Working precarity: Urban youth tactics to make livelihoods in instable conditions in Abidjan, Athens, Berlin and Jakarta

Abstract

Globally, conventional understandings of work no longer have much purchase for the efforts of most people to sustain minimally viable existences. This article critically expands on Bourdieu’s theory of practice by looking at the making of livelihoods of urban youth in as diverse places as Abidjan, Athens, Berlin and Jakarta, affected by transformations of work coined with the term ‘precarity’. This article discusses instability as one aspect of the set of experiences of ‘precarity’. Instability challenges how individuation and sociation work upon each other; what Bourdieu has described with the concept of habitus. Drawing on empirical material from the four cities, we explore practices of accruing value in a context of instability and conceptualize them as ‘detaching’ and ‘gathering’. We suggest that a rethinking of practices in relation to dispositions and habitus may enable us to better grasp the improvisations and more fluid forms of social life that characterize the contemporary urban life of many, and can help to address social inequalities today in a refined way.