Constructing Work and Subjectivities in Precarious Conditions: Psycho-Discursive Practices in Young People’s Interviews in Greece

'Precarity' and the Neo-Liberal Labour Regime of Precarious Employment in Greece

Several social theorists have asserted that in the last 30 years, with the advent of neoliberalism, a fundamental shift has taken place in how capitalism operates (e.g., Beck, 1992; Berardi, 2007, 2009; Boltanski & Chiapello, 2010; Duménil & Lévy, 2011; Furlong & Cartmel, 1997; Ross, 2009; Sennett, 2005). A lot of discussion in Europe – both at a theoretical and a social policy level – has been devoted to the new paradigm of 'precarity' documenting the shifting nature of the labour regimeⁱ in neo-liberal times: the flexibilisation of the work contract and the proliferation of employment practices and contract options (e.g., Gallie & Paugam, 2002; Letourneux, 1998; Rodgers & Rodgers, 1989; Standing, 2011, 2014).

'Precarity' is used in this study as an umbrella term to enclose the irregular conditions of work, like part-time employment, getting paid by the hour, temporary or short-term contracts, or shadow labour: in general, forms of employment diverging from the “standard employment relationship” which developed under the aegis of legislation or collective negotiation and agreement (Rodgers & Rodgers, 1989). According to Barbier (2011), the word “precarity” or “precariousness” in reference to atypical or “non-standard” work conditions is a fairly recent neologism in the Anglo-Saxon academia of the social sciences. Nevertheless, the French debate on precarious labour in social policy and academia dates back to the 1970s (Schnapper, 1989). Precarity can hence be defined as “a cumulative combination of atypical employment contracts, limited social benefits, poor statutory entitlements, job insecurity, short tenure and low wages” (Lewchuk, de Wolff, King, & Polanyi, 2003, p. 23). Furthermore, Kalleberg (2009) puts emphasis on the distress produced by precarious work, when he defines it as “uncertain, unpredictable and risky from the part of the worker. Resulting distress, obvious in a variety of ways, reminds us daily of such precarity” (p. 2). To theorise this (more or less global) tendency, the political economist Standing (2011, 2014) has suggested that in times of global crisis, we witness the rise of a new global social class, the precariat.

Evidently, in times of crisis as experienced by Greece and Southern Europe in the recent years, the taken for granted financial conditions – such as secure employment, monthly salary, social insurance, savings schemes, personal investments – have changed, unbalancing the future for almost everyone. In said times, employment is getting more flexible and precarious for the workers. For instance, in a 2013 report by the Labour Inspectorate Force of the Greek Ministry Of Labour, evidence was provided on the rise of the percentage of uninsured (shadow) labour from 26% to 35% between 2010 and 2012 (Gatos, 2013). Further, statistics from the Insurance Inspectorate Force attested that one third of the inspected employees were employed without having a right to social/health insurance insurance.ⁱⁱ This is corroborated by publications that estimate that 40% of people worked in precarious labour/bad jobs (e.g., Mouriki, 2010). What is more, according to the Labour Force Survey, the unemployment rate had risen up to 22% in 2011, up to 25% in 2012, up to 27.2% as of January 2013 (Greek Statistics Agency, 2013).ⁱⁱⁱ According to EUROSTAT data reported in local news,^iv it was estimated that the percentage of unemployment for young people aged 15-24 in Greece exceeded 57%.

Evidently, in times of crisis as experienced by Greece and Southern Europe in the recent years, the taken for granted financial conditions – such as secure employment, monthly salary, social insurance, savings schemes, personal investments – have changed, unbalancing the future for almost everyone. In said times, employment is getting more flexible and precarious for the workers. For instance, in a 2013 report by the Labour Inspectorate Force of the Greek Ministry Of Labour, evidence was provided on the rise of the percentage of uninsured (shadow) labour from 26% to 35% between 2010 and 2012 (Gatos, 2013). Further, statistics from the Insurance Inspectorate Force attested that one third of the inspected employees were employed without having a right to social/health insurance insurance.ⁱⁱ This is corroborated by publications that estimate that 40% of people worked in precarious labour/bad jobs (e.g., Mouriki, 2010). What is more, according to the Labour Force Survey, the unemployment rate had risen up to 22% in 2011, up to 25% in 2012, up to 27.2% as of January 2013 (Greek Statistics Agency, 2013).ⁱⁱⁱ According to EUROSTAT data reported in local news,^iv it was estimated that the percentage of unemployment for young people aged 15-24 in Greece exceeded 57%.

