In this article, I explore how different groups of the precariat endure and struggle with specific and hierarchical forms of precarity in Seoul. By paying attention to which precarity matters, and to whom it belongs, I examine the friction between the educated youth—the “deserving” precariat that can speak—and the urban poor, who endure abandonment. This collaborative project, in which university students encountered welfare recipients and homeless people through interviews with antipoverty activists, unveils the complex reality that one group’s attempt to react to their precarity risks marginalizing or exacerbating the precarity faced by another group. The affective discourses of fairness and security, which are often embodied and fetishized by precarious youth who are struggling to survive, turn out to have fostered a deeper marginalization and criminalization of the urban poor. Instead of reducing this finding to a critique of the differential distribution of precarity, I reposition my ethnography as an experimental and pedagogical project, in which an anthropologist’s “field” is created with the expansion of research inquiries, findings, reflections, and actions. As such, ethnography serves as a kind of activism to connect the bounded circles of the precariat and demonstrate new predicaments and possibilities in an open-ended manner.

中文翻译：

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会说话的不稳定者

在本文中，我探讨了不同的不稳定群体如何在首尔忍受和与特定和等级形式的不稳定状态作斗争。通过关注哪些不稳定因素很重要，它属于谁，我审视了知青——可以说话的“当之无愧”的不稳定者——与忍受被遗弃的城市贫民之间的摩擦。在这个合作项目中，大学生通过与反贫困活动家的访谈遇到了福利接受者和无家可归者，揭示了一个复杂的现实，即一个群体试图对其不稳定做出反应可能会边缘化或加剧另一个群体面临的不稳定。公平和安全的情感话语，往往被挣扎求生的岌岌可危的青年所体现和迷恋，事实证明，这加剧了城市贫民的边缘化和刑事定罪。我没有将这一发现简化为对不稳定的差异分布的批评，而是将我的民族志重新定位为一个实验和教学项目，其中人类学家的“领域”随着研究调查、发现、反思和行动的扩展而创建。因此，民族志作为一种行动主义，将不稳定的圈子联系起来，以开放的方式展示新的困境和可能性。反思和行动。因此，民族志作为一种行动主义，将不稳定的圈子联系起来，以开放的方式展示新的困境和可能性。反思和行动。因此，民族志作为一种行动主义，将不稳定的圈子联系起来，以开放的方式展示新的困境和可能性。