From worker to SMEs: the homogenization of demands about self- employment in the discourse of political parties

Abstract

Discourses on labour that had previously structured the left-right ideological axis and were key to parties’ political debates, have become similar and are now articulated around the ‘self- employed and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)’ framework and geared towards developing specic measures for these groups, only diering on technical nuances. Three factors have contributed to this homogenization: Spain’s consolidation as a peripheral economy within the EU; the transfer of many responsibilities from employers to employees through new forms of creative recruitment that have put employees on the spot; and an ideology of entrepreneurship. In this article we analyse the ways in which the measures put forward by each of the four-major national political parties do not eectively break away from the discourse that has operated over the last decades- not even in the context of two newly emerged political parties. Moreover, we will see how these even establish a certain connection with the economic foundations of the previous (dictatorial) regime. We work from the assumption that, contrary to what might be expected, an increased political choice has not translated into a wider discursive range of proposals regarding work. Many of these converge on the framework of self-employment, something that party representatives embellish with constant appeals to dreams, eort, etc.