‘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

This 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.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• future
• liquid modernity
• new adulthood
• precarious work
• temporality
• time
• transitions
• youth studies

Acknowledgements

The author was supported to undertake this research, and publish key findings, by being the recipient of the following scholarships while studying and working at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia: John Lane Memorial Scholarship, Australian Postgraduate Award, and the Monash Postgraduate Publication Award. Many thanks to Professor Gavin Jack and Dr Susan Mayson for providing excellent PhD supervision which strengthened this research. I would also like to thank the reviewers for their engagement with this article and useful literature suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.