10 Things I Learned About Precarity

In August 2018 Richard Smith of the Centre of Applied Linguistics at Warwick got in touch to see if I’d be interested in writing a key definition of ‘precarity’ for the ELT Journal. So, many months, and many drafts later – with many thanks to Richard for his supportive and helpful edits – my definition has been published and you can read it here.

So here’s a blog post to accompany the definition that explains ten things I learned while researching and writing the piece. Just to be clear, these are my own personal, individual views that I didn’t express directly in the ELTJ. But I hope that teachers might find something here that’s useful to them, and I also hope that ELT as a profession, no matter whether you agree with me personally or not, can at least start to have a broad and meaningful conversation about precarious work and how it affects working teachers.

So straight in at number 10…

10. It is difficult though not impossible to provide a sophisticated but also workable and useful definition of precarity. Before you can treat a problem, you need to define it. Even though there is no one accepted definition of precarity, it is possible to provide a definition that is theoretically informed, grounded in empirical reality, and (hopefully) useful to working teachers; a definition ‘adequate’ to the complexity of the phenomenon.

9. Precarity is global in scale, yet national in its effects. The effects of precarity on an individual worker depend on systemic factors at the national scale including the type of welfare regime, the model of capitalism pursued, and the relative strength of organised labour versus capital in a particular country (such as whether there are collective bargaining agreements or not) – for a comparative analysis across six post-industrial economies see Kalleberg 2018.

It’s also important to remember that for most of the world’s workers, such as those in the so-called ‘developing world’, precarity is the default employment regime (see Munck 2013).

8. Precarity is a condition that is imposed. It is not a force of nature or a by-product of the economy but a product of actions taken by specific decision-makers and institutions. According to Judith Butler (2009) precarity ‘designates that politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death.’ 

We live in a system where the risks of employment are increasingly shouldered by the employee, and where social safety nets are cut to the bone or simply non-existent, individuals cannot stand the costs and pressures they endure.

The justification for this imposed system usually comes in the form of ideologies of choice, individualism, and meritocracy. The small minority of people who succeed in such a system generally subscribe to one or more of these ideologies in a loose way and their views tend to be expressed in phrases such as ‘I worked hard’, ‘I made good choices rather than bad ones,’ or ‘If you don’t like it, just leave’ which tend to block genuine dialogue and therefore block any meaningful change or even its possibility.

However, if precarity is imposed by specific decision-makers and institutions, which the evidence suggests is the case, then the key issue is accountability. As the American writer Sarah Schulman (2013) explains:

Herein lies the problem. We live with an idea of happiness that is based in other people’s diminishment. But we do not address this because we hold an idea of happiness that precludes being uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable is required in order to be accountable […] Being uncomfortable or asking others to be uncomfortable is practically considered antisocial because the revelation of truth is tremendously dangerous to supremacy. As a result, we have a society in which the happiness of the privileged is based on never starting the process towards becoming accountable.

Within ELT, I’ve run up again and again against a wall of silence and denial, or a victim mentality when you approach people with these issues; something which is often expressed in comments such as ‘We’re doing good work,’ or ‘We’re all volunteers here’ or simply ‘We don’t recognise your reality’.

As I suggest in my blog post ‘Who Gets to Feel Good?‘ the issue is that many ELT teachers think of themselves as ‘good people’ with good, liberal views. But many of these teachers are also instinctively fragile and uncomfortable about other teachers – that is, their professional colleagues – who might be angry or depressed at the way things are and how the system is perpetrated, and might want to have a conversation about change.

I wrote that the ‘dangerous and insidious idea is that there is only so much “Good” to go round. That only a subset of teachers get to feel good. That only a subset of teachers actually matter. And I can’t think of a bigger indictment of the status quo than that.’

So perhaps it’s time for some teachers, and some teaching institutions, to say I’m / we’re uncomfortable about this – but let’s talk about it.

7. Precarity kills. I recently wrote an article for Open Democracy about Australian film-maker and English teacher Frances Calvert, who took her own life last year. After years of teaching business english, general english and freelancing at several Berlin institutions, her life grew more and more precarious. In the end she faced the prospect of not having enough classes in the upcoming semester to cover her expenses, which combined with other factors, was all too much for her to bear.

