Increased vulnerability is the lot of those exposed to the fallout of the contradictions of what J. Hillis Miller calls our ‘(un)globalized world’: one whose processes ‘globalize’ or unify while simultaneously, and to an equal extent, fracture, damage, and divide, in an ongoing ‘pattern of inadvertent reversal’ (‘How To (Un)Globe the Earth in Four Easy Lessons,’ 25). In one such reversal, the fluidity and flexibility fetishized by global capitalism renders workers and jobs expendable. For decades, France has struggled with this phenomenon. La précarité [precarity] has become a cultural keyword that, since the 1990s, has been used in France and Europe to ‘account for the effects of the transition from industrial to post-industrial capitalism’ and to describe the ‘re-organization of the capitalist mode of production that has ensured the flexibilization (and the weakening) of both financial barriers and traditional forms of employment’ (Colon, ‘Neither lieux de mémoire, nor non-lieux: Towards a Concept of Precarious Spaces in Philippe Vasset's Un livre blanc,’ 68). This neoliberal turn and the vulnerability it injects into working-class life in France is often thought to have taken root during the Mitterrand years (1981–1995), which include France's entry into the economically liberal European Union with the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. Virginie Despentes, having grown up precisely in those years, coins the neologism génération post-mitterrandienne in order to describe the increasingly common experience of those who, as she puts it, ‘craignent d’être sacrifiés à n’importe quel moment, de ne pas trouver leur place dans la société, de pas avoir d’avenir. Contrairement à ceux de 68 qui étaient animés par la révolte et l’espoir’ [fear being sacrificed at any moment, losing their place in society, losing their future. As opposed to the generation of ‘68 that was animated by revolt and hope] (cited in Schaal, ‘Whatever Became of “Génération Mitterrand”? Virginie Despentes's Vernon Subutex,’ 88). Such are the cracks in the master map of global capitalism, and as France continues to experience decades of elevated unemployment, falling through them and finding little or no safety net has become a reality for many, including the eponymous protagonist of Virginie Despentes's Vernon Subutex trilogy (2015–2017).