The global politics of precarity and insecure work: introduction

This article introduces the commentary on ‘The global politics of precarity and insecure work’, which brings together interdisciplinary insights from the Global North and the Global South in order to demonstrate the importance of taking a contextually sensitive, globally nuanced approach to discussing labour market precarity in the contemporary economy. By contextualising different forms of precarity globally, locally and through a decolonial lens, we argue it is possible to simultaneously highlight the fluid shape and significance of precarious work as this manifests in different places across the globe, as well as the fundamental interrelationships that exist between different forms of precarity within twenty-first-century capitalism. In particular, we show how the contributions to this commentary emphasise how our positionality within the wider system (and historical development) of global capitalism modulates our precarity(ies), and our exposure to domination, as systems of class, ethnicity, gender, migration status and language intersect with the shifting dynamics of precarious work in different contexts. This approach, we argue, not only helps to challenge the dominant perspectives that have developed towards precarity and insecure work within the Global North, but also enables us to better understand the various practical requirements for making labour markets fairer and more just for workers across the globe.