Precarity and precarisation have become a central political topic and a highly controversial issue in academic debate. Financialisation, flexibilisation and transnationalisation have led to adjustments in welfare state regulations and growing precarisation of labour markets – not only in the Global North. Taking account of traditionally highly segmented and precarious labour markets in the Global South, this special issue contributes to evaluating the shape and scope of precarisation processes and the related reconfiguration of social inequalities in different regions of the world. Going beyond simplified binary juxtapositions and based on examples from Germany, Brazil and Asia, the articles compiled here trace contradictory processes of precarisation and formalisation of labour and varieties of precarity and precarisation. They contribute to a broader understanding of social precarisation as a relational process embedded in the current transformation of capitalist accumulation on a global scale.