Re-situer la précarité en temps de crise

Interdépendance et déplacements en espace(s) urbain(s)

Abstract

The text, specially translated for this issue of Emulations, inscribes precariousness at the heart of a reflection on the failure of the presumed autonomy of the neoliberal subject. Through the experience of the economic crisis in Spain after 2008, the author describes how the ideology of the middle classes, rooted on a mirage of freedom, on a fictitious autonomy from social structures, has been shaken up. She advocates the development of ties both of interdependence and of codependence, ways of living which are well-known to subordinate populations. And she shows that the violent movement of downward social mobility entailed by the 2008 crisis may have had the advantage of weakening a myth that sees independence as the norm and dependence as the exception. The author thus defends an understanding of precariousness in terms of social reproduction rather than exclusively at the level of production relations to which some approaches have been limiting it.