As many more teachers approach retirement age without sufficient savings or pensions to rely on then we can expect to see tragedies like this repeated. It’s very clear. If institutions and individuals don’t DO something then more English teachers will suffer poor mental health, nervous breakdowns, and impoverishment. Or they’ll kill themselves. This is not just a political, economic or social issue, it’s a public health issue.

6. Precarity has a history and a genealogy. Part of being able to analyse a phenomenon is knowing its history and how it evolved. I wanted to ground precarity within a genealogy, and the most relevant in my opinion is that of colonialism. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu used the concept of precarity to describe what he witnessed in Algeria when French authorities broke up the Algerian people’s traditional social habits and forced them to adopt new ways of living and working. In a similar way, the imposition of precarity disrupts workers’ ability to plan, organise, and live a sustainable life.

5. The analysis of precarity demands an interdisciplinary, transnational approach. To understand precarity you need to know something about sociology, economics, and politics. And to think that precarity only affects individual teachers in individual contexts would be like thinking that global warming only affects individual countries. 

4. Precarity, paradoxically, can reduce or block solidarity between workers. In my definition I quote the work of German academic Klaus Dörre (2014). He conceptualised a model of precarity which is subdivided into three ‘zones’: the zone of integration, the zone of precarity, and the zone of detachment. The zone of integration consists of those in well-paid employment, but who are fearful of falling down. The zone of precarity consists of those who are ‘attenuated’ to precarity but also some who are ‘hopeful’ of climbing up. The zone of detachment consists of those who have largely given up; they have been ‘left behind’ in the race.

This model explains why workers find it hard to come together, organise, and change their situations. At each level, workers are disincentivised to show solidarity because of the dynamics of the system in which they find themselves; powerful dynamics of fear, hope, and disillusionment.

And you can understand this. Looking down into the abyss of precarity is something people, quite rightly, don’t want to do.

Better to look up, and hope for the best.

3. Precarity is widespread. Precarity is not just the ‘grit in the gears’ of our economic system, nor the result of a few ‘bad apple’ employers, but essential to the way today’s form of capitalism operates. Take a look at your clothes. Why is it that a t-shirt, or a pair of trousers, can be bought at a fraction of the price they cost twenty or thirty years ago?

And precarity is simply not the exception in ELT, it’s the everyday reality for many teachers, across many different sectors, in many different countries. From the ‘taxi professors’ in Chile to the teacher on a zero hours contract in the UK.

2. Precarity is getting worse. People who question the idea of precarity and precarious work often point to the employment figures in the US and UK. But these high employment figures disguise the explosion in poorly-paid, precarious work, and the fact that in-work poverty is now a rising trend even in countries such as Germany. As I write in my definition, the last European Working Conditions Survey from 2015 found that one in six EU workers feared losing their jobs in the following six months. The TUC also reports that 3.8 million people – 11.8% of the UK workforce – ‘are now stuck in precarious forms of employment such as zero-hours contracts, low-paid self-employment or agency work’. 

Watch out for the new Ken Loach film which explores this world of precarious, low-paid work; an exploitative regime based around ‘labour you can turn on and off like a tap’.

1. Institutions and individuals are taking action against precarity. As I write in my definition, some teachers have had enough and are taking action. There was a massive strike by the UCU union in 2018 over pensions. In March 2019, workers at all levels of the Dutch education system went on strike protesting the ‘incessant drive to turn schools and universities into supermarkets’.

In ELT, teachers protesting the snap closure of Dublin’s Grafton College, working with the Unite union, managed to push for legislation that will tighten up the largely unregulated ELT industry in Ireland.

And recently, teachers at Delfin language school in London, with the support of the TEFL Workers’ Union, won paid meetings, paid CPDs, paid sick days, a pay policy, and an end to zero hours contracts.

Conclusion

I call on ELT institutions to adopt a Triple-A approach to precarity and precarious work: acknowledge the problem at an institutional level in position statements and policy, air the problem within institutional settings such as conferences, and allow teachers suffering precarious work a voice within these institutions.

But most importantly teachers need to organise and take action in their own contexts, and support fellow teachers in other contexts rather than remaining silent. In the face of intolerable working conditions and the social risks that are now carried by precariously employed workers rather than their employers, it’s time for change in the ELT industry. It’s time to start the ‘process towards becoming accountable’. 

Paul Walsh