Abstract
This chapter investigates the impact that neoliberalism has on the experiences and representations of ‘work’ among young Italians. Drawing on research conducted in the Italian city of Milan from 2013 to 2017, the chapter analyzes the transformations of the perceptions and experiences of work among young people from 18 to 30 years old. The aim is to shed light on the way in which this generation imagines, practices, and elaborates an experience of work in the current context of neoliberal policies, amid the growing importance of knowledge, emotions, and social relations in work processes typical of the ‘immaterial economies’, and in response to rapid changes in demands for skills and self-entrepreneurship. In its first section, the chapter analyzes some general characteristics of the transformations of the job market and job opportunities for young Italian people in the past decade, with specific attention to the exemplary case of Milan. In the second section, the chapter presents the empirical research conducted in that city, analyzing from a generational and intersectional point of view the experiences and the representation of work among the interviewees.
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Notes
- 1.
The research on which this chapter is based was conducted in Milan, one of the Italian cities where the economic crisis that started in 2007 had a more moderate impact, even though the instability of professional opportunities and the fragmentation of careers are still part of the everyday experience of young people. The research conducted from 2013 to 2016 was based on 75 in-depth interviews with young people living in Milan and its suburbs, with different social and professional statuses, plus 10 interviews carried out in 2017 with university students involved in an occupied cultural centre in Milan. All the interviewees had completed, interrupted or started their studies after 2008 and entered or tried to enter the labour market when the effects of the crisis were already manifest; the 10 interviews conducted in 2017 included only university students without a stable job (5 females and 5 males). 35 respondents had lower education, were aged 18 to 26 (18 males, 17 females) and they were selected through public employment services in Milan or by word-of-mouth; 40 interviewees had higher education (degree), were aged 25 to 31 (20 males, 20 females) and were mainly contacted by word-of-mouth and through the Youth Orientation Service of the Municipality of Milan. Among the young adults with lower educations, 9 were unemployed, 11 were employed, 3 were self-employed and 12 were doing a work experience placement or an apprenticeship. Among those with higher educations, 2 were unemployed, 21 employed, 8 self-employed, 6 professional, and 3 were doing a work experience placement. The interviews mainly concentrated on: (1) work (current situation, school-work transition, and work expectations and aspirations); (2) lifestyle (consumption, future lifestyle aspirations and expectations); (3) social participation (forms of generational identification, interests and involvement in politics and voluntary work, representation of social rights and duties); (4) crisis (representation of the current economic and social situation, its constraints and opportunities), (Colombo et al. 2018).
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Rebughini, P. (2019). Facing the Self-Government Test: Italian Youth and the Avatars of Neoliberalism. In: Scribano, A., Timmermann Lopez, F., Korstanje, M. (eds) Neoliberalism in Multi-Disciplinary Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77601-9_10
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