Hence, in such turbulent times, it is evident that work patterns become increasingly fragmented, maximising employment vulnerability and its organisational and social consequences. Precarious employment is indeed becoming the norm. Such precarity has an impact not only on working conditions but also on people's subject positions (Davies & Harré, 1990) and agency (Gershon, 2011).

'Precarity' and Subjectivity in Neo-Liberal Times

Within the premises of the debate on neo-liberal (economic) policies in general, and precarity in particular, it is argued that neo-liberalism is necessarily accompanied by efforts to promote new conceptions of what it means to be an individual (Harvey, 2005, p. 42). People have to start engaging with (and perhaps performing) neo-liberal concepts of agency (Gershon, 2011) and forms of subjectivity (Sennett, 2000; Walkerdine & Bansel, 2010), built on the construction of neo-liberalism as common-sense (Hall & O'Shea, 2013). Scholars advance the argument that a shift has taken place in the psychic economy of the subjects in neo-liberalism (e.g., Dardot & Laval, 2014; Dejours, 1998, 2000; Deranty, 2008; Dufour, 2008; Melman & Lebrun, 2002). According to Gershon (2011), the concept of “self” is transformed into a project that must be consciously steered through various possible alliances and obstacles: “this is a self that is produced through an engagement with a market, that is, neo-liberal markets require participants to be reflexive managers of their abilities and alliances” (p. 539).

A similar argument was put forward by Beck, Giddens, and Lash (1994) in their account on the process of ‘reflexive modernisation’ and its consequences. According to this account individuals freed by traditional roles – including the traditional forms of work founded on routine, duty, and discipline – are repositioned through new forms of subjectivity and control. A typical feature of new control mechanisms is that they assign to individuals the duty to construct their own biographies in a ‘do-it-yourself’ mode (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). The individualisation process which is at work requires people to act but also to account for their actions through recourse to the rhetoric of individual responsibility. Therefore, subjectivities promoted by neo-liberal (economic) policies are nested within a contradiction (between emancipation and exploitation) that Honneth (2004) depicts as the ‘paradox of individualisation’. On the one hand, the destandardisation of work contents and forms allows room for greater personalisation and job enrichment. On the other hand, though, it also produces phenomena of work intensification which often invade both the private and social spheres of individuals (see also Gherardi & Murgia, 2013).

The discussion on new subjectivities constituted within the context of work flexibilisation and precarity has hardly affected the debates of social and political psychology, a project to which this paper aspires to contribute. Therefore, this study aims at exploring: a) the ways in which Greek youth account for working in precarious conditions and the common-place premises and values, i.e. the “lived ideologies” (Billig et al., 1988) that sustain and reproduce the regime of precarity; and b) issues of identity and agency elicited in the context of these accounts. In such an endeavour, a critical discursive social psychological approach (Bozatzis & Dragonas, 2013; Tuffin, 2005; Wetherell, 1998) was considered appropriate. This choice is predicated on its emphasis on everyday ideologies and their multifaceted nature that can help us shed light on the complex ways of understanding employment and constructing subjectivity and agency in precarious transitions.

Psycho-Discursive Practices of Accounting for Work Experiences

Critical discursive social psychology (Bozatzis, 2009; Bozatzis & Dragonas, 2013; Wetherell, 1998; Wetherell & Edley, 1999) aims at examining talk-in action, as processes of ideological reproduction in talk, as specific social practices, taking into consideration the fundamentally constructive and action-oriented nature of discourse (Potter, 2007). This approach stems from the dialogue between the fine-grained conversation analysis with the political-genealogical lens of post-structuralism (Wetherell, 1998). It provides researchers with analytic frames, concepts and a set of tools in order to conduct better analyses, focusing on both micro and macro contexts of discursive production. Specifically, such tools and concepts are: interpretative repertoires (Potter & Wetherell, 1987), subject positioning (Davies & Harré, 1990; Wetherell, 1998); management of accountability in talk (Bozatzis, 2009); categories constructed in talk (Figgou & Condor, 2006); ideological dilemmas (Billig et al., 1988), and psycho-discursive practices (Wetherell, 2007, 2008; Wetherell & Edley, 1999). According to Bozatzis (2009) critical discursive social psychological analyses “focus on ways in which historically constituted representations, implicated in power/knowledge nexuses, come to be mobilised within conversational contexts through speakers’ reflexive, vis-a-vis their accountability, rhetorical actions” (p. 435).

