Interview Transcripts - The Politics of Disablement and Precarious Work in the UK Prefiguring a Non-Productivist Future, 2020

Chis, Ioana Cerasella (2026). Interview Transcripts - The Politics of Disablement and Precarious Work in the UK Prefiguring a Non-Productivist Future, 2020. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-858545

The Politics of Disablement and Precarious Work is a postdisciplinary qualitative research study of disabling capitalism’s social relations, its productivist institution of work, and non-productivist alternatives. The insights developed in this thesis are embedded in the viewpoints and everyday activities of twenty-seven gig economy workers who are subjected to disablement oppression and exploitation in contemporary UK and informed by the UPIAS-inspired social model and post-'68 non-productivist Marxisms. Its contributions are as follows. First, this thesis offers a new theoretical lens called the collective-materialist approach to disablement (with five tenets) through which I demonstrate the benefits of synthesising the UPIAS-inspired social model of disability with post-’68 anti-productivist Marxisms. Second, the relationship between structural disablement oppression and exploitation (on the one hand) and capitalist social relations (on the other) is clarified through a new disability composition thesis. In short, I demonstrate that all people with impairments, who are chronically ill, d/Deaf, neurodivergent, and who experience mental distress are subjected to disablement, regardless of how they self-identify. Third, this thesis highlights participants’ experiences of everyday activities whilst also centring their critiques of productivism and visions for alternative horizons of possibility. Thus, through an analysis of participant interviews and diary entries, I identify six broad spheres of activity, such as waged work, unwaged work for the state and ‘professionals’, navigating the individual model of disability in everyday interpersonal relations, assistance work, subversion work and collective self-activity, and activities conducive to rest. In doing so, this thesis offers an expansive definition of ‘work’ to include activities that are often overlooked in academic literatures. It also highlights the complexity of non-waged work and its relationship to disabling capitalism. I approach the analysis of these activities through the work transfer thesis and argue that transformed conditions and resources are necessary to make space for prefigurative activities that act against-and-beyond disabling capitalism and the wage system. This thesis’ collective-materialist approach to everyday activities’ role in reproducing, reforming, or prefiguring beyond disabling capitalist social relations provides scholars and activists with a perspective that can inform transformative collective action and analysis – a perspective that does not separate capitalism and disablement and that strives for their abolition. Finally, this thesis calls for further explorations of the political economy of rest from non-productivist Marxist perspectives.

Data description (abstract)

The methodological, political, and ethical decisions made throughout this project were influenced most significantly by the experience I developed through activism, trade union organising, previous employment, being subjected to disablement, undertaking numerous gig economy jobs, striking, standing on the picket lines of my own and other unions, practising solidarity, and doing casework. These played a formative role in my outlook on social matters and my grounding as a social researcher.
The rigour and validity of this project’s analysis have been attempted by following the insights of praxis-informed publications that advocate for enacting collective and transformational principles of mutual recognition and reflexive practice (Birmingham Autonomous University 2017). They argue for dialogic social relations (Lather 1986); reciprocity and empowerment (Oliver 1992); comradeship (Dean 2019; Slothuus 2023), and ‘revolutionary recognition’ (Gunn and Wilding 2021). Principles are widely understood as ethical matters that are blurry, interconnected, and difficult to reify, and that can be striven for through continuous reflection-and-action (Galloway 2012). Whilst researchers cannot always fully enact their desired principles within their immediate contexts, foregrounding them in the research process allows for problematising their (im)possibility and building new horizons to struggle towards. Below, I distinguish between the political underpinnings of the social relations of allyship and comradeship, to justify my adoption of the latter.

The temes of the first round of interviews (27) focused on waged work, unwaged work, care and self-care, rest, resistance, and critiques of the productivism of current UK society. The themes of the second round of interviews (10) focused on participants' experience of keeping a diary for this project as well as their experiences of participating in this project more generally.

The findings of the study are that the participants were compelled and constrained to undertake waged and unwaged work that maintains the social relations of capitalism. This work was, in various ways, resisted by the participants - thus producing alternative, non-productivist social relations.

The diaries produced by the participants in this project cannot be made available.

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