Prekariátus: Miért pont most és miért pont itt?
Precariat: Why Here and Why Now?

PRECARIAT: WHY HERE AND WHY NOW?

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to introduce the concept of precariat into the Hungarian social scientific discourse and to comment on the four translations published in this issue. The potential applicability of the theoretical concepts onto the Hungarian context will be discussed as well. As a starting point three definitional attempts will be presented: when speaking about precarity we can refer to precarity as a movement; to precarity as groups of people, whose position of the labor market have become vulnerable and uncertain; and to the sum of people whose secure lives have become threatened by various risks and dangers. After that I show to what extent the notion of precarity can mean more than other categories describing marginalities – for this the coinage of the term will be analyzed. An elaborated argument will be shown about how the latest usage of “precarity” differs from how Robert Castel has used it. This argument ties into the debates around the problems characterizing the specific, European type of wage-earning society. After briefly introducing the articles of Guy Standing, Mario Candeias, Mika LaVaque-Manty, Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter, I will argue that the common element in them – which I fully agree with – is that the concept of precarity, at its present state, is too much connected to a specific historical period (to the era of post-WWII, Western European welfare consensus). In order to extend the notion this connection should be abolished. This is the only possibility to make the concept a useful analytical tool for comprehending broader social processes, especially in the context of Hungary and Eastern Europe in more general.

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