Contingent Employment, Workforce Health, and Citizenship By Marc ...

responsibility, is averse to bureaucratic institutions such as the welfare state, and is concerned with the revalidation of family and community as substitutes for what the market cannot provide (O’Brien & Penna, 1998). In the literature, three conceptualisations emerge that are aligned with these general perspectives: the idea of contingent work as flexibility, as precariousness, and as disadvantage. Flexibility is a feature of the neoliberal or social good perspective, and precariousness and disadvantage are constructs that are characteristic of the social problem perspective. In the next sections, I expand on these three conceptions and note their different foci.

Contingent Work as Precariousness

The conception of contingent work as precariousness emphasises transience, uncertainty, instability, and risk in employment. Such characterisations are attributed to the ephemeral and largely commercial or market-oriented nature of the employment relationship under global capitalism. This fragile relationship is seen to create uncertainty and instability in both the terms and the conditions of employment (Allen & Henry, 1996; Burgess & Connell, 2004; Heery & Salmon, 2000; Morgan, Allington, & Heery, 2000). Researchers who adopt the perspective of contingent work as precariousness¹¹ generally refer to its material/physical dimensions, such as inadequate or limited wages and benefits entitlements, and disorganised work, such as inadequate protections, training, and supervision (Lewchuk, de Wolff, King, & Polanyi, 2003; Quinlan, Mayhew, & Bohle, 2000; Quinlan et al., 2001; Vosko, 2006; Wiatrowski, 1994). There is also a psychological dimension to precarious work. This dimension might include, for example, the risk of being unfairly dismissed or dismissed without notice (Burchell, 1989); uncertainty about future employment prospects, income,