precarity

Essays

Navigating Jefes Fantasmas in New York City’s Urban Platform Economy

Jackson Todd - 3 March 2023
How has the “platform economy” altered urban life, infrastructure, and labor? Jackson Todd examines New York City’s...
From the Field

Double Jeopardy for Single-Parent Families: When Housing Conditions and Lockdown Collide

Laure Crepin & Fanny Bugeja-Bloch & translated by Oliver Waine - 5 November 2021
Single-parent families are among those households most affected by economic precarity and the current health...
From the Field

Between Two Crises: New York’s Artisanal Food Startup Founders

Nga Than - 28 September 2021
The Covid‑19 pandemic forced a pause to a decade of growth for New York City’s artisanal food startups. Strategies...
From the Field

Understanding Why Homeless People Refuse Emergency Accommodation

Édouard Gardella & translated by Oliver Waine - 9 March 2021
The refusal of emergency accommodation by many homeless people expresses the intensity of their attachment to the...
From the Field

Cleaning and Care Worker Cooperatives in NYC: Empowerment Through Collectivization of Labor

Nora Komposch - 8 December 2020
Worker cooperatives have been shown to reduce precariousness and economic exclusion of marginalized groups....
Essays

Poverty as a Social Stigma

Axelle Brodiez-Dolino & translated by Oliver Waine - 13 December 2019
The distinction between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor is deeply entrenched, and representations of poverty...
From the Field

Rio de Janeiro: Storms, Militia, and Urban Development

Leandro Benmergui & Rafael Soares Gonçalves & translated by Oliver Waine - 8 November 2019
The dramatic consequences of storms at the beginning of 2019 in a favela in Rio de Janeiro reveal the ongoing...
From the Field

Open-Air Auto Shops: Subsistence Jobs in Working-Class Neighborhoods

Collectif Rosa Bonheur & translated by Oliver Waine - 25 October 2019
The informal activities of street mechanics observed by Collectif Rosa Bonheur in northern France attest to a much...
From the Field

Immigrant Men and Voluntary Work in a Swiss City

Agnès Aubry - 15 May 2018
Across Europe, refugees and immigrants find themselves in uncertain civil and legal territory; precariousness...
From the Field

Insecure Lives Under Extreme Climate Conditions: Insights from a Fishing Hamlet in Tamil Nadu, India

Devendraraj Madhanagopal - 17 April 2018
In recent years, climate change–induced weather events have exacerbated poverty and insecurity in small fishing...
From the Field

How Children Cope When Home is a Hotel

Erwan Le Méner & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 5 February 2016
Emergency housing in social hotels is affecting a growing number of families in the Paris region. How does this...
Reviews

Good neighbours? Homeless people as seen by those who live alongside them

Marine Maurin & translated by Oliver Waine - 5 June 2015
Prejudices regarding the poorest in society die hard. Does living in proximity to some of these populations help...
Debates

Precarity and Gentrification: A Feedback Loop

Samuel Stein - 14 April 2015
How do rent hikes and labor precarity conspire to reinforce each other against tenants and workers? Samuel Stein...
From the Field

The Other Side of Austin, Texas

Caitlyn Collins & Katherine Jensen & Kristine Kilanski & Javier Auyero - 2 March 2015
Despite a booming economy, Austin, Texas, is a city where inequalities persist and grow in the shadow of neoliberal...

Series

Urban Wastes, Present and Future
New York Dossier: The Food Industry Faces the Covid‑19 Pandemic
Cities in the Age of Financialization
Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research
New York Tech Dossier: The Dark Side of New York’s Tech Economy
Progressive Mayors and Urban Social Movements
Land Rights in the Urban Global South
Climate Change and Social Change
Shrinking Cities

Featured

From the Field

Covid-19 Transformed New York’s Destination Food Markets

Ivana Mellers - 5 October 2021
Ivana Mellers analyzes how New York’s destination markets—key spaces of economic and social interactions—coped during...
Reviews

Filming Ethnic Diversity in New York

Stéphane Tonnelat & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 21 October 2016
Frederick Wiseman’s fortieth documentary film, In Jackson Heights (2015), returns to an urban theme explored in...
From the Field

Looking Inward, Across the Border

Harel Shapira - 19 April 2016
In the constellation of anti-immigrant politics in the United States, groups like the Minutemen, civilians who...
Essays

The Political Aesthetics of Drag

Shaka McGlotten - 13 October 2015
Drag, or the diverse art form and culture of performance that typically plays with gender and sex, is an integral...
Debates

Disarm the Police

Gregory Smithsimon - 29 September 2015
In the current political debates about discriminatory policing, there has been a lack of serious discussion of...
Reviews

The Dangers of Security

Médéric Martin-Mazé & translated by Oliver Waine - 22 May 2015
In Against Security, Harvey Molotch highlights – through various examples, including the New York subway, airports,...

Other resources online

Cycles of Violence: Analysing Media Discourse in the Newspaper...

Mobile Lives Forum
How are cyclist and pedestrian deaths depicted in newspaper reports, and how do these reports help shape...

Lahti: The First Carbon-Rationing Experiment Applied to Local...

Mobile Lives Forum
The city of Lahti in Finland was the first to experiment with a carbon-trading scheme among its inhabitants to...

Is Rationing Carbon for Travel a Fair, Efficient, and Realistic...

Mobile Lives Forum
In the wake of the pandemic, a carbon tax at Europe’s borders is now on the agenda, but a domestic version for...

Reducing Carbon-Emitting Travel: A Factor of Social Cohesion and...

Mobile Lives Forum
As part of France’s Mission on the Future of the Economic Model of Public Transportation, commissioned by the French...

Strasbourg, An Example of a Cycling City

Mobile Lives Forum
Strasbourg is the leading city for cycling in France and a constant source of inspiration for all French cities...

The Trinity of Walking, Cycling and Public Transportation Must Be...

Mobile Lives Forum
While emissions from the transportation sector remain at a very high level, all hopes are currently pinned on the...
Centre national de recherche scientifique
Journal supported by the Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales (Institute of Human and Social Sciences) of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

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