Social precariousness: Report 2023

The new normal. Elements of a new structural and widespread precariousness | Report 2023

SUPI Network (Berlin) – Eurispes Institute (Rome)

““The new normal.

Elements of a new structural and widespread precariousness”

Report 2023

as the “new normal” that characterises contemporary society. This is the basic element that clearly emerges from the 2023 Report on social precariousness drawn up by Eurispes in collaboration with the European Network on Social Uncertainty, Precarity, Inequality – SUPI, coordinated by Prof. Rolf Dieter Hepp, sociologist at the Freie Universitaet in Berlin and member of the Eurispes Institute’s Scientific Committee. The Report takes up and integrates the results of the conference organised on the theme of precariousness by the SUPI Network and Eurispes on March 24, 2023.

The Report entitled “The New Normal. Elements of a new structural and widespread precariousness” presents the results of analyses and evaluations by experts from Europe and beyond concerning the phenomenon of precariousness, which initially emerged mainly in the labour world and has become increasingly widespread in recent years throughout the entire social system, to the point of becoming a structural feature. Sociologists, economists, psychologists, and philosophers agree that precariousness has manifested an evolutionary process; from labour, it has progressively become a social, cultural, and existential fact, with all the negative consequences that this circumstance entails in the lives of individuals, communities, and also on institutions, politics, and democratic practices.

The topics on which the international research group’s analyses were most focused include: the conditions of labour (with the proposal regarding the updating of measurement indicators); the new functioning mechanisms of the economy and the negative effects of the debt economy; the limits of social policies faced with the need to correct inequalities, promote social cohesion, and pursue the sustainability of development; the corrective role of local services; the formation of a genuine new social class defined as “The Precariat”; the precariousness of the ruling classes; the precariousness affecting the world of education and training; the psychological precariousness caused by negative aesthetic-advertising practices on the human body; up to the ethical and philosophical assessments on the need to commit ourselves to recovering the true meaning of “a good life” as a condition for rectifying the structural precariousness now established in our systems.

The 2023 Report is presented in two versions, Italian and English, available at the following links:

The SUPI Network is a European research group, recognised by the EU, founded in 2007 to conduct systemic and interdisciplinary analyses in order to elaborate recommendations on social precarity issues. The Network follows a working method open to the contribution of experts from various disciplines and holds regular meetings, conferences, consultations. Eurispes is a founding member of the Network.