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Youth and the Politics
of the Present
Youth and the Politics of the Present presents a range of topical sociological
investigations into various aspects of the everyday practices of young adults
in different European contexts. Indeed, this volume provides an original and
provocative investigation of various current central issues surrounding the effects
of globalization and the directions in which Western societies are steering their
future.
Containing a wide range of empirical and comparative examples from across
Europe, this title highlights how young adults are trying to implement new forms
of understanding, interpretation and action to cope with unprecedented situations;
developing new forms of relationships, identifications and belonging while they
experience new and unprecedented forms of inclusion and exclusion. Grounding
this exploration is the suggestion that careful observations of the everyday
practices of young adults can be an excellent vantage point to grasp how and in
what direction the future of contemporary Western societies is heading.
Offering an original and provocative investigation, Youth and the Politics of the
Present will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Youth
Studies, Globalization Studies, Migration Studies, Gender Studies and Social
Policy.
Enzo Colombo is a Professor of Sociology and Culture at the Department of

Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Italy.
Paola Rebughini is Professor of Sociology of Culture at the Department of Social

and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Italy.
Routledge Advances in Sociology
259 Comparative Sociology of Examinations

Edited by Fumiya Onaka
260 The Human Rights City

New York, San Francisco, Barcelona
Michele Grigolo
261 Horizontal Europeanisation

The Transnationalisation of Daily Life and Social Fields in Europe
Edited by Prof. Dr. Martin Heindenreich
262 The Marginalized in Genocide Narratives

Giorgia Donà
263 The Social Structures of Global Academia

Edited by Fabian Cannizzo and Nick Osbaldiston
264 Citizenship in the Latin American Upper

and Middle Classes
Ethnographic Perspectives on Culture, Politics,
and Consumption
Edited by Fabian Cannizzo and Nick Osbaldiston
265 Youth and the Politics of the Present

Coping with Complexity and Ambivalence
Edited by Enzo Colombo and Paola Rebughini
For more information about this series, please visit:

www.routledge.com/Routledge-Advances-in-Sociology/book-series/SE0511
Youth and the Politics
of the Present
Coping with Complexity and

Ambivalence
Edited by Enzo Colombo

and Paola Rebughini
First published 2019
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Contents
List of figuresvii
List of tablesviii
List of contributorsix
A complex uncertainty: young people in the riddle of the present 1

ENZO COLOMBO AND PAOLA REBUGHINI
PART I
Complexity17
1 Learning (not) to labour: how middle-class young adults

look for creative jobs in a precarious time in Italy 19
LORENZO DOMANESCHI
2 Negotiating reality through the prosumption of the ‘unreal’

self: young people’s identities in an age of economic precarity 32
KONSTANTINOS THEODORIDIS, STEVEN MILES AND KEVIN ALBERTSON
3 ‘Flexi-lives’: facing the mobility imperative 44

VALENTINA CUZZOCREA
PART II
Uncertainty57
4 Fragile transitions from education to employment: youth,

gender and migrant status in the EU 59
ÇETIN ÇELIK, FATOŞ GÖKŞEN, ALPAY FILIZTEKIN, İBRAHIM ÖKER
AND MARK SMITH
vi Contents
5 Precarious and creative: youth facing uncertainty

in the labour market 75
SONIA BERTOLINI, VALENTINA MOISO AND MARGE UNT
6 Youth and precariousness in Spain: beyond a waiting time 88

BENJAMÍN TEJERINA
7 The myth of flexibility: young adults’ expectations of work

in the digital economy in Milan 101
ALESSANDRO GANDINI AND LUISA LEONINI
8 Uncertainty management strategies in the process of identity

formation of Polish young adults 113
MONIKA BANAŚ
PART III
Involvement127
9 Young women of Muslim background in France and

Britain: personal and public projects 129
DANIÈLE JOLY
10 Occupying the city: from social housing to the theatre 141

ANTIMO LUIGI FARRO AND SIMONE MADDANU
11 ‘I would rather choose a mixed school’: young people’s

secondary school choice in a low-income, multi-ethnic
neighbourhood 153
KIRSTEN VISSER
12 Our Nation’s Future: youth visions of a post-Brexit Britain 165

MARCO ANTONSICH, PANAGIOTA SOTIROPOULOU, LEILA WILMERS,
CUOMU ZHAXI AND SOPHIE-LOUISE HYDE
Index181
Figures
4.1 Predicted relative wage differences across vulnerable groups

relative to adult males (students excluded) 70
5.1 Conceptual map 78
7.1 What work do you aspire to do? 107
7.2 How would you describe work today? 109
12.1 Bloodshot 169
12.2 As we leave the EU 171
12.3 Bus stop 171
12.4 Please hold the door 173
12.5 May’s force is against you 174
12.6 Conversation expectation 176
Tables
4.1 Estimation of employment status, relative risk rates (excludes

students)64
4.2 Determinants of occupation status across vulnerabilities
(students excluded) 69
6.1 List of individual interviews and focus group 92
10.1 Essentials of occupations 148
Contributors
Kevin Albertson is Professor at The Business School at Manchester Metropolitan

University. His research interests range from business and social forecasting
to: the frontiers-zone crisis; social innovation; crime; and the application of
classical and behavioural economics to socio-political issues.
Marco Antonsich is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Loughborough
University. His research interests revolve around nation and migration, focus-
ing particularly on Italy. Among his publications are Everyday Nationhood
(Palgrave, 2017) and Governing through Diversity (Palgrave, 2015)
Monika Banaś is Associated Professor at the Institute of Intercultural Studies,
Faculty of International and Political Studies, Jagiellonian University, Cra-
cow. Her research interests focus on theory of culture, mutual dependences of
economy and culture, migration trends in contemporary societies, welfare state
and crisis. She holds a PhD in American studies and a post-doctoral degree
(doctor habilitus) in political science with a specialisation on social cohesion
and cultural integration of multi-ethnic societies. Currently she is involved in
an individual project dedicated to political culture in Poland and Scandinavia
in comparative perspective.
Sonia Bertolini is Associate Professor at the University of Turin, where she
teaches sociology of work. Her research interests concern labour market
flexibilisation; youth labour market entry; female labour market participa-
tion, labour market flexibilisation and transition to adult life; and sociology
of professions. Among her publications are Youth on Globalised Labour Mar-
ket. Rising Uncertainty and its Effects on Early Employment and Family Lives
in Europe (Barbara Budrich Publishers, Opladen, Germany, and Farmington
Hills, United States, 2011; edited with H. P. Blossfeld and D. Hofäcker), and
Flessibilmente giovani: percorsi di lavoro e transizioni alla vita adulta nel
nuovo mercato del lavoro (Il Mulino, Bologna, 2012).
Çetin Çelik is Associate Professor at Koç University, Istanbul. His research inter-
ests deal with different forms of educational inequalities within the context
of migration. He is author of The Process of Leaving School and Meaning
x Contributors
of Schooling: The Case of Turkish School Leavers in Germany (University

