tweets on Twitter to answer the questions above. You can use hashtags to highlight
particular words and engage in conversations related to these topics.
If you prefer not to use Twitter, you can write a sentence or two on the Tutor group forum (TGF) thread (if
you use the TGF, be sure to stay within 280 characters as though you were on Twitter).
Part B
Spend a few minutes looking at other students’ tweets or statements and compare and reflect on the
ideas that have been shared.
Reveal feedback
Don’t forget to keep track of the tweets or posts you have written, as these will contribute to 30% of your EMA
grade and 15% of your overall module grade.
References
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Butler, S. (2017) ‘Nearly 10 million Britons are in insecure work, says union’, The Guardian, 5 June 2017
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Cassells, R., Duncan, A., Mavisakalyan, A., Phillimore, J. and Tarverdi, Y. (2018) ‘Precarious employment is
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Coulter, S. (2016) ‘The UK labour market and the ‘great recession’, in Myant, M. Theodoropoulou, S. and
Piasna, A. (eds) Unemployment, Internal Devaluation and Labour Market Deregulation in Europe, Brussels,
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D’Arcy, C. (2018) Low pay Britain 2018. London,The Resolution Foundation.
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Downing, J. (2016) ‘The health effects of the foreclosure crisis and unaffordable housing: A systematic review
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Harvey, G., Rhodes, C., Vachhani, S. and Williams, K. (2016) ‘Neo-villeiny and the service sector: The case of
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Henley, J. (2018) ‘What is the current state of the migration crisis in Europe?’, The Guardian, 15 June 2018
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young-people-are-worse-off-and-its-not-their-fault-93833 (Accessed 7 June 2019).
23/27
Lewchuk, W., Clarke, M. and De Wolff, A. (2008) ‘Working without commitments: Precarious employment and
health’, Work, Employment & Society, vol. 22, no.3, pp. 387– 406.
Mahmoud, S. and Beswick, J. (2018) What lies beneath: How to fix the broken land system at the heart of our
housing crisis, London, New Economics Foundation.
Marx, K. (1844/2009) Essential writings of Karl Marx, St Petersburg, Red and Black Books.
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McCann, D. and Hall, M. (2018) ‘Controlled by calculations: Algorithms have huge influence over our lives.
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calculations (Accessed 7 June 2019).
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precarious work: Mobilizing the dependent self-employed as independent business owners’, Human Relations,
Vol 71, No. 3, pp. 375-398.
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com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/view/Entry/64050894?redirectedFrom=precarity#eid (Accessed 19 June 2019).
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ONS (2018) Housing affordability in England and Wales: 2017 [Online]. Available at https://www.ons.gov.uk/
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employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/
understandingthegenderpaygapintheuk/2018-01-17 (Accessed 7 June 2019).
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mental health: A longitudinal population-based study’, Preventive Medicine, vol. 105, pp. 304-310.
Prosser, T. (2015) ‘Dualization or liberalization? Investigating precarious work in eight European countries’,
Work, Employment & Society, vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 949-965.
Rankin, J. and Butler, S. (2015) ‘City Link’s army of self-employed workers count cost of business failure’, The
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Verso.
Standing, G. (2016) The precariat: The new dangerous class, London, Bloomsbury.
Swider, S. (2015) ‘Building China: precarious employment among migrant construction workers’, Work,
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The Guardian (2011) ‘Bank reforms: How much did we bail them out and how much do they still owe?’ The
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The World Bank, (2018) Groundswell: Preparing for internal climate migration, Washington DC, The World
Bank.
Tizard, J. (2018) ‘Pip and ESA assessments are failing and it is time to assess all public service outsourcing’,
Huffpost, 16 February 2018 [Online]. Available at https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/pip-and-esa-
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UNHCR, (2018) ‘UNHCR sounds alarm as Mediterranean sea deaths pass 1,500 mark’ [Online]. Available at
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Unison, (2013) Transgender workers rights factsheet, London, Unison.
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(Accessed 7 June 2019).
Vallas, S. and Cummins, E. (2015) ‘Personal branding and identity norms in the popular business press:
Enterprise culture in an age of precarity’, Organization Studies, vol 36, No. 3, pp. 293-319.
Vincett, J. (2018) ‘I befriended women detained at Yarl’s Wood: their life in immigration limbo is excrutiating’,
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American Journal of Public Health, vol. 106, no. 11, p. 1897.
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January 2018 [Online]. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/30/unpaid-internships-in-
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Wodak, R. (2015) The politics of fear: What right-wing populist discourses mean, London, Sage.
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economic deprivation for women, [Online]. Available at http://wbg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FINAL-
Female-Face-of-Poverty-Exec-Sumary.pdf (Accessed 7 June 2019).
Ziersch, A. and Due, C. (2018) ‘A mixed methods systematic review of studies examining the relationship
between housing and health for people from refugee and asylum seeking backgrounds’, Social Science &
25/27
Medicine, vol. 213, pp. 199-219.
Further reading
If you would like to further explore the concepts covered in this week of study, consider the following
publications.
For academic studies into precarious work, the following paper provides some salient insight into the working
lives of gym workers:
Harvey, G. Rhodes, C., Vachhani, S. and Williams, K. (2017) ‘Neo-villeiny and the service sector: the case of
hyper flexible and precarious work in fitness centres’, Work, Employment & Society, vol 31, no. 1, :pp. 19-35.
In terms of research or further information concerning young people, I found the work of the Resolution
Foundation’s Intergenerational Commission (https://www.intergencommission.org) informative, in that it
provides some in-depth research comparing the pressures and life chances of the young in comparison to
those of their parents and grandparents. In terms of looking for leadership here, I would want to look for
examples of young people becoming politically active in collective ways – through social movements, political
parties and trade unions.
The following book provides a searing and journalistic account of life in the ‘new poverty’:
Armstrong, S. (2017) The New Poverty, London, Verso.
Please remember that these reading suggestions are optional and will not be covered in any assessment.
Acknowledgements
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources:
Illustrations
Image of a queue of people: Colin McPherson/Getty Images
Image of an interior wall: wabeno/Getty Images
Image of workers in a warehouse: ESB Professional/Shutterstock
Image of people in boat: Joel Carillet/ istock unreleased/Getty
Image of a woman in a wheelchair: Jochen Sands/Getty Images
Image of a delivery man: Oramstock/Alamy Stock Photo
Image of a woman mopping the floor: Dmitry Kalinovsky/123rf
Image of a young man looking at his phone: Alexander Spatar/Getty Images
Image of a City Link van: Mark Richardson/Alamy Stock

