The Measurement of the Precarious
The notion of precariousness occupies an important position in contemporary sociology. But this notion is divided, from the point of view both of the sociological approaches and of the political matrixes that focus on it. In order to clarify these differences of perspectives, we offer to revisit the different modes of problematization which, in the late 1970s, came to invest the word “precarious”. We do so in a detailed way, paying particular attention to the various relations to quantification. Firstly, the social sciences of work were alarmed at a renewal of the legal segmentations of the wage working condition, in terms that led to a tension between juridicism and the study of poverty. Secondly, sociologists joined experts closer to political authorities in a discussion about the disruptive significance of “marginal” uses of precarious employment. Thirdly, far left theorists attempted to cast “precarious workers” as a revolutionary class, thereby inaugurating a series of endeavours at social mobilization. We wish to highlight the heterogeneity of the various modes of knowledge as well as of the political perspectives concerning the very notion of “precariousness”.