Working precarious careers trajectories: tracing neoliberal discourses in younger workers’ narratives

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to explore how, in the context of the post Global Financial Crisis (GFC), some Italian younger workers in a specific geographical region in Italy recount their work trajectories. Drawing on narrative interviews with ten participants (aged between 24 and 30) as part of a research project carried out in the Autonomous region of Aosta Valley in Italy, the article traces discourses closely associated with neoliberalism – the discourses of the entrepreneurial self, employability and self-responsibilisation – through which subjects’ work experiences take shape. Moreover, the analysis highlights how locality, one’s personal relation with the geographical territory, makes more complex the younger people’s negotiations in crafting themselves vis-à-vis precarious employment opportunities and wider socio-economic dynamics in respect of precarious employment opportunities.

KEYWORDS:

• Discourse analysis
• neoliberalism
• place
• precarity
• younger workers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Regione Autonoma Valle d’Aosta [Project “FAR - Formazione alla Ricerca”. Code: 14/04AG100000].