Guy Standing: The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class @ UNRISD Seminar Series Sept 2011

Excerpts from the seminar with Guy Standing, Professor of Economic Security, University of Bath talking about his new book, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class.

This seminar is part of the UNRISD Seminar Series. To find out more or sign up to our mailing list, visit us here: http://www.unrisd.org/

Summary:

Guy Standing introduces what he calls the precariat -- a growing number of people across the world living and working precariously, usually in a series of short-term jobs, without recourse to stable occupational identities or careers, stable social protection or protective regulations relevant to them.

They include migrants, but also locals. Increasingly frustrated and potentially dangerous because they have no voice, vulnerable to the siren calls of extreme political parties, the precariat could produce new instabilities in society.

How might these dangers be addressed? Standing outlines a new kind of good society, with more people actively involved in civil society and the precariat re-engaged. One way to this better society, he suggests, would be an unconditional basic income for everyone, contributed by the state, which could be topped up through earned incomes.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• precariat
• jobs
• unemployment
• crisis
• britain
• development
• class
• economics