Guy Standing

Current Projects

In his most recent book, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London and New York, Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), Dr Standing describes an emerging class characterised by insecurity and lack of any occupational identity. The book takes up one of the themes in his more comprehensive analysis of the global transformation of work and labour (Work After Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2009). Recurrent themes of his research, often drawing on extensive household and workplace surveys, have been the insecurities faced by workers in the wake of reforms of labour law, labour regulation and social protection, and the rationale for moving towards unconditional income transfers.

Current research interests include: social and economic security; cash transfers and basic income; labour economics; labour, work and occupation; economic rights; occupational communities; and globalisation and social protection policy. Dr Standing is advisor to SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association of India) on a number of pilot cash transfer projects in India. He also worked with SEWA on a survey of rural and urban households in the state of Gujarat, focusing on an experimental concept of “social income” and economic insecurity. A book on the survey results was published in 2010 (Guy Standing, Jeemol Unni, Renana Jhabvala and Uma Rani, Social Income and Insecurity: A Study in Gujarat, New Delhi, Routledge).