of Bremen, 2012). His recent research explores links between identity forma-
tion and educational achievement of the second-generation migrant youth and
broader social policies and institutional regulations in Turkey and Germany.
Enzo Colombo is Professor of Sociology of Culture and Intercultural Relations
at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Italy.
His research interests lie in everyday multiculturalism, active citizenship, cul-
tural aspects of the globalisation process, young adults’ identification and civic
participation. He has published in top peer-reviewed journals. He is author of
Children of Immigrants in a Globalized World: A Generational Experience
(Palgrave, 2012; with P. Rebughini).
Valentina Cuzzocrea (MA and PhD, Essex) is Senior Assistant Professor in Soci-
ology at the University of Cagliari, Italy, where she teaches (advanced) theory
and methods of social research, and visiting Senior Research Fellow at the
Department of Sociology, University of Vienna. She previously held research
positions in Germany (Max Weber Kolleg, Erfurt) and the University of Kent.
She is interested in various aspects of research on young people, and more
recently on how this intersects with issues of time and space, publishing on this
latter front in Current Sociology, Time & Society and Sociological Research
online. Her last books are Mobility, Education and Employability in the Euro-
pean Union. Inside Erasmus (Palgrave, 2018; with D. Cairns, E. Krzaklewska
and A. A. Allaste); and The Consequences of Mobility: Skilled Migration, Sci-
entific Development and the Reproduction of Inequality (Palgrave, 2017; with
D. Cairns, D. Briggs and L. Veloso).
Lorenzo Domaneschi is Research Assistant at the Department of Social and
Political Sciences, University of Milan, Italy. His main research interests are
cultural identity and consumption practices among youth cultures.
Antimo Luigi Farro is Professor at Sapienza University of Rome, Department
of Social Sciences and Economics, and coordinator of the PhD Program. For-
mer President of RC47, International Sociological Association, he is Member
of CADIS, Center of Analysis and Sociological Intervention (EHESS/CNRS)
Paris, France. His research interests include social movement studies, sociology
of labor, migration and urban sociology. He wrote the ‘Spin Time: From the right
to housing to a new left’ and ‘Conclusions’ sections in Chapter 10 of this book.
Alpay Filiztekin is Professor, Dean of Faculty of Businnes at Özyeğin Univer-
sity of Istanbul. His research topics include economic growth, regional devel-
opment, urban economics, applied econometrics and economic history. He is
particularly interested in agglomeration economies, education, labour markets
and inequality.
Alessandro Gandini is a sociologist and a senior researcher at the Department
of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan. Previously, he was a
lecturer in the department of Digital Humanities, King’s College, London.
Contributors xi
His research interests include the transformation of work, social relations and
research methods in the digital society. He is the author of The Reputation
Economy (Palgrave, 2016), the co-author of Qualitative Research in Digital
Environments (Routledge, 2017) and a co-editor of Unboxing the Sharing
Economy, part of The Sociological Review Monograph Series (2018).
Fatoş Gökşen is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at Koç University
Istanbul. Her main research interests are in the field of social policy, gender
and educational inequalities, and media studies.
Sophie-Louise Hyde is a poet, researcher and entrepreneur based at Lough-
borough University. She was awarded her PhD in 2017 for her part-creative
thesis: ‘ “We Should Be United”: Deploying Verbatim Methods in Poetry to
(Re)present Expressions of Identity and Ideas of Imagined Community in the
2011 Birmingham Riots’.
Danièle Joly is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the Uni-
versity of Warwick, Associate Researcher at the College d’études mondiales
(MSH-Paris) and at the IFRI (Paris). She has completed a European Com-
mission Marie Curie Fellowship at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales (CADIS), conducting research on Muslim women’s political partici-
pation in Europe. In 2011–2012, she was Resident Researcher at the Institut
d’Etudes Avancées-Paris. Prior to that and from 1998, she was director of the
Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations at the University of Warwick. She
obtained a Licence es Lettres from the University of Nanterre and a master’s
degree in industrial relations from the University of La Sorbonne. She has
directed a number of European Commission and other international collabo-
rative research projects. Her areas of expertise include Muslims in Europe,
refugees and asylum policy in Europe, ethnic relations and integration. Her
publications include L’Emeute (2007), Muslims in Prison (2005), Blacks and
Britannity (2001), Haven or Hell: Asylum Policy and Refugees in Europe
(1996), Britannia’s Crescent: Making a Place for Muslims in British Society
(1995), Refugees: Asylum in Europe (1992), The French Communist Party
and the Algerian War (1991) and, with Khursheed Wadia, Muslim Women and
Power: Civic and Political Engagement in West European Societies (Palgrave
MacMillan). She is editor of International Migration in the New Millennium
(2004) and Global Changes in Asylum Regimes (2002).
Luisa Leonini is Professor of Sociology of Consumption at the Department of
Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, where she convenes the
MA in public and corporate communication. Her research interests in recent
years have focused on the study of youth and the impact of economic crisis, its
implications for everyday life and consumption lifestyles.
Simone Maddanu received his PhD at the School for Advanced Studies in Social
Sciences (EHESS) of Paris, France. His research focuses on social movements,
common goods, migrations, ethnic relations, and Islam in Europe. He has been
xii Contributors
Research Fellow in Paris (2009–2010), Cagliari University (2010–2013), and

Sapienza University of Rome (2014–2015), he is currently teaching sociology
at the Seminole State College of Florida, in the United States. He wrote the
‘Introduction’, ‘Common social spaces’, ‘Metropoliz: Contemporary arts and
global citizens’ and ‘Teatro Valle: Cultural and urban common goods’ sections
in Chapter 10 of this book.
Steven Miles is Professor of Sociology and head of the Research Centre in
Applied Social Sciences at Manchester Metropolitan University. His particular
interest is in the role of consumption in impacting on the question of identity,
at both the individual level and that of the city. His key publications include
Consumerism as a Way of Life (Sage, 1998), Youth Lifestyles in a Changing
World (Open University Press, 2000) and Spaces for Consumption: Pleasure
and Placelessness in the Post-Industrial City (Sage, 2010). He is currently
Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Consumer Culture.
Valentina Moiso is a postdoctoral researcher in sociology at the University of
Turin, Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, Italy. Her research inter-
ests include household finance and social vulnerability, innovation in money
circuits, Islamic finance, mafia expansion and collusive relations. She has pub-
lished in Stato e Mercato and Critique Internationale, among several other
journals. Recently she has contributed to the volume The Making of Finance:
Conventions, Devices and Regulation (Routledge, 2018; edited by I. Cham-
bost, M. Lenglet and Y. Tadjeddine).
İbrahim Öker is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science, Univer-
sity of Minnesota, Twin Cities, United States.
Paola Rebughini is Professor of Sociology of Culture and Intercultural Com-
munication at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of
Milan, Italy. Her research interests lie in social theory, agency in everyday life,
social movements, cultural aspects of globalisation processes, young adults
identification and civic participation. She has published in top peer-reviewed
journals. She is author of Children of Immigrants in a Globalized World:
A Generational Experience (Palgrave, 2012; with E. Colombo) and of other
books in Italian and French.
Mark Smith is Professor Human Resource Management and Dean of Faculty at
the Grenoble Ecole de Management, France. He has carried out research work
for a number of European and National institutions and previously worked at
Manchester Business School, UK. His interests focus on labour market policy
and outcomes for women and men including working conditions, working-
time, equality and work-life integration. He has authored or co-authored over
fifty books, book chapters and journal articles. His most recent books include
Youth Employment (with J. O’Reilly, C. Moyart and T. Nazio published by
Contributors xiii
Policy Press in 2018), Gender and the European Labour Market (with
F. Bettio and J. Plantenga, also published by Routledge in 2013) and Business
Ethics – A critical approach: integrating ethics across the business world (with
P. O’Sullivan and M. Esposito, published by Routledge in 2012).
Panagiota Sotiropoulou is a Lecturer in Human Geography at Loughborough
University. She has recently finished her PhD entitled ‘Pre-Service Teachers’
Multicultural Competence and the Factors Influencing Its Development: The
Case of Greek Pre-Service Teachers’. Her research interests lie in the intersec-
tion between geography and education.
Benjamín Tejerina is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Collective Iden-
tity Research Center at the University of the Basque Country. His research
interests include collective action and social movements, living conditions,
precariousness and transformations in the work’s culture and civic transitions.
Kostantinos Theodoridis is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at
Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. His research interests
developed to a more critical examination of consumption during the economic
crisis in Greece, and his doctoral research explores young people’s identities
and the changing nature of consumption as a social and cultural phenomenon
through the lens of digital space and social media.
Marge Unt is Professor of Comparative Sociology and Head of the Institute of
International Social Studies (IISS) at SOGOLOS at Tallinn University. Her
research interests are in life-course studies in comparative perspective, namely
youth transitions from school to work, early career, gender inequalities, late
career transitions and active ageing in general. She coordinated a Horizon 2020
project, ‘Social Exclusion of Youth in Europe: Cumulative Disadvantage, Cop-
ing Strategies, Effective Policies and Transfer (EXCEPT)’ (2015–2018).
Kirsten Visser is an Assistant Professor in Urban Geography in the Faculty of
Geosciences at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her research activities
focus on geographies of children and youth, neighbourhood effects, urban
inequality and diversity.
Leila Wilmers is a doctoral researcher in the School of Social Sciences, Lough-
borough University currently working towards a PhD on constructions of the
nation’s continuity in Russia. Her research interests include nationalism, iden-
tity and memory, with a particular focus on the post-Soviet region.
Cuomu Zhaxi is a PhD student at the Centre for Research in Communication
and Culture, Loughborough University. Her current project on the media rep-
resentation of Tibetans and Chinese nationalism is sponsored by a Loughbor-
ough University studentship and a Universities’ China Committee in London
research grant.
A complex uncertainty
Young people in the riddle
of the present
Enzo Colombo and Paola Rebughini
Introducing the book

