Symbolic Leverage of Precarious Regular Workers: The Case of Japan

• In Event: 3244 - Precarious Work in Cross-national Perspective

Abstract

While the writing on labour market flexibilisation focuses on non-regular employment, this article explores one overlooked aspect, the experiences of increasingly precarious young regular workers. These jobs take the form of standard employment, but workers are often subjected to even more precarious and exploitative working conditions than non-regular workers. Drawing on the case of Japan, this ethnographic study has three aims. First, it clarifies the underlying mechanisms of labour exploitation in precarious regular employment. Second, it illustrates these mechanisms at work by examining the experiences of young workers. Third, it explores the potential of such young workers to disrupt these mechanisms through an individualistic form of collective action. By comparing one successful dispute with seven less successful cases, this paper tries to identify mechanisms that likely to lead precarious workers’ collective organizing to gain support from the public.

Author

• Yuki Asahina, University of Hawai'i at Manoa