Non-/Recognition in the Life Arrangement of Precarious Workers without a Partner Relationship: Compensation for or Cumulation of Recognition Deficits

This contribution studies the degree of social recognition of precarious workers without a partner relationship from a hermeneutic perspective on life arrangements: Is the lack of recognition in gainful employment (and a lack of partnership love) compensated for, mitigated, or intensified in close relationships or other meaningful dimensions? According to Honneth's theory of recognition, developing an unharmed self-identity requires, alongside legal recognition, intersubjective recognition in both the sphere of employment (achievement) and in the family sphere (love). We draw on eight in-depth narrative, partially guideline-based individual interviews with precarious workers, who were not in a partner relationship. The interviews were carried out between 2014 and 2016 across Germany. They were evaluated in a case-reconstructive manner, based on the hermeneutic sociology of knowledge. Empirically grounded, three ideal-typical constellations are shown: the mitigation of work-related recognition deficits through recognition in close relationships or from alternative sources; ambivalent relations of recognition and lack of recognition between different spheres of recognition, and the cumulation of multiple recognition deficits. Key to an often curvilinear trajectory in the accumulation of recognition deficits are the factors of the societal centrality of gainful employment, partnership, a lack of adequate consideration of care, and health problems.