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Articulations of workplace precarity : Challenging the politics of segmentation in warehouse logistics
Barnes, Tom Ali, Jasmine
Barnes, Tom
Ali, Jasmine
Author
Abstract
As critical nodes for global commodity flows, warehouses are an important example of segmented labour regimes which partition workers into groups with different conditions of security or its opposite, precarity. An emerging literature on warehouse work has tended to place segmentation in the context of managerial despotism based upon low wages, high labour turnover and job insecurity. However, the literature has, thus far, tended to pay comparatively less attention to workers’ collective resistance and its relationship to intra-labour divisions reproduced through segmentation. In refocusing attention to this problem, this article addresses the theoretical status of intra-labour groups, the nature of horizontal worker-to-worker relations, and their interaction with workers’ social identities and vertical capital–labour relations. It argues that the Gramscian concept of articulation provides the most promising frame for understanding these networked relations and for addressing how the politics of segmentation can be challenged by building common cause among divided workers.
Keywords
border as method, Gramsci, labour regimes, precarious work, warehouse logistics
Date
2022
Type
Journal article
Journal
The Sociological Review
Book
Volume
70
Issue
6
Page Range
1163-1180
Article Number
ACU Department
Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
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Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
File Access
Controlled