A Precarious Future: An Irish Example of Flex-Insecurity

Abstract

This introduction locates the chapter in a broad political economy framework. The chapter aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how meso level social security and labour market policy work to shape the negotiation of capitalism in the contemporary workplace. We examine how institutional reconfiguration of income support, labour law, and activation policy promotes or constrains labour market precarity. This builds on the analysis of Chapter 5, which dealt with the factors promoting or preventing participation in the labour market at the end of the working life in an era of new welfare politics. The focus is on changing production regimes, work organisation, and everyday lives and on how institutional reconfigurations of welfare architecture promote or constrain precarity.