Abstract:

While the writing on labor market flexibilization focuses on non-regular employment, this ethnography of precarious work 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, a seemingly unlikely place to observe such a development, this article has three aims. First, it clarifies the underlying mechanisms of labor 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. The paper illuminates that, in the context of labor market flexibilization, inequality of security exists not only between standard and non-standard employment but also within standard employment arrangements.

摘要：

虽然关于劳动力市场灵活性的文章侧重于非正规就业，但这种不稳定工作的民族志探索了一个被忽视的方面，即越来越不稳定的年轻正规工人的经历。这些工作采取标准就业的形式，但与非正规工人相比，工人往往面临更不稳定和更具剥削性的工作条件。以日本为例，日本似乎不太可能观察到这种发展，本文有三个目标。首先，它阐明了不稳定的正规就业中劳动剥削的潜在机制。其次，它通过检查年轻工人的经验来说明这些工作机制。第三，它探索了这些年轻工人通过集体行动的个人主义形式破坏这些机制的潜力。