The Proletarianization of Service Work. Institutional Selectivity, Labor Process and the Perception of Future in the Labor Market Segment of Routine Service Work

For the past years the German labor market has become more differentiated and diverse. Yet the existing flexibility and dynamic does not indicate pluralization alone. An explorative qualitative study on routine services, carried out between 2009 and 2012, provides insights about the consolidation of a certain social status. Our findings are pointing to a process of "proletarianization". Integration in different labor market institutions is selective and leads to a stabilization of disadvantaged perspectives and an unprivileged status for routine service workers. Work is marked by strategies of social rationalization, which enforce an ongoing dynamic of disqualification and devaluation. A specific control system produces a process of segmentation that undermines positional advantages. The loss of future perspectives risks the consolidation of disadvantaged perspectives because the idea of possible change is not available.