The Politics of Disablement and Precarious Work in the UK: Prefiguring a Non-Productivist Future
Author: Ioana Cerasella Chis, ioana.chis.research@gmail.com
Department: Political Science & International Studies
University: University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Supervisor: Dr Emma Foster
Year of completion: 2024
Language of dissertation: English
Keywords:
disability politics
, politics of work
, social reproduction
, capitalism
Areas of Research:
Work
, Mental Health and Illness
, Social Transformations
Abstract
The Politics of Disablement and Precarious Work is a postdisciplinary qualitative research study of disabling capitalism’s social relations, its productivist institution of work, and non-productivist alternatives. The insights developed in this thesis are embedded in the viewpoints and everyday activities of twenty-seven gig economy workers who are subjected to disablement oppression and exploitation in contemporary UK and informed by the UPIAS-inspired social model and post-'68 non-productivist Marxisms. Its contributions are as follows. First, this thesis offers a new theoretical lens called the collective-materialist approach to disablement (with five tenets) through which I demonstrate the benefits of synthesising the UPIAS-inspired social model of disability with post-’68 anti-productivist Marxisms. Second, the relationship between structural disablement oppression and exploitation (on the one hand) and capitalist social relations (on the other) is clarified through a new disability composition thesis. In short, I demonstrate that all people with impairments, who are chronically ill, d/Deaf, neurodivergent, and who experience mental distress are subjected to disablement, regardless of how they self-identify. Third, this thesis highlights participants’ experiences of everyday activities whilst also centring their critiques of productivism and visions for alternative horizons of possibility. Thus, through an analysis of participant interviews and diary entries, I identify six broad spheres of activity, such as waged work, unwaged work for the state and ‘professionals’, navigating the individual model of disability in everyday interpersonal relations, assistance work, subversion work and collective self-activity, and activities conducive to rest. In doing so, this thesis offers an expansive definition of ‘work’ to include activities that are often overlooked in academic literatures. It also highlights the complexity of non-waged work and its relationship to disabling capitalism. I approach the analysis of these activities through the work transfer thesis and argue that transformed conditions and resources are necessary to make space for prefigurative activities that act against-and-beyond disabling capitalism and the wage system. This thesis’ collective-materialist approach to everyday activities’ role in reproducing, reforming, or prefiguring beyond disabling capitalist social relations provides scholars and activists with a perspective that can inform transformative collective action and analysis – a perspective that does not separate capitalism and disablement and that strives for their abolition. Finally, this thesis calls for further explorations of the political economy of rest from non-productivist Marxist perspectives.
