Privileged precarity: how the mobile middle class leverage housing insecurity as labour market strategy

How does the ability to weather insecurity give some an upper-hand over others? This paper examines the interrelationship between housing and labour market precarity among middle class young professionals. Drawing on interviews with residents of co-living schemes—for-profit shared housing where tenants are on temporary rental contracts—it explores how residential precarity is strategically leveraged in pursuit of tumultuous careers in the knowledge economy. I propose the concept of privileged precarity in order to interrogate this dynamic and the contradictory subjectivities emerging therefrom. Whereas precarity is experienced by working class and marginalised households as a state of oppression, we see how the privileged can harness it as an asset and resource. In particular, the precarious tenure relations of co-living enabled participants to synchronise their lives with the rhythms of hyper-competitive and insecure careers in the tech sector—quickly pivoting to new economic opportunities and interacting with work on the terms of its contingent availability. By way of conclusion, the paper calls attention to the socially stratifying potentials of privileged precarities, and reflects on the applicability of the concept to other social domains and relations of inequality.