Professional workers in a risk society

This paper contributes to the debate on the utility of Ulrich Beck's (1992) notion of the ‘risk society’ for understanding the positions and experiences of workers who are negotiating more ‘flexible’ employment contracts. Whilst previous articles in this journal have concentrated upon the lower end of the employment market, I aim to broaden the scope of the discussion by focussing upon professional freelance magazine workers, and ask whether Beck's framework has a different utility in terms of understanding their employment security and risk.