ABSTRACT

Guy Standing’s precariat thesis, which suggests that precarious workers have distinctive class interests, has resonance in India where the overwhelming majority of workers lack adequate social protection. Among many criticisms, researchers have responded that this thesis ignores the historical experience of workers in poor countries and erroneously frames precarity as the province of a separate social class. As part of this debate, Erik Olin Wright argued that precarious workers were better understood as a potential fraction of the working class whose interests sometimes complemented and sometimes conflicted with the interests of other workers depending upon the regulatory scale and political terrain of struggle. Using an ethnography-based case study of automotive manufacturing in India’s National Capital Region, this article considers which of these frameworks – Standing’s or Wright’s – is better able to address the dynamic of contemporary struggle in a local labour control regime which has displaced an established core of “regular workers” with a surplus population of precarious “contract workers.”

摘要

Guy Standing 的不稳定论点表明不稳定的工人具有独特的阶级利益，这在印度引起了共鸣，印度的绝大多数工人缺乏足够的社会保护。在许多批评中，研究人员回应说，这篇论文忽略了贫穷国家工人的历史经验，错误地将不稳定现象定义为一个单独的社会阶层的领域。作为这场辩论的一部分，埃里克·奥林·赖特（Erik Olin Wright）认为，不稳定的工人应该被更好地理解为工人阶级的潜在部分，他们的利益有时与其他工人的利益相辅相成，有时与其他工人的利益发生冲突，具体取决于监管规模和斗争的政治领域。使用基于民族志的印度国家首都地区汽车制造案例研究，