ABSTRACT
The facts of how youth transitions in western, industrialized societies have been radically restructured over the latter third of the twentieth century – and the consequences of this for young people – are well known. The extenuation, fragmentation, and increasing individualization and complexity of pathways to adulthood is the stuff of many contemporary studies of young people’s lives. Less well understood is the significance of precarious work for young people under these changed conditions. In general terms, global economic changes have seen the declining importance of
youth employment, with labour market entry suspended pending lengthier periods of postcompulsory education. In the vision of a new, high-tech, knowledge economy offered by politicians, policy-makers and social commentators, professional and higher skilled employment dominates and low/no skill jobs disappear. Extended engagement in higher level education provides the expanded institutional pathway to this new world of work. In considering the topic of young adults and precarious work, therefore, we are able to
focus on particular, youth-related questions about changing transitions as well as broader sociological ones about change (and continuity) in the sphere of work and employment in late modernity. Because of youth’s status as harbinger of the future, the nature of the younger generation’s engagement in ‘new’ forms of employment has relevance beyond the sphere of youth studies. First, the chapter considers the prevailing wisdom that standard forms of regular
employment in stable jobs (taken to be typical of post-war, Fordist society) are being replaced by flexible forms of precarious employment that are now, in turn, seen as emblematic of late modern capitalism. Influential writers like Beck (1992) speak of the general social proliferation of risk, overriding older social divisions and certainties; rising
precarious employment affects all sorts of work and workers. This chapter examines evidence about the social distribution of precarious employment. Second, it asks whether insecure jobs provide stepping stones to more secure ones or traps which curtail biographical and social mobility. Third, patterns of choice and constraint that lie behind precarious employment are discussed. Fourth, the chapter examines the experience of doing this sort of work, with reference to qualitative youth and community studies, before considering the questions thrown up by this discussion, in conclusion.
