The Precariat: Insecurity as a Practice of Government

The assemblage of neoliberal policies with economic globalization has created the conditions for the emergence of a new class structure, which includes what Guy Standing calls "the precariat". This "class" is characterized by new types of relationships, which are increasingly unstable, of production, distribution and with the state. Our research focuses on one of the distinctive aspects of this "class in the making", the relations of production, with unique characteristics in history: it is the first class in which the rule is having a higher level of qualifications than the type of work one can aspire. We aim to discuss how the precariousness among female graduate is concealed by the increasing feminization of work. That is, how new forms of work organization impact in the construction of subjectivities and of personal and professional narratives of women workers. Our framework is based on the works of Hester Eisenstein, Fraser, Acker, Morini and Lorey on the centrality of women's work as a resource for global capital, the appropriation of feminist ideology by the capitalism and precariousness as governance tool, with women taking the place of "ideal worker". Within a qualitative methodology, we conducted semi-structured interviews with women whom perform functions below their academic qualifications. The collected data were analyzed according to content analysis techniques, encoded with the help of Atlas / IT software, version 7.0. The results show how precariousness, as a governmentality instrument, does not mean only the uncertainty of waged work, but also and above all uncertainty as a mode of living, the uncertainty of subjectivation modes and of bodies.