Abstract
Precarity is becoming the paradigmatic description of young people’s work conditions in crisis-ridden Greece, but also in other European countries. Focusing on interview data on the work experiences of young adults (18-26 years old), in urban centres of Greece, this study attempts to explore the ways in which informants account for working in precarious conditions and construct agency and subjectivity within these ways of accounting. The analysis drawing on insights from critical discursive social psychology indicates that participants construct precarious work conditions as widespread and banal a) by treating precarious work as a sine qua non condition of youth employment, b) by considering precarious work as an inherent trait of the Greek job-market, c) by considering precarious work as a necessary step on a (biographical) path leading to the desired and/or appropriate job, or d) by adopting a “there is no other alternative” accounting, representing precarious job conditions as the only alternative to unemployment. The analysis also points out the ways in which participants orient themselves to a dilemma of stake and accountability, being concerned to position themselves as effortful subjects, while they are rhetorically constructing the banal regime of precarious labour. The discussion considers the need to bring into the scope of social and political psychology the specific nuances of precarious labour.
Highlights
Precarity is becoming the paradigmatic description of young people’s work conditions in crisis-ridden Greece, and in other European countries
This paper aims at exploring the ways in which young people in Greece a) account for working in precarious conditions in an interview context and b) construct agency and subjectivity within these ways of accounting
Drawing on critical discursive psychology (Wetherell, 1998; Wetherell & Edley, 1999) the study attempts to reach the above objectives by casting light on both the discursive practices as well as on the ideological resources that are prominent in youth discourse on precarious employment in Greece
Summary
Precarity is becoming the paradigmatic description of young people’s work conditions in crisis-ridden Greece, and in other European countries. Focusing on interview data on the work experiences of young adults (18-26 years old), in urban centres of Greece, this study attempts to explore the ways in which informants account for working in precarious conditions and construct agency and subjectivity within these ways of accounting. The discussion considers the need to bring into the scope of social and political psychology the specific nuances of precarious labour. A lot of discussion in Europe – both at a theoretical and a social policy level – has been devoted to the new paradigm of 'precarity' documenting the shifting nature of the labour regimei in neo-liberal times: the flexibilisation of the work contract and the proliferation of employment practices and contract options (e.g., Gallie & Paugam, 2002; Letourneux, 1998; Rodgers & Rodgers, 1989; Standing, 2011, 2014). To theorise this (more or less global) tendency, the political economist Standing (2011, 2014) has suggested that in times of global crisis, we witness the rise of a new global social class, the precariat
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