The moral grammar of livelihood: work, dignity, and economic vulnerability in Indonesian public discourse

Cici Nur Azizah

doi:10.67490/ijle.v1i3.1025

Authors

Cici Nur Azizah Sekolah Tinggi Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan PGRI Metro Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.67490/ijle.v1i3.1025

Keywords:

Decent work, Dignity, Economic vulnerability, Livelihood discourse, Moral grammar

Abstract

Background: Indonesian public discourse increasingly frames livelihood not only as employment or income, but as a moral field where work, dignity, vulnerability, protection, and deservingness are publicly evaluated. Objective: This study examines how Indonesian public discourse constructs the moral grammar of livelihood and asks how vulnerable workers are represented through vocabularies of dignity, protection, responsibility, and economic risk. Method: This study applies corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis to 19 empirical public discourse items, comprising 13 primary documents and 6 contextual documents, supported by secondary scholarship on Indonesian economic discourse, precarity, moral economy, and labour dignity. Results: Livelihood discourse is organized through five moral grammars: decent-work norms, protection-as-duty, recognition of contribution, measurement-as-governance, and care-and-obligation. Vulnerability is most frequently aligned with informality and social protection, indicating that dignity becomes legible when workers are classified as informal, protected, eligible, or deserving. Responsibility is distributed across state institutions, public media, legal-statistical bodies, platform actors, international labour norms, and faith-based welfare, producing recognition while fragmenting accountability. Implication: These findings show that moral language can humanize vulnerable workers while also making insecurity administratively manageable and socially tolerable. Novelty: This study reframes Indonesian economic discourse by conceptualizing livelihood as moral grammar rather than a neutral labour-market category.

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