Japanese “Furītā” and German “Generation Internship”: The “precarious post-materialist” as an extension to Inglehart‘s theory of value change

Abstract

With a period of economic recession, rising numbers of unemployed and an increase in non-regular employment, the situation on the German and the Japanese labour market has undergone a change over the past two decades. At the beginning of the twenty-first century a generation of newcomers entered working life under changed conditions. In this paper, I will analyse whether the individual perception of worsening chances on the labour market will have an effect on the attitudes to and expectations of work prevalent amongst young entrants to the labour market drawing upon Ronald Inglehart’s theory of value change as a theoretical base. An analysis of qualitative interviews with Japanese Furītā and members of the German ‘Generation Internship’ will explore whether patterns of work values can be identified that call for an extension of Inglehart’s value concept of “materialist” versus “post-materialist”, namely suggesting the existence of a ‘precarious post-materialist’. The discussion concludes with a short analysis of quantitative data, to see whether this new value type might also be identified in a broader context.