THE CONTENTIOUS FIELD OF PRECARIOUS WORK IN ITALY: POLITICAL ACTORS, STRATEGIES AND COALITIONS

This article aims to present an empirically grounded analysis of the field of actors mobilized against precarious work in Italy. Based on extensive fieldwork including interviews and document analysis, we discuss and compare four types of social and political actors and their organizing patterns: traditional trade unions, radical trade unions, groups of self‐organized precarious workers, and grassroots activist groups. The underlying questions focus on patterns of organization and coalition building. By analyzing how precarious workers organize, which goals they have, which kinds of collective actions they engage in, and how they connect to other actors, we found that distinctive strategies lead to diverse degrees of agency and subjectivity that precarious workers develop, ranging from almost nonexistent to high degrees of subjectivity.