Other faces of being an ‘indebted worker’ in subcontracted employment relationships: stigmatization, vulnerability and acquittal

Abstract

In this study, the effects created by indebtedness which have become a strategy of making life sustainable are discussed from the viewpoint of construction workers the subjects of temporary inclusion into unstable and precarious labour market within the frame of their stigmatization and vulnerability processes and their efforts to be acquitted. This study focuses on the fact of stigma in the context of the relationships between indebtedness and the flexible, temporary, precarious working regimes of subcontracting systems. By taking into consideration the interconnection dynamics of subcontracted employment relationships, the forms of production and transmission of knowledge concerning worker’s state of indebtedness in their relationship network and the course of [being] discredit(ed) are considered with regards to indebted workers. The influences of the apparency problem, with the conditions that make intebtedness visible, on the processes of inclusion into labour market and of exclusion from it with respect to labour force and also the functional property of existing apparency are studied in terms of employers/foremen. It is anticipated that this study will contribute to analysing the relationships between indebtedness and stigma by pointing out the stigmatizer character of indebtedness and its role in employment relationships.

Keywords

• Subcontracting,stigma,inclusion into labour market,exclusion from labour market

References

1. Fellini I, Ferro A, Fullin G. (2007) Recruitment processes and labour mobility: the construction industry in Europe. Work Employ Soc 21(2):277–298.