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Guerrilla Selfhood: Imagining Entrepreneurial Futures

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Abstract

The downstream consequences of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) have impacted the lives of many people. Young people, as demonstrated in Chapter 3, were acutely affected, especially those making important transitions from schooling to college to work and imagining some kind of future amidst economic uncertainty and devastation. When the GFC landed in 2007 and 2008 it halted a decade of steady or declining youth unemployment rates in developed Western economies. Young people who had hoped that their emergence into adulthood could be modelled upon the experiences of their parents began realising that their opportunities for happiness and success were dissipating. But young people adapted and began to thrive. They developed a type of identity that we dubbed the guerrilla self. It is a form of selfhood that thrives at the interstices of capitalism, business and individualisation and walks hand-in-hand with resilience and entrepreneurialism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A recording of this advertisement is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq6AIFIeFk8

  2. 2.

    In doing so, Robert would have qualified for in-state financial support to the college of his choosing. He was required to live in the state for 12 months prior.

  3. 3.

    Read about the car sharing service at the Getaround website: https://www.getaround.com/share?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=CarLead_D_AllBerk

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Howie, L., Campbell, P. (2017). Guerrilla Selfhood: Imagining Entrepreneurial Futures. In: Crisis and Terror in the Age of Anxiety. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51629-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51629-9_4

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