Pathways and Transition to Work in New Economies: A Study of Young People in Lucknow City, India

Two decades of economic reforms has brought about far reaching changes in the nature of Indian economy. The nature of employment and industrial organization is also undergoing change. Highly flexible labour market, located in global market economy, has emerged. This is best described by the term post-Fordism. The workforce is required to be multi-skilled and flexible in new economies. Further, the growing economic instability and rapidly changing technoscapes pose a big challenge for making smooth transition to work life. Post-Fordism brings an accentuated division between core and periphery workers. The workers in the core are relatively well paid and have secure jobs. But the workers in the periphery lack job security. It is further argued that career decision making are mainly about ‘opportunity structures’ which in turn is strongly influenced by social class and associated social and cultural resources of young people. This paper answers three research questions. Does core employment in current labour market is restricted to well-educated and trained youth? How the location of young people in hierarchical career structure of market economy is influenced by their cultural resources? What pathways are followed by young people belonging to different class position? The study reveals that both core and periphery workers in market economy needs high level of education with constant re-skilling to adapt themselves continually to new and more demanding work opportunities. The adaption of young people in workforce is in turn affected by the cultural resources at their disposition. The young people in Lucknow are not a homogeneous group; they belong to different class positions and hence face different challenges in their transition to work life. Career decision making of young people and their pathways of transition to work is largely determined by social structure and cultural resources and partly determined by ‘reflexivity of the self’.