‘I am King’: Financialisation and the paradox of precarious work

Abstract

Financialisation is now an emerging field of research. Recently, the field has attracted criticism for its focus on large-scale economic processes, such as profit accumulation based not on production, but on a diversification of financial risk management tools – a focus which ignores the way in which individuals and households experience financialisation in everyday life. In addressing this gap, theorists have sought to understand financialisation as it relates to individuals as consumers and investors, increasing their need to integrate financial calculation into daily life. This article takes the analysis two steps further. First, it argues that precarious work is actually an aspect of financialisation, based on risk-shifting by employing organisations – a process of structural change in the labour market that actually undermines individual workers’ capacity to manage financial risk successfully. Second, it argues that financialisation is an ideology or narrative of individual responsibility, which seeks to legitimate structural change by promising emancipation through individual calculation. It draws on interviews with precarious workers to explore the gap between such norms of financial self-determination and the lived experience of insecure employment. It identifies this paradox of precariousness by focusing on people in professional occupations, who in theory are best placed to successfully negotiate economic change.