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

them. Although specialised skills might enhance workers’ leverage in the labour market and enable them to dictate the terms and conditions of their contracts, workers without high levels of human capital are seen to be doubly disadvantaged.

Gender and powerlessness also feature in the conception of contingent work as disadvantage, particularly in debates about choice—whether one freely chooses contingent work or whether the choice was discretionary. For instance, Carnoy (2000) implicitly associated contingency with powerlessness and flexibility with power when he asserted that individuals who choose flexible work should not be considered contingent workers. Because women often choose contingent work, Carnoy’s assertion suggests that they are vested with power. Feminist theorists, however, point out that women’s dual roles make their choice of contingent work discretionary, not voluntary (Vosko, 2000). It is a constrained choice, one that allows women to participate in the labour market and still fulfil their reproductive/domestic roles.

The relationships between disadvantage, powerlessness, and race/ethnicity are also implicit in Zeytinoglu and Muteshi’s (2000) observation that women and minorities dominate the most peripheral and exploitive jobs in the contingent labour market. Many are concentrated in the informal or unregulated market, where jobs are menial, physical, dirty, low paid, and dangerous (Raijman, 2001; Walter, Bourgois, Loinaz, & Schillinger, 2002). In many cases, these workers are recent immigrants who might be less educated or less skilled than other workers, or they may not be able to access the labour market because their training and skills are not recognised or valued in their new country. Some commentators observe that the more disadvantaged the work, the greater the likelihood that its incumbents will be members of disadvantaged groups (Mimeault & Simard, 1999; Rodgers, 1989).