In recent years, labor precarity has reached an undisputed centrality in the contemporary public discourse, in many European countries. A new narrative based on the difficulties young people are facing in the job market seems to have replaced the flexibility ideology of the 90s. There are obvious structural reasons for this shift, rooted in the interaction between the evolution of the European labour markets and the financial crisis that erupted in 2008. But these are not the only lenses through which it is possible to analyse the shift in the public discourse from flexibility to precarity. Precarity, this is our hypothesis, has not yet succeeded in producing massively new forms of organisation of social struggles, but it has succeeded in imposing itself in the public discourse, involving a wide set of actors and individuals. Many different conceptual lenses can be used to interpret this phenomenon: diagnostic frame, collective identity, narrative, master frame, hegemony. Different theoretical labels show in different ways how precarity has been a symbolic resource for social actors. Our argument is that precarity is a symbolic element able to transcend the matters merely related to the duration of a job contract, and to become a factor of common identification and belonging, which keeps together different actors. The label of precarious becomes relevant and charged with a strong unifying power also outside the strictly labour-related field, it becomes a generational label charged with social and political connotations. This working paper will propose an advanced formulation of the theoretical hypothesis we have described, with an analysis of its multiple dimensions. We also aim also to start testing this hypothesis based on our participant observation of the precarious workers' mobilisations and on a qualitative discourse analysis of the messages produced both by movements and SMOs and public discourse in the mainstream media.
