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

Year 2015, Volume: 6 Issue: 2, 53 - 64, 15.02.2016

Elif Kart

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

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