JS-12
Precarious Youth (1): Expressing Precariousness between Work and Everyday Life

Abstract Submissions Closed

Wednesday, 24 February 2021: 10:45-12:15
Location:

RC34 Sociology of Youth (host committee)
RC30 Sociology of Work

Language: Spanish, French and English

Session Type: Oral


In a time when the prolonged permanence in precarious jobs is a common experience for a growing number of young people and freelancing is largely depicted as the cure-all remedy for younger generations’ job difficulties in political agendas and public discourses, “precarity” is becoming a “normal” condition and a “normalized” horizon for youth throughout the world. Starting from the idea that precarity is a form of exploitation that involve the continuum of everyday life and not just the workforce, this session welcomes contributions that analyze the relationship between job precariousness and young people’s everyday life from a two-fold perspective.

On the one hand, we are interested in analyses aimed at exploring how precarity becomes the “norm”, that is which social pressures and individual experiences lead young people to perceive job precariousness as a normal condition, as well as through which interiorized discourses precarity is normalized in young people’s narratives.

On the second hand, we welcome contributions exploring what happens when precarity is the “norm”, that is which effects the condition of job precariousness produces on young people’s relationships (with family, partners, and friends), lifestyles (as political actors, citizens and consumers), cognitive approaches (i.e. presentification, risk-seeking attitudes, etc…), and ideas of future.

Through this twofold perspective, the session aims at exploring the blurred boundaries between work and everyday life and wishes to reflect upon long-term and in-depth effects of job precariousness on younger generations. The session welcomes both theoretical and empirical contributions and particularly encourages proposals from younger scholars.

Session Organizer:
Ilaria PITTI, Department of Sociology and Business Law, Italy, ilaria.pitti2@unibo.it