Citizenship and Precarious Work under Neoliberalism: Turkey and the United States, 1980 to the Present

• In Event: 397 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. States, Workers and Labor Movements

Abstract

How do the dispossessed remain governable under conditions of mounting economic inequality? Drawing on a comparison of citizenship epistemologies in Turkey and the United States since 1980, we synthesize macro-historical and Foucauldian approaches to neoliberalism by demonstrating that state actors have linked citizenship to wage work in a time when fewer and fewer people can earn a wage in the formal sector. In deploying this “work-citizenship” discourse, states have created a disciplinary mechanism of tiered citizenship, in which a shrinking minority retains full citizenship, while a growing majority becomes reviled and struggles to attain the rights and privileges of the formally employed. In addition to offering a much needed theoretical synthesis, this research also offers methodological clues for how to do comparative historical research on transnational processes. For though the articulation of the work-citizenship discourse is distinct in our two cases, we hold that these are parallel and related “moments” in an overarching transnational process.

Authors

• Kaan Agartan, Framingham State University

• Cedric de Leon, Providence College