Precarious Asia assesses the role of global and domestic factors in shaping precarious work and its outcomes in Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia as they represent a range of Asian political democracies and capitalist economies: Japan and South Korea are now developed and mature economies, while Indonesia remains a lower-middle income country. With their established backgrounds in Asian studies, comparative political economy, social stratification and inequality, and the sociology of work, the authors yield compelling insights into the extent and consequences of precarious work, examining the dynamics underlying its rise. By linking macrostructural policies to both the mesostructure of labor relations and the microstructure of outcomes experienced by individual workers, they reveal the interplay of forces that generate precarious work, and in doing so, synthesize historical and institutional analyses with the political economy of capitalism and class relations. This book reveals how precarious work ultimately contributes to increasingly high levels of inequality and condemns segments of the population to chronic poverty and many more to livelihood and income vulnerability.

In an era of irregular labor, nagging recession, nuclear contamination, and a shrinking population, Japan is facing precarious times. How the Japanese experience insecurity in their daily and social lives is the subject of Precarious Japan. Tacking between the structural conditions of socioeconomic life and the ways people are making do, or not, Anne Allison chronicles the loss of home affecting many Japanese, not only in the literal sense but also in the figurative sense of not belonging. Until the collapse of Japan's economic bubble in 1991, lifelong employment and a secure income were within reach of most Japanese men, enabling them to maintain their families in a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Now, as fewer and fewer people are able to find full-time work, hope turns to hopelessness and security gives way to a pervasive unease. Yet some Japanese are getting by, partly by reconceiving notions of home, family, and togetherness.

At a time of significant change in the precarious world of female individualization, this collection explores such phenomena by critically incorporating the parameters of popular media culture into the overarching paradigm of gender relations, economics and politics of everyday life.

"A joint publication of the Social Science Research Council and New York University Press."

In the midst of refugee crises, terrorist attacks and territorial disputes across the globe, nationalism remains a powerful force in generating affects of inclusion and exclusion. In Asia, inter-Asian migration, enabled and disrupted by a history of colonialism, capitalist globalization and political conflicts, has rendered the idea of nation as both politically distinct and culturally malleable. Precarious Belongings: Affect and Nationalism in Asia explores the affective politics of Asian nationalism by addressing the entwined structures of precarious belonging and national feelings. Bringing together leading scholars it looks at how the reification of nationalism in social movements, popular sentiments, online groups, and cultural representation directs hatred towards migrant and minority groups across Asia. The book posits that nationalist affects are embedded in the politics of exclusion, and seeks to make room for precarious belongings in the transnational and multicultural present. It should be of interest to students and scholars interested in Asian Cultural Studies, transnationalism, migration and nationalism.

This volume presents original theory and research on precarious work in various parts of the world, identifying its social, political and economic origins, its manifestations in the USA, Europe, Asia, and the Global South, and its consequences for personal and family life.