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Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) from 1979 to 2008, this study examines how employment precarity is associated with the transition to first marriage. Building upon research on precarious work and economic determinants of marriage, I employ various measures of precarious work, including health insurance coverage, the provision of pension benefits, and part-time work. Results from the discrete-time hazard models show that precarious work delays men’s marriage entry more than women’s. For men, all indicators of precarious work decrease the odds of first marriage by up to 40%. Compared to men, women’s entry into first marriage is delayed when they have part-time employment. My study findings contribute to the theoretical discussions of the causes of family inequality, which have suggested the precarization of work and associated deterioration of job quality as one of the leading influences on the retreat from marriage. Further, results of this study indicate that the spread of precarious work has profound social consequences through its impact on family formation. In light of limited empirical research on the impact of precarious work on non-work-related outcomes, subsequent research needs to continue examining how employment precarity and family inequality are intertwined with various substantive foci across societies.

Over the last few decades, precarious work rose as an important feature of socioeconomic insecurity in contemporary Europe. The following study asks: How do labor market institutions and labor market conditions shape work precarity in Europe? This research captures the elusive concept of precarious work by measuring the degree to which a job (1) is insecure and uncertain, (2) offers poor prospects of career mobility, and (3) puts workers in an economically insecure position with low pay. Building on two theoretical paradigms, the Varieties of Capitalism and the Power Resource Theory, this study derives and tests hypotheses about how macro-level factors shape the variation in the distribution of precarious work in 32 European countries. Combining individual-level data from the 2010 European Working Conditions Survey with country-level data from multiple sources, my findings suggest that work precarity decreases in countries with high percentages of employees in all enterprises receiving continual training, high percentages of all enterprises providing on-the-job training for employees, and high levels of spending on active labor market policies.

Gender is a defining feature of informal/precarious work in the twenty-first century, yet studies rarely adopt a gendered lens when examining collective efforts to challenge informality and precarity. This chapter foregrounds the gendered dimensions of informal/precarious workers’ struggles as a crucial starting point for re-theorizing the future of global labor movements. Drawing upon the findings of the volume’s six chapters spanning five countries (the United States, Canada, South Korea, Mexico, and India) and two gender-typed sectors (domestic work and construction), this chapter explores how gender is intertwined into informal/precarious workers’ movements, why gender is addressed, and to what end. Across countries and sectors, informal/precarious worker organizations are on the front lines of challenging the multiple forms of gendered inequalities that shape contemporary practices of accumulation and labor regulation. They expose the forgotten reality that class structures not only represent classification struggles around work, but also around social identities, such as gender, race, and migration status. However, these organizing efforts are not fighting to transform the gendered division of labor or embarking on revolutionary struggles to overturn private ownership and liberalized markets. Nonetheless, these struggles are making major transformations in terms of increasing women’s leadership and membership in labor movements and exposing how gender interacts with other ascriptive identities to shape work. They are also radicalizing hegemonic scripts of capitalist accumulation, development, and even gender to attain recognition for female-dominated occupations and reproductive needs for the first time ever. These outcomes are crucial as sources of emancipatory transformations at a time when state and public support for labor and social protection is facing a deep assault stemming from the pressures of transnational production and globalizing markets.

We critique existing literature on the rise of precarious work because of its inattention to the historical organization of work by race and gender. We use intersectional theory to develop a racial–gender lens on precarious work, asking how do race, gender, and educational attainment shape exposure to insecure work. Historically, Blacks pursued education to mitigate against labor market discrimination with uneven success. Education has traditionally protected against exposure to precarious employment, but this association has weakened in recent years and the persistence of differential returns to human capital suggests that the relationship between education and insecure work may be racially contingent. We assess risk of exposure to precarious nonstandard work for racial and gender groups from 1979 to 2015 using data drawn from the CPS-MORG. We find that education is not equally protective across demographic groups and over time, contributing to inequality in access to stable, standard employment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore experiences and attitudes associated with “precarious work”, an umbrella term for insecure, casual, flexible, contingency, non-standard and zero-hour types of employment.

The investigation was carried-out through two studies. The “outside-in” view was represented by business undergraduates (n=56), responding to a four-item questionnaire on precarious work. It was contrasted with the “inside-out” perspective of migrant, care and hospitality workers (n=72) expressed in 48 in-depth interviews, and four focus groups.

Participant narratives included counterfactual comparisons that were more often of a downward (“it could have been worse”) than of an upward (“not as good as it could have been”) kind. Precarious participants spontaneously remarked that they were “lucky” (rather than “unlucky”) to be in precarious work.

Precarious work is likely to give rise to insecurity, uncertainty and vulnerability. However, this study distinguishes between the perspectives of “outside-in” observers, and “inside-out” participants. The former view was aligned with the standard view of work social scientists, yet the latter ran counter to both. Interestingly, the narratives of participants were compatible with the self-evaluations of people exposed to other hardships (like natural disasters).

There is a limited research on how the use of counterfactual thinking and difference of vantage points shapes attitudes and evaluations of precariousness. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study which has identified and explained the unprompted use of “luck” in the narratives of precarious workers.

This study aims to analyze whether precarious employment is associated with youth mental health, self-rated health and happiness in marriage and whether this association differs by sex.

This paper uses longitudinal data from the Survey of Young People in Egypt conducted in 2009 and 2014 and estimates a fixed-effects model to control for time-invariant unobserved individual heterogeneity. The analysis is segregated by sex.

The results indicate that precarious employment is significantly associated with poor mental health and less happiness in marriage for males and is positively associated with poor self-reported health for females. The adverse impact of precarious work is likely to be mediated through poor working conditions such as low salary, maltreatment at work, job insecurity and harassment from colleagues.

Governmental policies that tackle job precariousness are expected to improve population health and marital welfare.

Egypt has witnessed a significant increase in the prevalence of precarious employment, particularly among youth, in recent decades, yet the evidence on its effect on the health and well-being of youth workers is sparse. This paper adds to the extant literature by providing new evidence on the social and health repercussions of job precariousness from an understudied region.

This paper aim to examine the implication of section 172(1)(b) on employment rights, particularly on workers on precarious employment contracts. The aim of the paper is to analyse whether company directors have any liability for potential abuse of worker on precarious employment contracts. The paper examine the advantage of companies recruiting staff on precarious employment contracts and the effect of such contract on the worker.

The paper reviews case law, statutory provisions and academic opinions on precarious employment contracts and its advantages and disadvantages to the company and the worker. The paper critically reviews the impact of Section 172(1)(b) of the Companies Act 2006 on precarious employment contract workers.

The paper argues that companies benefit more from precarious employment contracts than workers do. The Companies Act 2006 is silent on whether directors should factor the interest of precarious employment worker when making company decision, thereby leaving these workers in a vulnerable position and at the mercy of the employers.

The paper offers a different argument about why the use of precarious employment contracts is on the rise in the UK. It highlights the silence of the Companies Act 2006 as a driver for the increase in the use of precarious employment contracts in the UK.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how precarious conditions at work affect older workers’ decision about their planned age of retirement.

Different theoretical approaches on the decision to retire are investigated in order to ascertain whether precarious employment extends, or not, one’s working life. A rich data set including over 250,000 old workers across EU-15 is built for the empirical investigation.

The results suggest that old workers involved in precarious employment are planning to retire later than those who are engaged with more stable and regular jobs. However, lack of training as well as poor health conditions at work are found to be associated with early retirement.

The analysis conceptually associates two key features of modern labour markets (precariousness and retirement) and empirically provides some evidence of the effect of poor employment conditions on the decision to retire.