Abstract
Young people pursuing employment along with their studies or soon after they complete their education in Singapore often experience hardship as a “normal” part of their work and life. This chapter focuses on how hardship serves to foster youth identity creation in line with neoliberal ideals of enterprising subjects. Our analysis is based on an ethnographic study conducted on youth experiences in Singapore. Youth work in this city-state is widespread and actively promoted by educational institutions and the state, along with dominant discourses of equal opportunity and meritocracy. We draw on focus group discussions conducted between 2017 and 2019 with 85 Malay, Chinese, and Indian young people in Singapore to explore the nature of their learning during their early career work experiences. On one hand, the state and educational institutions cast young workers as entrepreneurial, independent, and agentic. There is an aura of “experience” which is assumed to automatically lead to skill and better future prospects. However, hardship learning as part of work/learning in university or workplaces and individualization of responsibility of achievement/success leaves young workers often isolated, exhausted, and lacking agency. The experiences of young workers, in a city-state like Singapore that consists of a mix of Chinese, Malays, and Indian youth in the labor market, are impacted by race gender and class. Overall, we suggest a need for a shift in organizational and public policy towards ensuring high quality work experiences for young people.
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Bhutani, A., Mirchandani, K. (2022). Workplace Hardship: Learning Entrepreneurial Identities. In: Lee, W.O., Brown, P., Goodwin, A.L., Green, A. (eds) International Handbook on Education Development in Asia-Pacific. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2327-1_68-1
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