UNIVERSITY PARK, PA. -- Guy Standing, professor in development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, will offer the opening address, “The Precariat: Building Occupational Citizenship," at 7:15 p.m. March 20, in 101 Chambers Building, as part of the international symposium Global Workers’ Rights: Patterns of Exclusion, Possibilities for Change. Standing will speak on topics explored in his recent book, "The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class" (Bloomsbury, 2011), regarding the composition and characteristics of the precariat, which he contends is the most important post-globalization “class in-the-making.”
Members of the Center for Global Workers’ Rights (CGWR) will host scholars, activists and labor practitioners from various parts of the world focusing on the growing trend toward worker precarity. The aim of this symposium is to discuss existing strategies and propose alternative ways to overcome associated insecurities while seeking approaches that might help promote worker empowerment.
This talk is free and open to the public. The surrounding symposium, also open to all, takes place from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. March 21 and 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. March 22, at the Penn State Room in the Nittany Lion Inn. Events are sponsored by the CGWR in the Penn State Labor Studies and Employment Department, and co-sponsored by the PSU Center for Global Studies and Latin American Studies Program. For a full event listing, see http://lser.la.psu.edu/gwr/2013.shtml. For an event flier, go to http://lser.la.psu.edu/gwr/images/International%20Symposium%20flyer.pdf.