26/27
Videos
Exodus: Our Journey Into Europe: KEO Films and BBC
I, Daniel Blake: Sixteen Films
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the
publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.
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Week 2 Turbulent Contexts The Socio-Political Environment of Precarity

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Week 2 Turbulent contexts: the socio-political

Owain Smolović Jones

Who are the people primarily affected by precarity?

Week 2 Activity planner

Activity Details Time

1 How did we get here? Listen to an audio and find information 90

2 Migrants in precarity Watch a video and answer questions 45

4 Men in precarity Listen to the audio and answer questions 15

5 Women in precarity Watch a video and answer questions 25

6 Understanding women in precarity Watch a video and answer questions 45

7 Young people in precarity Listen to an audio and make notes 45

Reflection on Week 2 Use Twitter to reflect on your learning for the 30

1 Defining precarity and its implications for leadership

to be vulnerable to the will or decision of others … dependent on chance or circumstance; uncertain;

The above definition suggests that precarity creates two circumstances:

the experience of danger and risk.

Activity 1 How did we get here?

Allow about 90 minutes to complete this activity

Seven causes of precarity

1. The global recession

3. The weakening of trade unions

3 Who is the precariat?

Activity 2 Migrants in precarity

Allow about 45 minutes to complete this activity

3.2 The elderly, disabled and unwell

Activity 3 Elderly and unwell people in precarity

Allow about 30 minutes to complete this activity

Austerity and health

Save and reveal feedback Reset

3.3 Working-class men

Activity 4 Men in precarity

Allow about 15 minutes to complete this activity

Listen to the audio and consider the questions that follow.

What it means to be a working-class man in today’s context of precarity

Save and reveal feedback Reset

Activity 5 Women in precarity

Allow about 25 minutes to complete this activity

Women in precarious work

Save and reveal feedback Reset

3.4.1 Women on the edge

Activity 6 Understanding women in precarity (optional)

Allow about 45 minutes to complete ths activity

3.5 Young people

Activity 7 Young people in precarity

Allow about 45 minutes to complete this activity

Save and reveal feedback Reset

4 Precarious lives in and between work

5 Is precarity the future for most of us?

Reflection and sharing

Allow about 30 minutes to complete this reflection

Ask yourself the following questions:

What have I learned this week which is particularly important or relevant?

How does this impact on my understanding of precarious living in relation to practising

D’Arcy, C. (2018) Low pay Britain 2018. London,The Resolution Foundation.

Hill Collins, P. and Bilge, S. (2016) Intersectionality, Cambridge, Polity Press.

HM Government (2018) ‘Asylum support’ [Online]. Available at https://www.gov.uk/asylum-support/what-youll-

Marx K. (1867/2004) Capital Volume 1, London, Penguin.

OECD (2018) Income inequality [Online]. Available at https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-

Unison, (2013) Transgender workers rights factsheet, London, Unison.

Medicine, vol. 213, pp. 199-219.

Armstrong, S. (2017) The New Poverty, London, Verso.

Image of a queue of people: Colin McPherson/Getty Images