The debate on the criteria of evaluation for discursive and generally qualitative research has been elaborate and extensive (e.g., Lincoln, 1995; Wood & Kroger, 2000). Potter and Wetherell (1987) proposed an alternative framework of criteria for the validity of discursive research, based on a social constructionist (Gergen, 1985) and 'epistemologically relativist' (Potter, 1996) perspective. The first criterion lies in the coherence of the analytic claims vis-a-vis the body of discourse analysed, i.e. “analysis should let us see how the discourse fits together” (Potter & Wetherell, 1987, p. 170). Participants' orientation is the second criterion of validation, as analytic claims should not diverge from the actual discourse of the participants. The creation of new problems and new questions, upon giving analytic answers, is the third criterion advanced by Potter and Wetherell (1987). Finally, the fruitfulness of the analysis, to generate novel explanations, to make sense of new kinds of discourse in a field of research is the fourth criterion proposed by Potter and Wetherell (1987). Such criteria nevertheless do not address the issue of generalisation of the analytic claims of discursive research. Goodman (2008) remarks that there are elements of discursive research pertaining to generalisability which reflect the context-rich and ideological nature of language. He suggests that discourse analytic findings can be considered generalisable once they can demonstrate how a specific rhetorical strategy will often bring about the same interactional accomplishments (Goodman, 2008).

Through this methodological perspective we address the question of how young people in Greece speak about their first work experiences in precarious conditions, elicited in the context of interview. In this effort, analytic focus is placed on how the informants employ psycho-discursive practices (Wetherell, 2007, 2008; Wetherell & Edley, 1999) to construct their agency and identity while accounting for the precarious jobs they have been employed.

Accountability is a routine feature of interaction (Edwards & Potter, 1992), since speakers ordinarily deal with issues of agency and responsibility when offering reports of events. Thus, accounting and accountability are pertinent in the research interview as a local interactional context for the description of work and the construction of the self. This is the context where informants employ psycho-discursive practices. This concept is defined as “recognisable, conventional, collective and social procedures through which character, self, identity, the psychological, the emotional, motives, intentions and beliefs are performed, formulated and constituted. Psycho-discursive practices are those which among the sum of social practices constitute a psychology, formulate a mental life and have consequences for the formation and representation of the person” (Wetherell, 2007, p. 668).

The founding argument advanced overall in this paper is that specificities of the employment relationship have changed to a great extent in the recent years, due to the crisis and the precarisation of the work regime (Castel, 2002). The discursive analytic approach to social and political psychology (Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell, 1998) could prove fruitful in the study of such a shift, exploring constructions of identity and precarious work, as specific, generalisable discursive practices and strategies, i.e. as regularities across a sample of participants in a study, embedded in the macro social and political context.

Participants and Interviews

For the purposes of this project, 40 semi-structured interviews were conducted with young adults, 18-27 years old. The interviews were conducted by the first author of this article in the years 2010-2012, the early years of the 'Greek turbulence'. Hence, 21 native Greeks and 19 second generation immigrants^v were interviewed. All of the participants were living in urban areas of Greece, most of them in the capital city of Athens. They were high school graduates in Greece and most of them had higher education (i.e. university or college degree). The interviews were digitally recorded and lasted about 1h and 30min. Interviewees were reached through personal contacts, then by snowball sampling, using their social networks, acquaintances and family ties.

The interview schedule consisted of open-ended questions structured in three sections. The first section involved questions on the socio-economic background of the participant, the origin and structure of the family, the school and higher education years. The second part involved questions on participants’ work experiences, starting with the earlier ones and proceeding to the latest. Questions concerned the period of employment, the way the job was found, the sum of pay, insurance and the reason for the termination of the employment. Finally, the last section revolved around the projected future, inquiring on aspirations and future plans. All interviews were fully transcribed by the first author, focusing on the reproduction of content.