It is widely perceived that contemporary society is changing fast and that the
interpretative categories, practices and words that we have inherited from the
past are now inadequate to account for everyday experience. This perception
is likely not new, and since modernity, all Western societies and all generations
have felt a sense of lack and crisis. Crisis, instability and uncertainty have often
been described as typical ‘modern’ conditions related to the rapidity of social and
material changes (Mannheim, 1928; Polanyi, 1944; Koselleck, 2004) and to the
difficulty of understanding and assimilating the heritage of previous social expe-
riences (Arendt, 1961). From a historical point of view, the sensation of being
unable to understand the current ‘metamorphosis of the world’ (Beck, 2016) can-
not be considered a new experience, although it is new from a subjective point
of view.
Yet, even if we can discuss the originality of the current situation, it is undeni-
able that a series of transformations – concerning work opportunities, intercultural
encounters, gender relationships, migration processes, awareness of environmen-
tal threats, and ICT technology, to name some of the most important ones – are
subjecting taken-for-granted routines and habits to great stress. Such changes are
inducing a search for new ideas, concepts and activities that fit the new and fast-
changing contexts better.
Young people – especially those among them with high social and cultural capi-
tal, more in tune with practices of mobility and interconnectivity – are in a very
specific position in relation to these changes. As they grew up, they internalised
and took for granted the main transformations that characterised the transition
from ‘classical’, ‘industrial’ society to a different social organisation, usually
called with differentiated and sometimes contradictory names: ‘radical moder-
nity’, ‘post-industrial’, ‘postmodern’, ‘risk’ or ‘network’ society. Although the
different terms foreground different aspects of the changes that have characterised
Western societies, they all share the standpoint that the old set of concepts, ideas,
words, routines and habits inherited from modern thought need a radical adjust-
ment to the new situation.
2 Enzo Colombo and Paola Rebughini
The current cohort of young adults have grown up as ‘natives’ of the new social
organisation. They have learned to live in new spatial and temporal dimensions,
characterised by the mediation of new technologies, the possibility – real or
virtual – of travelling easily and coming into everyday contact with different cul-
tures and points of view. They have learned to take into account the uncertainty
related to the persistence of economic instability, the rapid changes in labour mar-
kets, the risks of environmental disasters, the fragility of democracies and the
threat of violence and terrorism of a constant ‘war at home’. So as not to succumb
to subalternity and marginality, they have needed to learn new languages, new
codes and new rules to adapt to the different contexts in which they must act.
In this book we consider observation of the practices and experiences of young
people facing the challenges of a globalised society, the uncertainty of the future,
the continuous transformations of the job market and the growing presence of
cultural diversity as yielding important insights into how the overall society is
transforming. It is from the specific standpoint of a ‘generational gaze’ that this
book analyses, in situated European contexts, the locations of agency as ‘politics
of the present’.
Generation as an analytical tool

The concept of ‘social generation’ can be a useful analytical framework for read-
ing and analysing social changes (Woodman and Wyn, 2015). While we recognise
the current fragmented nature of the field of youth studies (Cȏté, 2014; Wood-
man and Bennet, 2015; France and Threadgold, 2016), and the criticism concern-
ing the risk of transforming the social generational paradigm emerging in youth
studies into a new orthodoxy devoid of analytical precision (Morgan and Idriss,
2012; France and Roberts, 2015), we suggest that the use of social generation as
a heuristic tool can help overcome a too-simplistic opposition between the ‘struc-
tural’ and ‘cultural’ perspectives (Furlong, Woodman and Wyn, 2011). To achieve
this goal, it seems necessary to avoid reifying generations and considering them
as homogeneous. A careful analysis of how generational experiences intertwine
with different social positions is necessary to understand how agency and struc-
tural constraints mutually define each other and how the action of the subjects is
concretely defined within this mutual definition. This can highlight some ways
in which agency and inequalities among young people are intertwined and affect
each other (Colombo, Leonini and Rebughini, 2018).
In recent years, social generation has emerged in youth studies as a conceptual
framework that helps overcome the pitfalls of a functionalist approach that risks
reducing youth experience to a series of mechanical transition events: comple-
tion of schooling, labour market entry, leaving the parental home, forming first
union, entry into parenthood (Buchmann and Kriesi, 2011). Research focusing on
transition often ends up by presenting an excessively pessimistic image of young
contemporaries highlighting their faulty, messy, irregular and failed transitions,
measured against the standard of the previous cohorts (Wyn and Woodman, 2006;
A complex uncertainty 3
Blatterer, 2007). The concept of social generation was originally introduced into
the sociological debate by Karl Mannheim (1928/1952) to refer to a particular
cohort of individuals united in a self-conscious age stratum by their specific col-
lective response to a traumatic historical event or catastrophe, and constituting a
concrete group with the necessary political awareness to become drivers of social
change (Edmunds and Turner, 2002). While Mannheim emphasised political and
intellectual self-awareness as the characteristic of a generation (Aboim and Vas-
concelos, 2014), we consider generation as primarily defined by the subjective
experience of the inadequacy of what is at hand to manage the complexity and
novelty of mundane situations, with the impossibility of following consolidated
and shared routines. Such impossibility is marked by the perceived necessity to
acquire new languages, routines and practices. We consider social generation to
be a useful analytical reference whenever we try to make sense of the experience
of individuals and groups that have to cope with situations in which the words,
concepts, routines and patterns of behaviour that they have inherited from pre-
vious cohorts are no longer satisfying. Rather than defining a group of people
sharing a precise political project or utopia, the concept of social generation can
be useful to refer to the shared experience of knowing ‘what doesn’t work any-
more without knowing [or without agreeing on] what does work, how it might
work and where it leads’ (Beck, 2016, p. 189). As Lizardo and Strand observe
(2010, p. 223):
all periods of dissolution of external support for action and the reconstitu-
tion of new ones separate actors into institutional generations, at the level
of practical consciousness, even if some sort of homogeneity at the level
of discursive consciousness (explicit institutionalization) is achieved. This
separates the (institutionally) ‘old’ who have less of a capacity to retool and
relearn new habits from the (institutionally) ‘young’ who are able to recon-
vert (through skill transfer) not yet crystallized practical investments into
new patterns of habitualized expertise to generate and organize action under
currently developing external supports.
Thus, generation can be a useful analytical notion to define the shared experience
of living a ‘crisis of presence’ (De Martino, 1975), a momentary failure of the
possibility of synthesis according to past references, and in the absence of new
and clear references for orienting oneself in the future. Social generation can be a
useful analytical tool with which to explore how people construct new meanings
and new practices to cope with historical situations in which personal becoming
cannot refer to given and well-established categories and vocabularies. Young
people perceive themselves ‘as falling out of history’, in a sort of presentism,
where they are forced to exercise creative solutions in response to the unpredict-
ability of everyday life (De Certeau, 1984).
However, once this epistemological posture has been taken, it is necessary
not to reify or crystallise it. It is important to analyse how ‘meaningful actions’
are constituted and deconstructed within their historical-social framework, to

