Precarity

Uncertainties regarding the availability of, and access to opportunities, support, resources and knowledge, have fed into widespread precarity as a lived socio-technical condition across all aspects of life. There is an enduring risk in the aftermath of COVID-19 of rising structural inequality not least because those hit hardest (in terms of work and health) by the COVID-19 pandemic are precisely those already precarious. The expansion of the periphery, decreased job security, and related concerns around labour protection and working conditions10 are also of major concern to the public sector in particular, where related demands on welfare systems and health care are increasing even as these sectors are also threaded with precarity around resources, access and support. We ask about the lived conditions of precarity; how and where is precarity is being resisted? How can we build transparent and accountable systems, infrastructures and practices that promote equality and serve all users? How appropriate are alternative structures that move away from a corporate capture model and might be grounded more in civic or community action models?