Analytic Procedure

The first stage of the initial data analysis, conducted in Greek, involved the selection of manageable chunks (Potter & Wetherell, 1987) and passages from the transcripts (in the original Greek language), according to thematic similarities and relevance with the research questions. The second stage, which provided the extracts for this paper, was organised around the search for regularities, recurring broad patterns and lines of argument (Wetherell, 1998; Wetherell & Edley, 1999). The interview as a method of data elicitation, as a specific dialogic interaction (Potter & Hepburn, 2005; Tanggaard, 2009), provided the local context, which enabled specific accounts, categorisations and evaluations (Edwards & Stokoe, 2004; Potter, 1998) regarding precarious work. It was inferred that jointly the participant and the interviewer performed the constructions of precarious labour in this local context of the interview, drawing on shared resources, shared knowledge (Edwards, 1997) regarding the conditions of the labour market. In such an effect, particular analytic effort was put in order to be reflexively mindful (Georgaka, 2003) of the power asymmetry in the interview, i.e. to be reflexive regarding the imposition of researcher's concerns and socio-cultural positioning^vi (Billig, 2003). This step then identified the patterns of accounting in the local interview context. As a next step of analysis, the identified regularities in the interview were contextualised hermeneutically in the macro level, drawing on relevant discursive studies as well as social and political theory. The final step involved the production of the analytic arguments, in an accessible report of findings, contending that their intelligibility and trustworthiness is indicative of their robustness and transferability outside of the interview contexts (Wetherell & Edley, 1999).

It needs to be mentioned that the wording of the extracts in Greek was translated in English by the first author after the analysis, then corroborated by the other two authors. Temple and Young (2004) suggest that the act of translation needs to be identified, while the role of the researcher/translator of the findings is inextricably bound to the socio-cultural positioning of the researcher. Hence, the act of translation of findings has been fruitful for the researcher/translator/author in order to reflexively discuss issues of meaning in the extracts.

Α) Precarious Work as a Sine-Qua-Non Condition of Youth Employment

In Extract 1, Iason (25 years old, Greek origin), discusses his teenage summer job in a family-owned country restaurant.

The interviewer's previous questions to Iason revolved around his work schedule and around the ways of spending his earnings from this job. In this turn the interviewer is concerned with the issue of tiredness. Iason articulates a positive assessment (l.2, 3: “I didn’t mind about it”; “it was more fun”) of this teenage, summer job, while he also brings up the subject of “realisation”. He justifies this positive assessment based on the work relationship, which he categorises as helping, supporting his parents in this family business (l.4: “I saw this relationship as helping my parents”).

In the next turn, when the interviewer puts forward again the subject of realisation and asks for further explanations, Iason articulates a justificatory argument that revolves around a chronological dichotomy of the self to a “younger” and an older (working) person. Iason attributes to youth the descriptive attribute of “not having a clue” (l.6), the psychological trait of not being distrustful and suspicious. On the contrary, when the person grows older, there is a psychological shift which involves realisation of “much more things” (l.9). In fact, this is an instance when he mobilises the interpretative repertoire we have named “life's course”, emphasising the distinct stages and shifts of personal realisation in a life course: a jolly young person when working, gains experiences, and progressively s/he changes and becomes wiser. Hence, Iason attributes to the teenage/young worker a psychological trait, the (constant) smile, the (positive) outlook, in contrast (“it is definitely different”, as he states in l.13) to the older worker, who has had to endure the repression and has gained experiences through years of work.

The term used to refer to the money gained further indicates the dichotomy between younger/teenage and older workers. “Pocket-money”^vii (in l.11) is a common category of lower pay, a common-place discursive resource mobilised by Iason in order to denominate the dependent work relationship with his parents as well as to distinguish rhetorically this teen-job from other later jobs. In fact, the framing of youth employment wages as “pocket-money” is a key analytic finding, as used by the informants in order to pinpoint both the lower sum paid in youth employment, as well as its small importance in their lives. It is a notion indicative of the normalisation and banalisation (Dejours, 1998) of precarious work, as a sine-qua-non condition, a lived ideology (Billig, 1995) in the Greek labour regime.^viii Moreover, this extract is a first instance of the mobilisation of the repertoire (Potter & Wetherell, 1987) named “life's course”, in order to articulate a path of self-realisation, through the accumulation of experiences. In the next extract, Dennis (25 years old, of Albanian origin) is constructing the same condition for agency and youth employment.

