‘I don’t want to be a vagrant for the rest of my life’: young peoples’ experiences of precarious work as a ‘continuous present’

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis work presents findings from a qualitative multi-case study investigating the lives of young, precariously employed academics working at a large Australian university. The lived experience of precarious employment is explored through a temporal analysis of how lifestyles are conceived and constructed under the conditions of liquid modernity. The findings highlight how participants felt limited in their capacity to commit to long-term life plans due to invasive feelings of insecurity and dependency that confronted participants with feelings of inadequacy. Participants referred to an inability to make adult-like decisions and bind themselves to future commitments such as independent living arrangements and starting a family. Engagement with concepts of temporality assisted in the theorising of a ‘continuous present’, which refers to the deferring and sacrificing of lifestyle plans in the hope for an imaginary future that never seems to arrive. This theorisation contributes an understanding of how precarious employment can disrupt the flow of culturally acceptable expectations surrounding adulthood and how precarity develops over time. The analysis illustrates that an extended durée of precarious employment increases precarity beyond the present and into the future temporal zone of young peoples’ lives.