Changes in the world of work set the challenge of a greater understanding of precarity in contemporary societies. Instead of limiting it only to the contractual status of workers, we propose a multidimensional perspective of precarity anchored into the problematic of social inequalities. By observing the countries that are part of the European Union we discuss the hypothesis that the various forms of precarity analyzed will be more or less pronounced due to inequalities that structure the European space of work. Through data from the “Labour Force Survey” (LFS) and the “EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions” (EU-SILC), it is possible to analyze the main trends of the precarity before and during the crisis and, synchronously, draw a picture about the current precarity in the European context of the knowledge society. We verify that the crisis and the austerity policies that followed have exacerbated the precarity in the European Union area. Categorical inequalities (of national states, gender and age) and distributive inequalities (of educational resources and income) accentuate the processes of labour precariousness. Europe is a salient precarious chess in multiple boards, which is expressed in terms of the various dimensions of precarity and certain regional and transnational regularities.

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Precariedade,Desigualdade,Crise,Sociedade do conhecimento,Espaço europeu do trabalho