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The global sex industry has undergone a tremendous transformation, and many different forms of commercial sex have emerged with the growth of digital media. The advent of 'platform work' in diverse fields, including sex work, has affected digital workers' experiences dramatically. Combining insights from literature on labour platforms' proliferation with online sex work that entails new forms of exploitation, this paper introduces the concept of flexi(nse)curity to describe the tension between work arrangements and insecurity narrated by Romanian women working as webcam models. In doing so, the article places webcammers' narratives in the structural and cultural context dominated by neoliberal post-socialist reforms and strong religious interference in both State affairs and people's private lives. Alongside the relevance of country scale, in which cultural and structural features shape the size and challenges of adult webcamming, our article examines how place-bound insecurity is narrated in online discussions as a multi-faceted and multi-layered experience co-produced through the intersection of online platforms and material spaces where webcammers perform (i.e., models' home bedrooms and webcam studios). Challenging the popular view of webcamming as autonomous and flexible work, this paper reveals sex workers' vulnerabilities by applying a feminist geographical lens to webcammers' narratives from an online discussion forum. The findings suggest that there are diverse flexi(nse)curity patterns that are contingent on the intricacies of platform capitalism and emerging work arrangements in online sex work marked by an upsurge in webcam studios in which webcam models occupy a vulnerable position in asymmetric staff power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the gendered aspects of changes affecting the life course of Romanians post-socialism, and the meanings men and women—with ages spanning across various age cohorts—employ to make sense of their experiences. Based on qualitative data collected during research on precarious prosperity among Romanian households conducted in 2013, the findings show that major shifts occurred in the timing of life events. Romanians’ life courses and their work trajectories have been unevenly affected depending on their intersectional belonging to gender, area of residence and life stage at the moment of the political transition. The analysis of work trajectories unravels increasing gender differentiation among younger cohorts and reinforcement of the gendered life paths taken. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses the tensions arising from the intersection of norms and practices of support in situations in which intergenerational support is the main household strategy for coping with precariousness in Romania. This paper describes competing meanings of solidarity and reveals gendered experiences of ambiguity with respect to the sustainability of help exchanges within the context of economic vulnerability. Romania displays high public acceptance of intergenerational support, while the country’s deficient social welfare system prompts families to intensify their help exchanges. Findings based on in-depth interviews suggest that private arrangements are compounded by unbalanced help exchanges among generations. With the state and the community support directed towards lower social strata, these arrangements give rise to many tensions. Parents become excessively burdened by the constant obligation to help their adult children, while the children’s dependence upon their parents limits the opportunities to reciprocate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the predictors of natives’ perception of the immigrant threat in Romania, an interesting site given immigrants’ marginal presence in the total population and the sizeable proportion of co-ethnic immigrants. Yet the interplay between nationalism and religion shapes an ideological frame that favours unwelcoming attitudes towards immigrants that challenge the Romanian identity forged along ethnic and religious ties. The authors used regression to analyse immigrant threat according to several dimensions: cosmopolitanism, group conflict and intergroup contact. In order to reflect specificities of this particular context, the latter dimension is conceptualized so as to include active and passive contact with immigrants. This distinction is relevant because of immigrants’ low presence in Romania. Findings suggest that variables from conflict theory explain more of the variation in the perceived threat, while indirect contact through mass-media exposure to immigrant content has the potential to reduce the perception of immigrant threat. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]