In the first instance, the interviewer is mobilising the dichotomy of the younger/teenage worker by enquiring on the job description (l.1: “did you help there or did you master the craft”), prompting him to follow this course: as “very young” (l.5) worker, he had an assistant's role. This is indicative of a shared knowledge (Edwards, 1997), a common sense (Billig, 1987): teenagers are helpers in this kind of jobs, they don't have a central role. In this role, Dennis minds to articulate an 'effortful' (Gibson, 2009, 2011) subject position, by stressing that “they had me for the petty work, the errands, say, get me this and do the other thing” (l.5-6), “I was horrified, mind you” (l.11). As a consequence, he can describe a form of realisation from this experience (l.10: “I took an example from there”), which culminates in taking up the agentic decision to decide on his future: “I won't be doing this thing for a lifetime” (l.11). Dennis, in this extract, accounts for his subsequent choice without though rhetorically including himself explicitly in the second generation group.^x This account of accumulating experiences and changing constructs an identity of resilience and effort for better conditions.

Moreover, of analytic interest here is the discursive articulation of precarity as a sine-qua-non feature of the labour market. When I enquire on the issue of the daily wage in relation with the working hours, Dennis is quick to declare: “Nothing, no insurance... as if!” (l.17). This idiomatic expression in Greek indicates that providing insurance to a teenage worker is out of the common-sense of the labour market. He is thus 'flagging the flag' (Billig, 1995), in a spectacular way, of the banality of the precarious work regime. But, reflexively, I have to point out that I am also 'saluting this flag', once I positively recognise (l.18: “Yes, you were a kid then”) this sine-qua-non condition, that a youngster cannot receive insurance; I am also recognising as banal and common-sense this dichotomy between younger and older workers.

Hence, through the reflexive rhetorical analysis of this extract, it is evident that the interviewer and the interviewee pinpoint the common-sense, joint construction (through their shared knowledge) of precarity as a sine-qua-non condition of youth employment, as a banal regime of youth work. Moreover, in the interaction of accounting, through the banal dichotomisation of the younger/older workers, Dennis is positioning himself as an effortful subject, by articulating his agency, and explaining the rationale of his decisions, mobilising the repertoire of the “life-course”, indicated also in the first extract. This psycho-discursive practice, whence the rhetorical dichotomy of younger vs. older worker is a resource, effectively sets the person's actions in a biographical perspective of agency and realization, as discussed in the following set of extracts.

B) Precarious Work as a Necessary Step on a (Biographical) Path Leading to the Desired and/or Appropriate Job

In the following extract, Daniel (24 years old, of Georgian origin) is asked to explain the meaning of 'stability' for him, since he had previously articulated a dichotomy between stable and unstable work in his account. Thus, he elaborates on the construction of this (biographical) path, from one job to the next.

After the interviewer's question on stability and a long pause (7s), Daniel replies sarcastically ''there is no such thing. For me” (l.8). He appoints a 2-years horizon to stable employment, in parallel to the cooking classes he was attending. Effectively, he is accounting by categorising the accumulation of work experiences in a “perfect CV”, a “very good CV” (l.15) as the end of precarious work, in order to build a pathway to a career. Again, the repertoire of “life's course” is mobilised in this instance, in order to frame the construction of a path to a desired job. Daniel constructs his agency as willing to disregard the weariness of those 2 years (l.15-18: “let me work myself to death”, “let those 2 years of my life pass, without remembering any of them. Without having anything to remember”). This in an instance where the 'effortfulness' repertoire (Gibson, 2009, 2011) is mobilised, so as to construct his individual effort to build a CV, setting as a first necessary step a precarious job, in order to attain a better (precarious) job in the foreseeable future.

