No place for their children: negotiating gender, place and generation in a flexible work context

Abstract

Drawing on a combination of theories on gender and place and work after globalisation, this article addresses how gender, place, employment-related mobility and flexible work conditions affect generational ties to place. Interviews with persons whose working life histories (by choice or circumstance) include flexible hours and high levels of mobility reveal explicit hopes that their children will have more stable working lives – and expectations that this will mean that they shall have to leave the local area. The article documents how the local place is an important component in the construction of employment-related mobilities, expectations for the future, valorisation of education, inter-generational relations and ties to places.

Keywords:

• Flexible work
• gender
• generation
• mobility
• place