The recent vast upsurge in social science scholarship on job precarity has generally little to say about earlier forms of this phenomenon. Eloisa Betti’s monograph convincingly demonstrates on the example of Italy that even in the post-war phase of Keynesian stability and welfare state, precarious labor was an underlying feature of economic development. She examines how in this short period exceptional politics of labor stability prevailed. The volume then presents the processes whereby labor precarity regained momentum— under the name of flexibility— in the post-Fordist phase from the early 1980s, taking on new forms in the Craxi and Berlusconi eras.
Multiple actors are addressed in the analysis. The book gives voice to intellectuals, scholars, politicians and trade unionists as they have framed the concept and debates on precarious work from the 1950s onwards. Views of labor law experts, politicians and public servants are investigated in regard to labor regulations. Positions of the very precarians are explored, ranging from rural women, industrial homeworkers and blue-collar workers to physicians, university researchers and trainees, unveiling the emergence of anti-precarity social movements. The continuous role of women’s associations and feminist groups in opposing labor precarity since the 1950s is prominently exposed.
- Cover
- Front matter
- Series title page
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments and Note to the English Edition
- Acronyms
- Introduction
- I. Labor precarity as a historical phenomenon
- II. Historicizing precarious work in the Italian Republic
- III. Precarious workers: A readers’ guide
- CHAPTER 1. THE OTHER FACE OF THE BOOM: THE DISCOVERYOF PRECARITY
- 1.1 The invention of precarity: Paolo Sylos Labini’s contribution
- 1.2 Precarity thy name is woman: Genesis of a debate
- 1.3 Against precarity: The fight for “job stability”
- CHAPTER 2. THE CONSTRUCTION OF STABLE WORK BETWEEN PARLIAMENT AND LABOR LAW
- 2.1 The parliamentary inquiry into the conditions of workers in Italy
- 2.2 Legislation on “particular labor relationships” during the boom years
- 2.3 New regulations on dismissals in the nineteen-sixties
- CHAPTER 3. STABILITY OR PRECARITY? THE TWO FACES OF THE LONG SEVENTIES
- 3.1 The achievement of stability
- 3.2 In the shadow of the crisis: Industrial restructuring and precarity
- 3.3 Intellectual precarity and intellectual elaboration on precarity
- CHAPTER 4. THE MYTH OF FLEXIBILITY DURING THE ROARINGEIGHTIES
- 4.1 The flexibility paradigm in economic-sociological thinking
- 4.2 Labor policies and legislative changes in the shade of flexibility
- 4.3 The utopia of flexibility between freedom and liberation from work
- CHAPTER 5. THE NEW EXPLOSION OF PRECARIOUS WORK BETWEEN THE NINETIES AND THE AUGHTS
- 5.1 Legislative changes and labor policy between the old and new millennia
- 5.2 Precarious subjectivity and new forms of self-organization in theaughts
- 5.3 Precarity between artistic-cultural portrayals and political-trade unionreflections
- CHAPTER 6. THE NORMALIZATION OF PRECARITY DURINGTHE YEARS OF THE GLOBAL CRISIS
- 6.1 Precarity and global crisis: A necessary periodization
- 6.2 Precarity and legislative reforms during the crisis years: An assessment
- 6.3 Against Precarity: Mobilization, campaigns, and forms of resistance
- Epilogue
- Refernces
- Index
- Back cover
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