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Paper short abstract:

This ethnographic study investigates the flexibility and the precarity in Greece after the eruption of the crisis and the imposition of austerity measures. My research is based on a three and half -year fieldwork carried out in a multinational door to door marketing company located in Thessaloniki.

Paper long abstract:

The global financial crisis of 2007/08 and the imposition of austerity policies in Greece had incalculable effects on multiple levels, largely affecting the labor sector. More specifically, the austerity measures that were implemented by traditional parties through Memorandums led the country in a "chaotic situation", which resulted to the gradual impoverishment, the rise of unemployment and brain drain phenomenon, the transformation of the way of life and the degradation of work. Additionally, the notions of flexibility and precariousness have emerged during the period of crisis and, as Guy Standing noticed, a new dangerous class, the precariat, has been created. The protagonist, in this "class in the making", is a new type of worker, who is fungible, expendable and replaceable. This worker works in low-paid and uninsured jobs, while he/she spends his/her labor time between a short-period of work and a long-period of unemployment. It's no coincidence that the precariat, due to the consecutives labor changes and the deprivation of labor rights, face intense anxiety, psychosomatic problems.

This ethnographic study investigates the flexibility and the precarity in Greece after the eruption of the crisis and the imposition of austerity measures. My research is based on a three and half -year fieldwork carried out in a multinational door to door marketing company located in Thessaloniki. Specifically, this paper underlines the working conditions of precarious jobs in Greece of the crisis, through the case of a marketing company, as well as the effects of this typed of job on workers.