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This article critically examines Guy Standing's A Precariat Charter by posing three questions: 1) What is the significance of the North/South divide for the global spread of the precariat? 2) Is the precariat an agent of transformation, or simply a passive recipient? 3) How should we understand the fragmentation of the working class and its implications for progressive change? In addressing these questions, I argue that Standing's analysis offers useful insights into the current era of insecurity. But it downplays important variations in forms of precarity, and also over-emphasises fragmentation and weakness. The limits of this approach are illustrated through two empirical examples drawn from Johannesburg, South Africa, and Oakland, United States. Taken together, these examples point towards a broader and more fluid understanding of the "working class". They also underscore possibilities for working-class solidarity, both between stable workers and their more precarious counterparts, and between different groups that Standing identifies as the precariat.

Community protests in South Africa are often described as violent. Drawing from newspaper articles, interviews with protesters and statements by public officials, this paper unpacks the meaning of 'violent protest'. It shows that violence is both ambiguous and deeply entangled with democracy. On the one hand, violent practices may become a tool of liberation, promoting democracy by empowering marginalised groups. On the other hand, democracy may become a tool of domination, undermining dissent by constituting as violent those persons and actions that deviate from formal institutional channels. The analysis urges scholars to adopt a critical and nuanced view of violence.

The growing precariousness of the working class and the declining significance of unions has given rise to precarious politics: non-union struggles by insecurely employed and low-income groups. Under what conditions do unions incorporate these struggles as part of a broader labor movement? This article examines how unions responded to two particularly visible examples of precarious politics in the late 1990s and early 2000s: the struggles of low-wage noncitizen workers and communities in California, USA; and the struggles of poor citizen communities with high unemployment in Gauteng, South Africa. Contrary to what the legacy of unionism in each context would predict, unions became fused with precarious politics in California but were separated from them in Gauteng. This surprising divergence stemmed from the reconfiguration of unions in each place, most notably due to steady union decline in California and democratization in Gauteng. Whereas unions in California understood noncitizen workers as central to their own revitalization, the close relationship between unions and the state in Gauteng created distance from community struggles. Both cases underscore the importance of workers' citizenship status and the role of the state for understanding how unions relate to precarious politics.

The closing decades of the 20th century were devastating for the working class. Across the globe the widespread embrace of free markets led to growing capital mobility, flexible and informal employment, and union decline. A key result of these shifts was the expansion of the precarious working class: insecurely employed, low-income, and non-unionized segments of the urban working class. Scholars have increasingly highlighted this transformation, but they have paid little attention to collective struggles emerging from the precarious working class. Members of the precarious working class are instead commonly dismissed as too weak or fragmented to engage in politically relevant action. We thus know very little about their political orientation: what do members of the precarious working class struggle for, who do they struggle against, and from where do they derive power?This dissertation is a study of precarious politics , which refers to the political content of collective struggles by members of the precarious working class. The study focuses on two groups that were actively engaged in collective struggles during the late 1990s and 2000s: low-wage noncitizen workers in California, United States; and poor citizen communities in Gauteng, South Africa. The two groups shared a common structural position based on insecure employment and livelihood. But they also reflected the uneven development of the precarious working class across the world system. Low-wage noncitizen workers in California were prototypical of the precarious working class under advanced capitalism, which was increasingly organized around insecure formal sector employment and international migration. Poor citizen communities in Gauteng were, in contrast, prototypical of the precarious working class under peripheral capitalism, which was increasingly organized around high unemployment, informal economic activity, and "internal" rural-to-urban migration.In both cases precarious politics were rooted in demands for recognition, dignity, and respect. Given their marginalization, recognition was an important end in itself for members of the precarious working class. But it was also a source of symbolic leverage, enabling them to compensate for their detachment from unions and lack of economic leverage. Symbolic leverage was, in turn, crucial for achieving more concrete ends. Given the economic insecurity of the precarious working class, economic struggles for basic survival were central. But economic struggles in both places fed into and overlapped with citizenship struggles around official inclusion in the political community, broadening the terrain of precarious politics.Beyond this basic similarity, precarious politics in California and Gauteng were very different. Oriented towards participation , low-wage noncitizen workers in California sought to increase their access and leverage within the economy and society. Their economic struggles were organized around an Equal Opportunity politics, which sought access to the labor market and basic labor protections, while their citizenship struggles were organized around a Membership Inclusion politics, which sought official legal status and freedom from criminalization. Oriented towards protection , poor citizen communities in Gauteng instead sought to protect themselves against the ravages of the market. Their economic struggles were organized around a Collective Consumption politics, which sought state delivery of basic public goods, while their citizenship struggles were organized around a Membership Exclusion politics, which sought the expulsion of noncitizen outsiders. Precarious politics in California and Gauteng thus ran in opposite directions as they moved from economic struggles to citizenship struggles. Whereas low-wage noncitizen workers in California sought to broaden the political community, poor citizen communities in Gauteng sought to contract it.Labor responses to precarious politics tended to reinforce the divergence. Understanding the struggles of low-wage noncitizen workers as crucial to their own revitalization, unions in California embraced precarious politics as part of a broader labor movement. This fusion affirmed the recognition of the precarious working class, reinforcing their struggles for participation. Focused on negotiating with the state and protecting their own privileges, unions in Gauteng treated precarious politics as separate from the labor movement. This separation isolated the precarious working class from broader struggles, reinforcing their struggles for protection.The concept of precarious politics provides a new lens for examining working class struggles in an age of marketization and insecurity. Using this lens, the two case studies show that a common precarious politics is emerging in very different parts of the globe, but that it takes very different forms depending on where the precarious working class is located within the world system.

AbstractThe current popularity of "racial capitalism" in the American academy is typically attributed to the work of Cedric Robinson. But in this paper, we demonstrate that Robinson was riding a wave that began a decade before: in the South African movement against apartheid. We trace the intellectual history of the concept through two heydays, one peaking in the 1970s and 1980s and another emerging following the 2008 financial crisis. To make sense of racial capitalism during these two heydays, we argue, one must locate the concept in relation to three dialectics. First, racial capitalism traveled back and forth between periphery and center, emerging, for example, in both the context of anti- and post-colonial/apartheid struggles in southern Africa, and against the backdrop of the Black Power and Black Lives Matter movements in the United States. A second dialectic is evident in the way the concept, while initially produced in the context of these fierce struggles, was quickly absorbed into academic discourse. And, in addition to periphery/center and activism/academia, we identify a third dialectic: between the term itself and the broader problematic in which it was (and remains) situated. Our analysis is attentive to the ways that theories acquire contextually specific meanings as they travel, providing a model for understanding the circulation across multiple political contexts of a concept as deceptively stable as racial capitalism. It also demonstrates how expansive the field of racial capitalism actually is, extending well beyond any particular historical or geographic context, institutional or social domain, and even the very term itself.

South Africa is not typically mentioned in studies of recent global protest. But popular resistance surged in South Africa from 2009, reaching a peak of more than one protest per day in 2012. We examine the 2009+ South African protest wave, highlighting its sources, antecedents, primary features, and key consequences. Marked by an explosion of popular resistance in both communities and workplaces, we argue that the protest wave shares key features with recent protests elsewhere. Most importantly, they are propelled by forces of marketization and critique the failures of democracy. The protest wave had a major impact on South African politics, instigating the emergence of new challenges to the dominance of the Alliance between the African National Congress (ANC)—the ruling party—the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). But the current political trajectory is far from stable, and the future is remarkably uncertain.