ABSTRACT
It should be superfl uous to underscore the centrality of work/employment to human welfare and the particular importance of work and career expectations for all new entrants into the adult world of economic activity. Work is the defi ning mundane quality of human existence: ‘it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and nature, and therefore no life’ (Marx 1954: 50). Work is an ontological given, be it in the individualized form of appropriating use values from hunting and gathering to sustain the family, or in the collective form of the massively complex division of labour currently operating in the global economy, alongside the (predominantly unpaid) labour required to maintain the household and the local community.