When the interviewer moves on to enquire on this time limit of 2 years of stability after this period of precarity/training, Daniel states initially that “things would have been easier” (l.20), but then he is adjusting the time limit of his endurance to 10 years. He positions himself again as an 'effortful' subject, who can “endure”, aiming at “new dreams” (l.22) of a much bigger salary and a better work position (l.24: “super-chef, in charge of I don't know what”). The rationale underlying this effort is: “one thing leads to another” (l.24-25); one job leads to the next, in the build-up of a good CV. In this perspective, Daniel is also bringing forth the accumulation of experiences when referring to a grave injury he had on his back, for lifting too much weight in this pastry shop. He embeds the experience of this injury in a rationale of justification (l.26: “it was good of you to get it”) because he had to grow up, to become mature and realistic (l.26-27: “you had to take a smacking to get yourself together”) in this life-course. The use of this vibrant image, of the smacking as a metaphor for the injury sustained by work, is drawn from a culturally shared resource, i.e. that an extreme experience, such as a beating, can wake up a person, make one “get together”, adhere to the same common-sense everyone takes for granted. Daniel is in fact asserting the necessity of precarious and difficult work, as a step in the effort to attain a “good job”, in the person's life course.

In this extract Daniel overall constructs the importance of personal investment to attaining a “good job”, in a biographical perspective of accumulation of work experiences. Rhetorically, he connects the personal work effort, despite all difficulties, such as precarity, to a future time horizon of 2 and 10 years, as the individual tries to achieve the “good job”. In his utterances he constructs the notion of 'work' as a constellation of consecutive precarious jobs, in the life-course of an individual, who strives to attain the desired and/or appropriate job. The individual's agency, as indicated in this extract, is linked with the effort, the personal responsibility, and the endurance vis-a-vis the labour market competition.

C) Precarious Work as an Inherent Trait of the Greek Job-Market

The next extract is typical of another discursive practice employed by the participants working rhetorically towards the banalisation of precarious labour regime. This practice involves the employment of the stereotypical representation of Greece (and Greeks) in general and the Greek labour market in particular as par excellence disorganised (Bozatzis, 1999). In the extract, Alexis, a 26 years old guy from Greece who has studied economics and applied arts, categorises one of his first jobs as “classic Greek”. While accounting, he also mobilises the 'effortfulness repertoire' (Gibson, 2009, 2011) so as to position himself as an effortful, hard-working citizen in the “classic Greek” precarious labour regime.

The topic of discussion is one of his first full-time jobs as a graphic designer, in a print shop of Athens. Alexis is orientating himself towards accounting for his monthly wage, by effectively attributing the characterisation of “Classic Greek job” (l.10) to that particular job. This characterisation is an instance of a common-place (Billig et al., 1988), as we share the understanding (Edwards, 2004) of what means a ‘classic Greek job', to which the interviewer gravitates by not prompting him for explanations. It is also a self-stereotyping description (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987), when the common-place of lack of organisation and control (Bozatzis, 1999; Herzfeld, 1987), as an inherent trait of the labour market, is culturally (and mutually) understood as an attribute of something which is “classic Greek”. In fact, it can be argued that Alexis is mobilising this common place resource, in order to account for leaving this workplace. Thus, precarity as a regime of work is performed through the attribution of inherent characteristic qualities to the Greek labour market, evidenced by that particular workplace.^xi

Moreover, Alexis inoculates himself (Potter, 1996) against the common characteristic of these extracts, the stake of being called idle, by using an external attribution. Through that rhetorical strategy he is effectively casting the blame of the precarious work conditions (that finally led him to quit) to the boss of that workplace (l.9: “whatever the boss told you was this job”). In order to render this attribution rhetorically convincing he has to draw on the repertoire of effortfulness (Gibson, 2009, 2011), describing in detail his work duties in a list (l.4-6, l.8-10). He is thus positioning himself as an effortful subject, a person who is working hard, facing the banal regime of precarious labour. Interestingly though, in his next enunciation, Alexis articulates a positive assessment of this job (l.10: ‘nice job’), based on the atmosphere of the workplace. The camaraderie, lads hanging-out after work, are mentioned as positive characteristics of that job. Nonetheless, this categorisation of the Greek labour market amidst the precarious labour regime is not the most grave.

D) Precarious Work as the Only Alternative to Unemployment

In the final extract, Dimitra (25 years old, of Albanian origin), when asked to discuss her employment in a technology magazine, also constructs exploitation and disorganisation as typical of the Greek labour market, though in a different way.

