Liquid jobs and precarious workers. The Welfare State under pressure

Abstract

This article is inspired by one of Zygmund Bauman’s powerful metaphors, the concept of liquid, to interpret the present configuration of jobs and ongoing changes in individuals’ relationship with work. The later materialize in a time when welfare states’ role is going through a process of transformation itself. The sociological framework informing the article is anchored in a Southern European country, Portugal, with an idiosyncratic work and welfare state trajectory. It is argued that, in the liquid phase of our social reality, forms of inclusion into the labour market, such as the ones disseminated through public (active) employment policies, entrap individuals in unstable and insecure forms of employment.