Development Seminar

GUY STANDING

Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath in the UK, and author of Social Income and Insecurity: A Study in Gujarat as well as Work after Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship will talk about his new book:

The Precariat:

The New Dangerous Class

Friday, October 26, 2012,

12:00pm - 02:00pm

University College, Room 179, 15 Kings College Circle

Neo-liberal policies and institutional changes have produced a huge and growing number of people with sufficiently common experiences to be called an emerging class - a class Guy Standing calls the Precariat. They work in a series of short-term jobs, without recourse to stable occupational identities or careers, social protection or protective regulations relevant to them. Precarious conditions cross cut the global north and south, and shape the lives of both migrants and locals of all ages and educational levels - witness the prominence of the "educated unemployed" in recent struggles in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, and Quebec. Some people never had stable work or protections, but aspired to achieve them and are reacting now to frustrated hopes. Is this a class that is becoming dangerous? Come, listen,  and discuss!

For further info: http://www.devsem.utoronto.ca/

The seminar is sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Science. It is co-sponsored by Anthropology, Geography, Political Science, Sociology, and the Comparative and International Development Education Centre at OISE

Guy Standing is Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath in the UK. From 1999 until March 2006, he was Director of the Socio-Economic Security Programme of the International Labour Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland. Professor Standing is a founder member and co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). He has written on labour economics, labour market policy, unemployment, labour market flexibility, structural adjustment policies, and social protection policy.His most recent book is The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London and New York, Bloomsbury Academic, 2011). Earlier books include: Social Income and Insecurity: A Study in Gujarat, with Jeemol Unni, Renana Jhabvala and Uma Rani (New Delhi, Routledge, 2010); Work after Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2009); Promoting Income Security as a Right: Europe and North America (London, Anthem Press, 2005); Beyond the New Paternalism: Basic Security as Equality (London, Verso, 2002); and Global Labour Flexibility: Seeking Distributive Justice (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1999).