Kretsos & Umney new paper ‘That’s the experience’
The new paper ‘That’s the experience’ by Lefteris Kretsos and Charles Umney looks at jazz musicians in ’emerging adulthood’ and their ambivalence to precarious work. Precarious employment is an important consequence of structural changes in labour markets. Precarity has had profound effects on young workers in particular, often disrupting the process of ’emerging adulthood’. This paper looks at precarious employment in the creative sectors, specifically among jazz musicians. It explores their experiences of and attitudes towards precarity. It shows how participants sought to manage and sometimes embrace precarity as part of the life course, but also argues that this managed embrace was dependent on factors such as family background.
Lefteris Kretsos on the crisis in Greece
Over the past four years, Greece has been “rescued” on countless occasions. Over the past four years, state legislators across the country and supranational institutions have launched an unprecedented series of reforms aimed at lowering labor standards, weakening trade unions, and eroding workplace and welfare protections. The country has become almost a byword for “structural adjustment” and drastic labour market reforms across Europe. Financial support from the Troika and especially the IMF has been conditional on reductions in public deficits and public spending, initiating drastic labour market reform and a welfare state retrenchment unprecedented in the post war period. Structural reforms and labour market restructuring policies have been undertaken in line with the loan agreements based on the Troika’s premise that labour market regulation and social protection in Greece constituted a significant barrier to growth and a main driver of public debt.
The rest of the summary is here, and here is the full report.
Marketization in Europe 