focus on the different situated and contextualised positions, and on the rela-
tionships between capability/possibility and structural dimensions/systems of
categorisation.
Assuming a generational perspective centred on changes does not mean focus-
ing attention only on the subjective dimensions of the action, ignoring the impor-
tance of the ‘political economy’ (Cȏté, 2014, 2016), and the structural dimensions
that define the possibilities for action. On the contrary, it means recognising that
every generation location consists of a multiplicity of possible generation units
that constitute what Beck (2016, p. 194) calls ‘generational constellations’: a
diagnostic concept in which demographic dimensions and material inequalities,
diversity in education and labour market position, gender, ethnicity and other
forms of social categorisation overlap and interpenetrate.
The variability of ‘social locations’ (Anthias, 2013, 2016) precludes the possi-
bility of considering a generation as a unitary and homogeneous group and asserts
the need to look carefully at the material and cultural differences that differently
characterise how individuals and groups react to similar historical-social experi-
ences (Cȏté, 2014; France and Threadgold, 2016). The notion of ‘social location’
aims to represent a more complex and cultural informed idea of social class. It
suggests that class, gender, education, ethnicity, age and other forms of social cat-
egorisations all contribute, with their specific form of intersection, in shaping dif-
ferent conditions of existence and different dispositions and opportunities. In our
view, the notion of social location stresses the intertwining of material, cultural
and symbolic dimensions in shaping the resources and the constraints that inform
people’s definition of the situation and their agency. From a methodological point
of view, the notion of social location invites consideration of the specific social
context in which and from which social actors give meaning to their social experi-
ence and find room for their actions. It suggests avoiding too abstract generalisa-
tions (‘the youth’) and taking seriously the interweaving of social categorisations
that define the space of subjectivity and action.
Overall, the aim of this book is to show that the capability, and the need, to
manage complexity, plurality, uncertainty and variability – what we call the poli-
tics of the present – has become a mark of the experience of contemporary youth
and may constitute a basic component in creating innovative forms of social rela-
tionships. Moreover, it shows how this capability is affected by different social
locations.
While the book explores different local and specific situations in which such
capacity can be analysed, in this introductory chapter we start by focusing on
two main transformations that are promoting deep changes in how young people
make sense of their everyday experience: complexity and uncertainty. These are
considered the two main analytical elements that call for a politics of the present.
The transformations of the perception and experience of space and time contribute
to making complexity and uncertainty the constituent elements of the contexts
within which young people find themselves living and acting. This means that
new skills and competencies are needed to cope with constantly new situations,
and that possessing or not possessing these new skills can make the difference
between being included and being excluded. This can give us some indications
about the possible directions in which the everyday actions of young people will
develop in order to cope with complexity and uncertainty.
Facing complexity
One of the most important changes introduced by the processes of globalisation
can be summarised in the term ‘complex connectivity’ (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 2).
The term is used to denote the intensification of global interconnectedness (Held
et al., 1999) and the complex and dense network of linkages that it implies. It
highlights the fact that people’s experiences are ‘more connected’ because what
happens in people’s lives is closely related to the actions and decisions of oth-
ers, and that the specific characteristics of everyday situations in which people
have to act – acquaintances and friends with whom they are in contact; news and
information to which they have access; the goods and the commodities they can
buy; the music, movies or novels they love; behaviour models and rules to which
they decide to comply – often originate in places far from their physical location.
The radical and deep penetration of complex connectivity in everyday experience
transforms the idea of proximity, familiarity and belonging.
In a context of complex interconnectedness, what is perceived as part of peo-
ple’s sphere of interest, as part of their domestic, daily world, is no longer delim-
ited by the immediacy of the geometric space. It is rather the synthesis of the
interconnections that can and are to be activated, as well as those that impose
themselves from the outside and that cannot be avoided. In this way, the idea of
proximity is transformed. It does not refer primarily to the spatial dimension of
everyday experiences, but to their relational characteristics. What is near is not
necessarily what is spatially close, but what is in relation with people, what they
feel to be close, because it touches them, involves them, becomes part of their
routines and their world of meaning.
The changes in the way in which individuals perceive proximity and the
world of everyday life have important consequences. A first consequence is that,
especially for young people who have grown up by internalising this different
experience of proximity, interconnectedness is perceived as unavoidable. It is
taken for granted and conceived as a constitutive part of normality that indi-
vidual lives are affected by facts, decisions and rules generated and circulating
on a global scale. Consequently, proximity makes sense for its connections with
real, perceived or imagined global localities that are ‘in touch’ with the lived
space of everyday experience rather than being defined by physical proximity.
The world of everyday life is mainly defined by its relational rather than spatial
characteristics, by topology rather than by topography (Lash, 1999; Lury, Parisi
and Terranova, 2012; Shields, 2013). As Kallio, Häkli and Bäcklund (2015)
observe, topology is a useful way to describe dynamic relations that cannot be
(entirely) contained by scaled spatial entities, such as the geographical concepts

of territory, country or city.
By paying attention to connections, relations and changes, young people are
driven to find the raw materials for the construction of their points of view, life-
styles, routines, allegiances, sympathies, engagements and identifications in
global flows and in the networks of global interconnection to which they can
gain access, rather than simply using what is available in their immediate spatial
context. What constitutes their more familiar, personal, and authentic world is
no longer derived from the automatism of being located in a specific geographic
locality. It rather derives from their location in the networks of global intercon-
nection and from their capacity to activate and keep active connections. This does
not mean that locality has become inconsequential; it simply signals that locality,
and any sense of attachment and belonging, has to be actively constructed out of
a particular constellation of social relations in order to be meaningful, to be able
to produce identity, to become a marker of identification and distinction (Massey,
1991; Hugh-Jones and Madill, 2009). In this way, the ideas of community, belong-
ing, continuity, identity and difference are problematised and must be revised to
fit the new experiences better. Variability, eclecticism, bricolages and adaptability
become the standard. Being able to build an original, effective and rewarding
proximity by coming into contact with global networks that are considered closer
to one’s personal characteristics is more important than being similar and loyal to
the people living in the immediate geographical context. The necessity to build
personal localities from the multiplicity of options available promotes a growing
sensitivity to diversity. Super-diversity (Vertovec, 2007) becomes the main fea-
ture of everyday experience, and young people (must) learn to recognise, assess,
value or hide differences. This does not mean that geographical location becomes
irrelevant (see Visser in Chapter 11 of this book), but rather that it assumes a rela-
tional character (see Antonsich et al. in Chapter 12). The resources available and
the spatial and social collocation condition the type, the strength and the extension
of the relations that define the sense of the place.
A second important consequence is that, by promoting an emphasis on mean-
ingful connections (topology) rather than on geometric links (topography) (Cas-
tells, 1996; Lash, 1999; Lury, Parisi & Terranova, 2012), the current globalisation
processes bring to the fore practices of attributing meanings to social reality. They
foreground the processes of the social production of reality and encourage reflex-
ivity (see Chapter 1 by Domaneschi and Chapter 9 by Joly in this book). Producing
a personal and original proximity means being able to manage global intercon-
nected localities; it means recognising the diversity of contexts and understanding
the rules that apply to them. In order for this task to be accomplished, young peo-
ple must learn to move from one environment to another. They must use different
languages, understand and apply different rules, take into account the expecta-
tions of the different people inhabiting the different networks that they visit, and
avoid being excluded. Constructing and preserving topological proximities of this
kind requires the capacity to adjust, translate and transform.
The experience of constantly moving from one context to another and of link-
ing together elements from disparate global flows makes evident that what is valid
in a specific context cannot be exported successfully to others. It becomes evi-
dent that rules, codes and languages do not derive from universal principles or
laws; they cannot be taken for granted or regarded as unchangeable. Instead, they
depend on the contexts in which people are to act, the goals they aim to achieve
and the hierarchies of power that apply in the specific situation. In this way, a rela-
tivistic attitude is promoted: rather than adhere to a defined set of norms, young
people learn that it is important to understand what is valid in the specific contexts
in which they must act.
The injunction to be flexible assumes an ambivalent value. On the one hand,
it presses young people to be independent, to make their own choices, to express
their preferences amid the great possibilities offered by the global networks. On the
other hand, it becomes evident that the individual possibility of choice is restricted
to the options already present in the global flows, while the possibility to have a
voice in defining new options is problematic. In this way, the capacity/necessity
to understand the relativity of the different contexts foregrounds the importance of
agency. At the same time, however, it shows the strength of structural constraints;
constraints that cannot be easily ignored, avoided or bypassed because they arise
from conditions, decisions and processes that are placed on indefinite dimensions,
more and more distant from the possibility of subjective intervention, modifica-
tion and resistance (Beck, 1992). As Alberto Melucci (1996, p. 43) so effectively
remarked:
we have become migrant animals in the labyrinths of the metropolis, travel-

