The words ‘precarity’ and ‘precariousness’ are widely used when discussing work, social conditions and experiences. However, there is no consensus on their meaning or how best to use them to explore social changes.


This book shows how scholars have mapped out these notions, offering substantive analyses of issues such as the relationships between precariousness, debt, migration, health and workers’ mobilizations, and how these relationships have changed in the context of COVID-19.


Bringing together an international group of authors from diverse fields, this book offers a distinctive critical perspective on the processes of precarization, focusing in particular on the European context.


The Introduction, Chapters 3 and 8, and the Afterword are available Open Access via OAPEN under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Contributions by: Jean-Claude Barbier, Emiliana Armano, Cristina Morini, André Barata, Klaus Dörre, Charles Umney, Valeria Pulignano, Glenn Morgan, Agnieszka Piasna, Patrick Cingolani, Mireia Bolíbar Planas, Francesc X. Belvis, Mariana Gutiérrez-Zamora, Charlotta Hedberg, Barbora Holubová, Marta Kahancová, Alice Mattoni, Jane Hardy