Dimitra uses an emphatic expression (l.2-3: “I mean how much exploitation you can find in the magazines”) in order to articulate her argument on this issue, which is framed by the metaphor “fence-less vineyard”.^xii This metaphor, particular in Greek, is a common-place expression indicative of a non-controlled setting. Just like Alexis in the previous extract, Dimitra draws then from a shared resource in order to illustrate the lack of protective legislation and control mechanisms. Moreover, she repeats the general expression “whatever, whatever” (l.4), commonly indicative of the speaker's negative assessment of the referred situation. In fact, she elaborates further on that assessment, by adding an extreme case formulation (Pomerantz, 1986) in line 4: “no one monitors anything, nothing”. There is a stake of accountability (Edwards & Potter, 1992) here, since she needs to rhetorically back up her accusations and claims on that workplace, so that she is not characterised as prejudiced. She provides the reasoning by constructing a memory account of the working conditions (l.4: “let's say I remember”), in order to attribute the blame to the owner of the magazine for the work conditions of precarity (l.5: “here he had them on 4-hour contracts, he had everybody on 4-hour contracts”). Dimitra is mobilising the repertoire of 'effortfulness' (e.g., in l.5,7: “people were working in there”, “they were working... a lot of work”), in order to contrast hard work on the part of the employees with the precarious work conditions imposed by the employer. With this contrast she cements her external attribution of blame. An attribution that she emphasizes more in lines 9-10, drawing again on the effortfulness of her colleagues: “Because imagine 3 persons, 4, they were publishing a monthly magazine, which was a thing like that [demonstrates size using her hands]”. She has effectively positioned her colleagues (and probably herself) as effortful employees and has constructed the precarious conditions of work in that magazine as a banal regime, not controlled by anyone.

In her next enunciation, she moves on to construct a psycho-discursive practice of banalisation (Dejours, 1998), by attributing to the labour regime the explicit assessment of “exploitation” (l.12). It is an exploitation that even though is visible by the person (“you could see”), it is ineffable (“you couldn't say a thing”), because “out there is too much unemployment” (l.13). The use of the second person implies the generalisation of this exploitation, implying that it is not just an exception in this workplace; it is a generalised, banal work regime, instantiated in the interview by a psycho-discursive practice, which attests to the agency of the speaker. The existence of unemployment in the labour market is offered as an explanation for the acceptance by the employees of the precarious work conditions. Hence, the employee is justified rhetorically to work in silence, instead of speaking up and taking action. Dimitra is using direct speech (l.14: “You know what? ... you don't give me...”), in order to illustrate her personal report which leads to the conclusion: “You will be left unemployed, completely” (l.15). Thus she constructs a position for herself and her colleagues in that magazine as people unable to act, to speak up, or else they will be left unemployed. That is, she places the responsibility of acting for the improvement of their conditions on herself and her colleagues, taking it away from her employer. This is, in effect, the banalisation of suffering, in the regime of precarious work, according to Dejours (1998): suffering from work becomes ineffable, since it is banal, common-place.

Dimitra is using a common idiomatic metaphor in order to describe this regime, as “in front of you there is the cliff, behind you there is the stream“ (l.15-16). This expression^xiii conveys the metaphoric meaning of a dead-end, as a spatial metaphor of the precarious labour regime. In order to rhetorically justify this characterisation, she is constructing an “us and them” (Billig, 1995) dilemma, positioning herself on the “us” side: on the one side there is the exploitation of precarious labour, on the other side the unemployment; “you have to choose” on which side you accept to play, “or you don't play at all” (l.17). In contrast, she positions the other side, “the others”, as people who can set the rules to that game. All in all, she attributes the agency of “setting the rules” of the regime of precarity to the “others”, the bosses or the system, trying to argue effectively for herself and her colleagues against the stake of passivity, of doing nothing. In that way, she constructs a subject position for herself and her colleagues as unable to act or to speak up, in a precarious labour regime which impels them only to work with effort. This positioning in a binary dichotomy of “us and them” is indicative of the dilemmatic construction of the labour market as performed in this local context by the informants: in or out, precarious work or unemployment and exclusion. Precarious work is constructed then as the only alternative to unemployment, in a 'there is no alternative' (TINA) rhetoric. But this is also another instance of the psycho-discursive practices mobilised in the accounting of the informants: a common analytic theme where the agency of the person is attested by hard work, marked by the rhetorical use of the repertoire of effortfulness (Gibson, 2009, 2011). Thus, a subject position of an effortful citizen (Gibson, 2009, 2011) is articulated, in a neo-liberal labour regime of precarity, which is constructed as banal, commonsensical.