lers of the planet, nomads of the present. In reality or in the imagination,
we participate in an infinity of worlds. Each of these worlds, moreover, has
a culture, a language, and a set of roles and rules to which we must adapt
whenever we migrate from one of them to another. Thus we are subjected
to mounting pressure to change, to transfer, to translate what we were just a
moment ago into new codes and new forms of relation.
However, the capacity to be a nomad of the present depends on specific skills that
are unequally distributed. Having the resources needed to be mobile, knowing dif-
ferent languages, understanding the different codes and applying them correctly
to different situations, and tolerating ambivalence and uncertainty make the dif-
ference between being included or excluded, being able to take full advantage of
the situation or being considered extraneous or unfit.
Living uncertainty
Besides interconnections and the necessity of continuous translations, being
nomads of the present means being able to deal with contingency and uncertainty,
to cope with a given space-time situation made by a complex overlapping of
identities, references, opportunities and constraints. Like complexity, uncertainty

also has become a fundamental aspect of post-industrial society, characterised by
globalisation and digital economies. Although, contrary to complexity and con-
nectivity, uncertainty is certainly not a new historical phenomenon and has always
characterised social life, it is its current perception to represent a new issue. The
perception of uncertainty is related to unprecedented levels of personal security,
at least in Western countries, but also to growing levels of unpredictability of
the future. It is the certainty of uncertainty, without promises of a final goal, the
realisation that uncertainty is here to stay and that we need an art of living perma-
nently with it (Bauman, 1999). Uncertainty, as the lack of ontological references
in everyday life (Giddens, 1984), as structural insecurity to which every individ-
ual has to find situated and impermanent solutions, can be considered typical of
current post-industrial societies (Beck, 2006). Everyone is constantly looking for
a personal stability with strongly individualised characteristics, while maintaining
relationships with the recognition, the representations and the choices of others
(Martuccelli, 2017). Uncertainty encourages the focus on the contingent situation,
while the references of the past are vanishing, history becomes a history of the
present (Spivak, 1999) and contingent and singularised solutions are related more
to the given of the context that to past experiences.
In terms of space and time relations, this historical transition has enhanced a
process of presentification that has also changed the perception of one’s agency
and vulnerability, especially among the younger generation. While in philosophi-
cal terms (such as in Husserl) presentification concerns the reproduction of an
impression, recalling an absent object to mind, and is related to the notions of
‘presence’ and ‘absence’, in sociological terms ‘presentification’ means a sub-
jective relation with time. Presentification can be considered a lifestyle focused
on the present, on immanence, accompanied by a difficulty in imagining the
future, typically observed among youth in Western countries (Alteri, Leccardi and
Raffini, 2016; Colomb, Leonini and Rebughini, 2018). Presentification is char-
acterised by the paradoxical oscillation between fatalism and hyper-realism. On
the one hand, the difficulty in selecting among and interpreting the complexity
of the data in front of oneself generates a fatalistic attitude, a new avatar of what
Bourdieu (1984) called the amor fati; on the other hand, it leads to a realistic
approach, free from illusions and utopias and based on a sort of life-long learning.
The difficulties in making long-term plans, or foreseeing the effects of current
choices, enhance tactical attitudes and require the ability to surf on the instability
of the present, instead of openly confronting oneself with structural constraints.
Moreover, the necessity to choose among multiple strategies and unforeseeable
perspectives requires an agency based on an oxymoron of ‘obligation/opportu-
nity’ connected with the need to face the complexity and variability of situations
(see Bertolini et al. in Chapter 5 and Banaś in Chapter 8 of this book).
It is in the practices and choices of young people that we can observe a nor-
malisation of uncertainty, sometimes translated into a sort of ‘active resigna-
tion’, whereby action must be taken anyway, because remaining still would
mean succumbing. In this case, agency is based on the capacity to understand the
options available, avoiding immobility and failure to recognise opportunities or
to promote and create them.
Because time has been accelerated by technological change (Eriksen, 2001;
Rosa and Scheurman, 2009), the presentification of action, whose coordinates are
only those of the contingent situation, requires a rapid reaction. Again, although
current acceleration can be considered only an ‘acceleration of acceleration’ typi-
cal of the modern framework (Koselleck, 2004), this is another evident genera-
tional turn. The acceleration of social and technological transformations fosters
a rapid erosion of personal and collective experiences, a decreasing time period
during which expectations based on past experience reliably match the future.
The time required to make decisions, to orient one’s action or to evaluate ideas
and experiences is more and more brief. Choices and decisions, as well as values,
have an increasingly short period of validity, and it becomes impossible to fol-
low consolidated and shared routines. Because opportunities cannot be missed,
cumulating multiple and short experiences – albeit unsatisfactory – is necessary to
avoid social exclusion and isolation. This management of the present means being
able to situate oneself where the flows of chances and information are thicker and
more intense.
In this new scenario, precariousness does not concern work experiences alone;
it also involves the possible effects of choices and decisions concerning everyday
life (Cingolani, 2014; Bröckling, 2016). Young people today are constantly called
upon to shape their biographies and make choices, not because of the weakening
of structural constraints – such as family and gender patterns – but because of
their proliferation (Beck, 2016). A life plan can no longer be the organising prin-
ciple of a biography, while on a systemic level we witness the fading of the myth
of progress and the end of the teleological orientations of history, with a sensation
of continuous metamorphosis of everyday life references. Multitasking capacities
become paramount.
Indeed, this new experience of time and agency is in tune with the immate-
rial and digital economies of knowledge, where most new professions are de-
spatialized and can be performed in different spaces and at different times with
the help of technological devices. Presentification is extended to different forms
of spatiality and the same ‘present’ can follow us in different contexts, of personal
and professional life.
New skills, new exclusions

The capacity to deal with the growing complexity and uncertainty of everyday
experience promotes new skills but also marks new lines of exclusion. Being
able to navigate super-diverse, fast-changing and uncertain environments requires
the development of a specific set of personal capacities (Melucci, 1996), which
depend on the material and cultural resources on which an individual can draw to
think and act in order to be recognised as a person by others, and to invest energy
in personal fulfilment. Personal capacity refers to ‘a formal and processual capac-

ity which enables the individual to assume a situational identity without a loss of
a deeper sense of continuity of her/his personal existence’ (Melucci, 1996, p. 52).
Such material and cultural resources for personal capacity can be analysed as
both historical and conjunctural, and not only as related to the social position
from a structural point of view. This means that we can analyse them from a gen-
erational perspective and investigate their consequences at the intersection among
different categories such as gender, education and family economic background.
Indeed, the consequences of presentification, for example as in the precarisation
of jobs and opportunities in the labour market, are generational characteristics, but
they can vary according to specific situations, to personal and family resources,
and they involve different forms of social inequality (Lorey, 2015; Kelly, 2017;
Colombo, Leonini and Rebughini, 2018).
Besides personal capacities to seize the right opportunity, agency starts from
different chances and resources, and thus from different contingent social posi-
tions, for example from the different intersecting of gender, education and family
context in terms of economic resources, social relations and educational back-
ground. This means a different mix of opportunities and constraints, a different
starting point in evaluating one’s vulnerability and points of strength. It means
relying on skills of adaptation and improvisation, but also facing unexpected risks
of exclusion. Yet, it is evident that young people from families with good eco-
nomic, social and educational capital not only can rely on much broader and more
composite resources, but they can also accept longer periods of uncertainty and
precariousness, or jobs below their expectations, as temporary transition phases
towards their goals. Conversely, young people with less economic and educational
capital, who usually live in or come from families that also have low economic,
relational and educational resources, are obliged to invest only in their personal
capabilities, with a higher form of individual responsibilisation.
Indeed, uncertainty and complexity require new skills and foster new forms
of social stratification, whose combination of ‘capitals’ – in Bourdieu’s (1984)
sense – only partially correspond to previous forms of social inclusion and exclu-
sion. While the reference to social structures becomes increasingly blurred, the
over-investment in personal capacities becomes evident. The challenge of find-
ing a job and constructing a professional career tends to be declined as a per-
sonal challenge, while agency is widely perceived as the capacity to seize the
moment, to manage ambivalence, to translate from one code to another, to orient
expectations in accordance with the expectations of the context. The capacity of
improvisation and adaptation becomes a new form of agency, free from the pride
and self-confidence typical of the ‘modern subject’, whose limits were recognised
in external natural and social constraints to be overcome. Young people seem
aware that economic, social or environmental limits have to be taken seriously
into account, trying to bend or manipulate them, at least in the contingency of
the situation. Their agency continues to be a practical capability of doing, related
to the crafting capacities of the human as homo faber, whose characteristics are
no longer exclusively related to the material interaction with the environment,

but continue to be oriented by the search for the sense of what is made (Sen-
nett, 2008). Adaptation and improvisation are not simple reactions to the growing
unpredictability but include the sense of the practices of such improvisation (see
Farro and Maddanu in Chapter 10 of this book).
The politics of the present

