Worker flexibility often functions as a euphemism for precarity

Evidence

In other cases, flexibility was a euphemism for instability—or what critical scholars call “precarity,” defined as “intermittent employment and radical uncertainty about the future.” Several full-time producers acknowledged the challenge of “making a living” in an economy where—as Sissi put it—“you can get hired over a tweet or get fired over it too!” — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 571

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines precarity as intermittent employment and radical future uncertainty.
• XREF: connects to: Independent-work boosters frame gig careers as voluntary self-fulfillment — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 508; Academic schedule flexibility masks ever-accessible unbounded work hours — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 618; Flexible gig work shifts organizational risks onto individual workers — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 39 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Flexibility is passivity — conciliation, not resilience #qualifies (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 252
• Flexibility functions as enforced docility within exploitative culture #corroborates (0.85)
• Flexible capital’s ephemerality atomizes workers and enables individualism #expands (0.80) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1049
• Flexibility means instantly adapting labor and machinery to market demand #qualifies (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 154
• Flexibility is an unrooted notion while plasticity is a historically grounded concept #contradicts (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 59