The necessity to govern, invent and reconfigure everyday life becomes a new
form of ‘politics of the present’. This specific ‘politics’, as the art of governing
what is going on – to find the ‘desirable effects’, as in the Aristotelian Politics – is
a technique of everyday life that young people learn to apply to cope with unpre-
dictability, more than to predispose the future. At the same time, such politics is
a generative production of new practices ‘from below’. Politics means trusting
one’s capacity to grasp and modify the situation, to avoid abandoning oneself to
events and the processes of alienation. When amor fati and cynical hyper-realism
collapse in the concreteness of a specific situation, the politics of the present arises
as the necessity to manage the given.
Here, the present is a reference to the specific frame of the action, to the spatial
and temporal situation where young people must act, a situation characterised
by contingency and continuous becoming. The frame of the action is dominated
by unpredictable circumstances that evade the capacity of the subjects to foresee
them, and by the elaboration of solutions, choices and practices that start from the
current configuration of social relations. Obstacles, or unexpected chances, can
appear without notice, and they have to be treated with solicitude. Thus, the poli-
tics of the present has a deep immanent character: practices and choices, personal
capacities and tactics, have to be processed here and now.
Navigating the present, with its multiplicity, its instability and the uncertainty
of seizing the right moment, means being able to translate experiences and com-
petences from one situation to another. Experiences are not cumulated in a tem-
poral way, in a vertical stratified form, but connected in a horizontal, presentified
way, to be rapidly converted. The present is no longer a fleeting moment, but the
only horizon where relations and strategies can be organised. The politics of the
present is a way to be able to seize connections, and contradictions among them,
beyond mere adaptive utilitarianism.
This tendency towards a ‘politics of the present’ as a form of agency, of criti-
cal and creative capability, and not only as form of adaptation, can be consid-
ered a historical phenomenon, but it can be more easily observed – with different
intensities and characteristics – among the current generation of young people.
To some extent, this recalls de Certeau’s (1984) definition of agency as the ‘art
of doing’, a way to cope with the constraints of the situation developing a sort
of problem-solving creativity, for which lives assume the form of a continuous
self-management of contingent resources. This also recalls Foucault’s ‘art of not
being governed like that and at that cost’ (1997, p. 27), as attempts to escape the
constraints of the situation, acknowledging the necessity to work with and within
the current situation, navigating among constraints that cannot be definitively
overcome.
The politics of the present is a government of contingency, the art of those
who are accustomed to improvisation here and now; it is different from the Fou-
cauldian ‘ontology of the present’ (Foucault, 1997), or from Butler’s (2005) ref-
erence to vulnerability as incompleteness of personal autonomy. More than an
analytical definition of the capabilities of the subject, based on an idealistic repre-
sentation of the subject and her/his agency, the politics of the present assumes the
characteristics of a historical and generational stage, a cultural attitude embodied
in the everyday practices of young people. It outlines a transition in which tech-
nological, material and social changes, intertwined with cultural diversity, fosters
a new idea of agency, more related to negotiations and connections than to radical
oppositions and coherent ideas of the future.
Inevitably, the relative absence of the state, of welfare resources and of political
and institutional references from the discourses of young people is the comple-
mentary side of the strong injunction to self-government. In a neoliberal land-
scape, young people are accustomed to the idea that social inequalities will not
be overcome with the help of institutional interventions. Distrust in institutional
solutions to inequalities of chances is the complementary side of the politics of the
present and its emphasis on situated solutions.
Politics of the present and challenges of the future

Besides its capacity to refer to individual experiences of managing and surfing
uncertainty and to highlight forms of agency firmly placed in the here and now
of the contingent situation, the idea of politics of the present directs attention to
the collective and social implications of young people’s efforts to govern what is
going on. Politics, in this case, refers both to a form of discipline that regulates
individual and collective action and to the ways in which the action confirms or
transforms existing institutions by redefining the conditions of collective action.
In the former case, politics of the present can highlight how the pressure imposed
by the necessity to cope with complexity and uncertainty constitutes new forms of
constraints and opportunities. Young people are constantly called upon to expand
their personal abilities and to invest resources in self-realisation as autonomous
and active subjects (see also Tejerina in Chapter 6 of this book). In order not to
be isolated or excluded, young people have to be reflexive; they have to learn to
remain up to date, on the move (for the relevance of the ‘mobility imperative’, see
Cuzzocrea in Chapter 3 of this book). On the one hand, they are under constant
pressure to develop useful resources to face complexity and uncertainty, and to
promote creativity, innovation, detachment from the taken-for-granted and explo-
ration (as shown by various chapters in this book: see particularly Chapters 5, 9
and 10). On the other hand, the injunction to be active and creative constitutes a
new form of self-discipline. As Theodoridis et al. show in Chapter 2, in situations
of resource restriction or in the impossibility of acting effectively for the loosen-

ing of structural constraints, action can be oriented towards forms of masking dif-
ficulties and can be reduced to the maintenance of a self-image, often virtual and
disconnected from real experience, which conforms to social expectations. The
capacity for action and innovation is then reduced to maintaining a self-image in
tune with the social demands, encouraging young people to be in harmony with
the contexts rather than acting to modify them for their own benefit. The binding
force of the context is further accentuated by the observation that possessing a
strong endowment of personal capacity is not always sufficient if the context does
not allow it to be fully exploited (see Chapter 1 in this book).
New forms of potential exclusion emerge. Producing the necessary personal
capacity, the indispensable set of skills and resources, can be problematic when
young people start from a disadvantaged social location. The fatigue and the dif-
ficulty of investing constantly in personal capacity can also foster forms of closure
and adaptation to one’s condition, especially among those with the most limited
material and cultural resources. In this case, the effort to control the uncertainty
and variability of the contexts can be resolved in an attempt to limit mobility
between one context and another, exposing as little as possible to unknown situ-
ations and new relational circles or placing trust in forms of stability that the pre-
sent contexts do not seem able to offer (see Chapter 7 by Visser and Chapter 11
by Gandini and Leonini in this book). This can foster also feelings of ‘lagging
behind’, new forms of closure and attachment to presumed past certainties, restor-
ing vigour to forms of authoritarianism, populism and racism.
A politics based on contingency and oriented to managing complexity and
uncertainty, rather than assuming the task of overcoming them – which appears
objectively problematic and beyond the individual’s capacity for action – brings
to the fore the importance of social location, and the different distribution of
social, material and cultural resources. The affirmation of the politics of the pre-
sent induces us to reconsider both the forms of political mediation and the policies
to support participation and prevent marginalisation. Civic and political participa-
tion become more fractured and episodic, while they can assume forms of strong
intensity and involvement.
The politics of the present requires a specific form of illusio (Bourdieu, 2000):
the belief that the game in which we are involved is worth playing but, at the same
time, the ability to maintain a certain distance, to look at the game with ‘irony’
(Rorty, 1989). Rather than being taken for granted, the politics of the present
requires that the rules have to be scrutinised and understood, so that they can be
fully exploited, allowing the actors to seize the favourable moment. The forms of
involvement do not exempt from maintaining a reflexive distance from the game;
a distance that can appear both as a form of distrust towards the fairness of the
game, and as an ability of the actors to consider themselves agents and not to lose
sight of the structural dimensions that delimit the game, supporting the awareness
that the definition of its rules goes beyond the possibility of action of individual
players. Participation and support for political and institutional action is no longer
guaranteed ‘in the long run’, but subjected to verification and rejection when the
action or policy fails to achieve the desired results. This stresses how contingency
and presentification affect the political action, eroding the guarantee that political
support or political involvement can be maintained without immediate concrete
results (Alteri, Leccardi and Raffini, 2016; Broom, 2017).
To conclude, this book shows how the politics of the present in which young
people live today outlines new forms of opportunities and constraints, new privi-
leges and new processes of exclusion. Young people who do not have the skills
appropriate to the circumstance, or cannot be ‘reflexive, active and flexible’
enough because of the lack of appropriate resources, risk new forms of margin-
ality. Taking seriously the idea of living in a politics of the present implies also
the effort to imagine active policies of support for an adequate development of
personal capacity. This means policies focusing on the development of material,
relational and cognitive resources that allow young people to maintain a space
of agency, despite the constraints of a society increasingly characterised by eco-
nomic instability, growing social inequalities, environmental alarms, fears for the
future and other forms of uncertainty, but also by complex interconnections that
can open unexpected pathways.
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Part I
Complexity
Chapter 1
Learning (not) to labour

How middle-class young adults
look for creative jobs in a
precarious time in Italy
Lorenzo Domaneschi
Introduction
The economic crisis that started in 2008 considerably affected young Italians,
becoming part of their everyday life and a taken-for-granted frame of reference
(Colombo and Rebughini, 2012). Compared with their peers in Europe, Italian
young adults suffer from a higher unemployment rate and more persistent condi-
tion of precarious employment, which affects their everyday living conditions
and their passage to adulthood (ISTAT, 2016). Such experience of job insecu-
rity, the fragmentary nature of professional careers and the difficulty of achiev-
ing economic autonomy strongly contribute to setting a wider scenario of social
changes that eventually creates ‘a new generational location’ (Colombo, Leonini
and Rebughini, 2018, p. 62, emphasis in the original).
Hence, the starting hypothesis of the research presented here is that ‘the crisis’
is not just a temporary economic conjuncture; rather, it is a shared experience, the
‘normal’ context in which young people are about to accomplish their transition
from school to work, from childhood to adult life (Cuzzocrea, 2011). Therefore,
the crisis itself becomes a social phenomenon reshaping the social positions of
individuals in both structural and subjective terms.
Nowadays, one relevant effect often highlighted by scholars and public opinion
of such a ‘new generational location’ is an increasing distance between young
people and public issues and the consequent uncertainty characterising youth’s
existential condition, with a weakening of their wider expectations and projects
and a forced focalisation on private and present issues (Brannen and Nilsen, 2002).
Nevertheless, volunteering and political activism outside institutional contexts are
increasing among youth, and the economic crisis, instead of only pushing young
people deeper into the realms of the ‘private’ sphere, also caused a proliferation
in several of these forms of participation (Henn, Oldfield and Hart, 2017; Genova,
2018). Within such a frame, the chapter presents the case of a collective of stu-
dents in Italy as an alternative small-scale form of political and cultural action
and explores its dynamics and limits. While examining a particular form of youth
activism in political squats, the chapter aims particularly to unpack the ‘black box’
of youth agency (Coffey and Farrugia, 2014) within the present structural context
set by the economic crisis.
20 Lorenzo Domaneschi
Therefore, the main questions that guide this study concern how classical struc-
tural categories like gender and cultural capital work together in defining the
structural gap between aspirations and actual potential, by a specific social group
of middle-class millennials. Which sets of constraints and alternative opportuni-
ties are put back into play in the daily practices of middle-class young students?
What is the experience and possibly reflexive re-interpretation according to dif-
ferent degrees of this structural gap?
In order to understand such issues, there is the need to look at the specific inter-
section of structural dimensions – gender, class and education – which generates
different social locations (Anthias, 2013) that, in turn, create different constraints,
opportunities and strategies. Accordingly, by intersecting gender and cultural cap-
ital, I aim to highlight the stratification internal to a generational location. Thus,
I start by briefly introducing the question of youth agency and the role of inter-
sectional studies in approaching such an issue. Then, I show how I drew on the
seminal work by Willis as a sort of ante-litteram intersectional scholar in order to
investigate middle-class young students in Italy. Finally, I present and discuss the
main empirical findings coming from my field work, and I conclude by analysing
how the precariousness produced by the incongruences between the school sys-
tem and the labour market opens a surplus of space for reflexivity, hence a sort of
sur-reflexivity1 which could become a specific resource in coping with the present
frame of uncertainty.
Youth agency, intersectionality and

habitus fragmentation
Agency is essential to one of the most considerable theoretical debates in contem-
porary youth sociology: ‘the relationship between individualization . . . and con-
temporary youth inequalities’ (Coffey and Farrugia, 2014, p. 464). Accordingly,
a relevant issue in the way agency is frequently operationalised in the sociology
of youth relates to issues on how the relationship between the subject and power
is understood (Spencer and Doull, 2015). From this point of view, agency and
structure are considered separate and opposed forces found in different portions of
the social world and with different effects on the social organisation of everyday
life. In this view, structure explains reproduction, whereas an autonomous crea-
tive agency explains social change, with Bourdieu (1990) and Beck (1992) being
brought in to represent, respectively, the structural constraints and the creative
agency of this dichotomy (Woodman, 2009). Eventually, the debate has led to the
need to move outside simplistic distinctions between agency and structure and,
following from this, to the call for increased dialogue between Beck’s work and
Bourdieu’s positions (Farrugia, 2013).
In line with such a plea, it becomes particularly useful to adopt the intersection-
ality perspective (Crenshaw, 1989; Walby, Armstrong and Strid, 2012; Colombo
and Rebughini, 2016) in order to cope with both the various structural dimensions
and the individual agency. In fact, the possibility of analysing the articulation of
Learning (not) to labour 21
structural categories such as class, gender and race/ethnicity – instead of consid-

ering them as independent and separate forms of power relations – is at the basis
of the notion of intersectionality as ‘an epistemological approach to domination’
(Colombo and Rebughini, 2016, p. 439). This leads to expanding the theoretical
and heuristic potential of intersectionality as an analytical tool, not exclusively
related to the investigation of overlapping forms of oppression, but which also
concerns the more general relationship between individual agency and structural
determinants. In short, the aim is precisely to show how intersectionality can
make a new contribution to the traditional agency/structure debate.
Despite differences and variations, the common theoretical claim of accounts of
intersectionality is that different social categories mutually constitute each other
as overall social structures as well as in creating composite identities. Structural
categories such as gender, cultural capital and class are not parallel; they cre-
ate each other and consequently cannot be examined separately. Converting this
statement into the analysis of youth cultures allows us to think of the complexity
of the shared social situation created by the frame of the ‘crisis’ as well as ‘the
complexity of their collective answers to their situation’ (Jensen, 2018, p. 414).
In a nutshell, it allows us to investigate the constraints and possibilities of a new
generational location. Taken as an epistemological approach to domination, then,
‘intersectionality may be useful for the analysis of not only the “matrix of domi-
nation” but also the “matrix of privilege” to show how any single categorisation
only works in relation to other categorisations to produce a field of opportunities
and constraints’ (Colombo and Rebughini, 2016, p. 443).
In this broader – epistemological – sense, intersectionality may be usefully
compatible with Bourdieu’s sociology, in particular his view on the body and his
idea of the habitus as socially conditioned embodiment (Jensen and Elg, 2010).
Habitus is in fact both classed, gendered, ethnicitised and racialised. Thinking
of the habitus as multidimensional and complex (that is, as simultaneously con-
ditioned by different social structures) but also as the basis for practical agency
(Bourdieu, 1990) seems fully compatible with this particular ‘epistemological’
approach to intersectionality.
A key register of the concept of habitus is, in fact, that it incorporates past experi-
ences which are modified by present ones, as well as a sense of a probable future
(Bourdieu, 1990). Yet, Bourdieu changed his presentations of the notion of habitus
during his works: from earlier elaborations, where a unified habitus is prevalent,
to later conceptions of habitus fragmentation (Silva, 2016). It then accounts for a
plural interiority in tension with dissonances and fragmented belongings. This is a
key theoretical connection with intersectionality: how the habitus incorporates dif-
ferences and is transformed as the person relates to various fields both over time and
simultaneously. The habitus ‘helps to understand social change because it provides
multiple locations to negotiate submission and defiance, adaptability and resistance’
(Silva, 2016, p. 174). A challenge for the habitus in contemporary life is then inte-
gration, but integration is not solely made within a unit. It can happen from various
units and present varied depth and texture in different cases and circumstances.
In the case of young people of Generation Y (Strauss and Howe, 2006; Kelan,
2014), therefore, the research aims to investigate in what way this generation –
not necessarily in its most marginal positions – is positioned with respect to struc-
tural categories like gender and cultural capital: namely, how and how much they
are more or less able to manipulate and reflexively managing such categorisation
and how, at the same time, these intertwined categories contribute to define con-
texts in which these individuals are located. Hence, intersectionality is employed
as an analytical approach to investigate how different ‘structural categories’ act
not only by adding privileges or disadvantages but, above all, by defining the
conditions for particular social locations (Anthias, 2013).
Learning (not) to labour: the case of young

middle-class activists in Italy
The idea of generational locations (Mannheim, 1952; Woodman and Wyn, 2014),
understood as a set of attempts at a solution, answer or response to a shared situa-
tion, did not necessarily imply an optimistic prognosis for such solutions. For exam-
ple, resistance may be practiced in a way that actually strengthens the reproduction
of class society. Such mechanisms, in fact, were the main theme of Paul Willis’s
seminal work, Learning to Labour (1978), that explicitly contains a sophisticated
analysis of the relationship between youth agency and structural reproduction. He
demonstrated that youth creative resistance against class dominance in school – a
practice he termed counter school culture – in fact facilitated the reproduction of
the overall class system and was part of what doomed working-class young stu-
dents (the ‘lads’) to traditional, dreary sweatshop jobs. Willis argued that ‘the lads’
gained status from the construction of a tough and sexist masculinity in a situation
where they were otherwise disadvantaged due to their class position (Willis, 1978).
Thus, mixing and matching the effect of different social categorisations (class and
gender), ‘Willis’ analysis may be considered an example of an intersectional analy-
sis without the concept’. (Jensen, 2018, p. 415).
Hence, the inspiring work by Willis could be very useful in researching the
present situation in Italy, especially the case of middle-class young millennials. In
fact, if we look at the latest Istat report (2016), 62.5% of young Italians between
18 and 34 years of age, the so-called Generation Y (Howe and Strauss, 2000;
Kelan, 2014), still live with their parents, with a marked difference among women
(56.9%) and men (68%), but above all a significant difference with the European
average, which stands at 48.1%. The most interesting aspect of this sociologically
growing inequality, the effects of which seem to fall especially on the generation
born between 1980 and 2000, concerns the impact from the initial structural con-
ditions: according to Istat (2016), in fact, Italy is among the European countries
where the advantage of individuals whose starting status is ‘high’ is greater; that
is, at the age of 14 years they lived in a house owned and who had at least one
parent graduated and occupied in a managerial profession.
Therefore, the research aims to examine the particular generation of millennials

(born between 1980 and 2000), as defined as a new shape of ‘generation betrayed’
(Bourdieu, 1979, p. 148) in which the gap between the aspirations produced by the
school system and the actual possibilities it offers becomes a structural fact, that
affects in a different way all members of a generation. This imbalance caused by
such a structural gap between aspirations and possibilities nowadays assumes –
objectively and subjectively – different forms according to different social loca-
tions, particularly in the case of the middle-class young student.
If working-class kids, as shown by Willis, while showing capacity for innova-
tion and agency, through opposition to the school they condemned themselves to
a social destiny equal to their origin, we could ask what happens to middle-class
young adults today within the frame of crisis. If school degrees do not guarantee
the working and social position neither to the middle class, but rather produces
more and more precariousness, how do the identities of the middle class repro-
duce themselves?
In order to analyse and map the different social locations of these youngsters
positioned in the mismatch between the ‘educational paradigm’ and the prospects
of precariousness in the labour market, the ethnographic tool, as again proved
by Willis, is needed to grasp the daily living experience of these boys and girls.
Accordingly, conclusions presented in this chapter arise from the author’s long-
standing ethnographic engagement with a group of 26 middle-class young stu-
dents from 19 to 26 years of age (10 female and 16 male) in Milan, who squatted
in an empty building in the city centre in order to create a brand new space of
both political and artistic action, sharing skills and information with one another.
In particular, for 11 months I engaged in participant observation (March 2017 to
April 2018) and carried out in-depth interviews in order to uncover the rituals,
practices and mentalities produced by the participants of this youth political and
cultural space, and to understand how new subjectivities and collectivities might
come into being.
Finally, in order to investigate the dynamics of their particular social location,
I operationalised that into the dilemma about the possibilities and opportunities
for planning their future: that is, to plan or not to plan (Devadason, 2008; Wood-
man, 2011). The search interest, in fact, is to investigate the dynamics of the par-
ticular kind of ‘planning agency’ at work in the moment of thinking about the
future and imaging and projecting expectations and aspirations.
Unpacking the black box of youth agency:

six ideal typical profiles
While the interviews and ethnographic transcripts were analysed using thematic
analysis for commonalities, in this chapter I will not present the analysis, as is
often the case, as a number of transcript excerpts from a selected part of the par-
ticipants to illustrate each theme. Instead, as other scholars have already proved
useful (Woodman, 2011; Franceschelli and Keating, 2018), I will present material
from six participants in the form of a small case study on each using a number
of extended quotations from the interview. Thus, I will illustrate the main themes
using the narratives and cases of specific individuals who distilled the wider pat-
terns apparent in the data. These case studies, along with contextual information
about their everyday lives and practices collected through the ethnographic work,
help us to shed light on the ways in which young people talk about their future
and eventually make sense of the often-contradictory experiences of their lives.
The discussion of empirical findings through these six small cases brings to
light the dual – and never dualistic – process of agency and structure; that is, the
intersection of the categories of age, gender and cultural capital and the differen-
tiation in the ability to manipulate more or less actively these social categorisa-
tions. To this aim, I will comparatively present two cases at a time, in order to
highlight three different themes that clearly emerged from the whole narratives:
(a) the dichotomy lying in their vision of future as a field of opportunity versus
a general sensation of feeling stuck in the present; (b) the comparison with past
generations; and (c) the feeling of an objective trade-off between achieving a
‘structural security’ and constructing a ‘personal culture’.
Marco and Filippo: on being young, male and educated

When talking about their future expectations, all the participants started from their
perspective on finding a job nowadays, in Italy, at the time of precariousness. Yet,
particularly two of them, Marco and Filippo,2 described vividly the polarisation
of such perspective. Both of them, in fact, were born in the same year (1996), they
are both students in humanities and their parents are managers or professionals.
Nevertheless, while Marco spent the first part of his childhood and his scholastic
career in a suburb, Filippo lived all his life downtown and attended one of the bet-
ter high schools in Milan.
When I asked Marco to explain something more about his hopes and expec-
tations about the future, he offered a very nuanced way of thinking about the
potentiality of what he called ‘his generation’ and the multiple institutional
impediments on the way. According to him, in fact, only if you are given some
‘personal resources’, mostly from family and education, is there a chance to not
‘remain stuck’ where you are.
Many of my peers with which I shared schools when we were young . . .

they didn’t have the same possibilities . . . but I’m not talking about money
or stuff . . . I mean . . . it’s not about economic resources . . . it’s more a sort
of . . . personal resources . . . being open minded . . . my mother used to give
me books to read since I was 3 . . . and not everyone got such possibilities . . .
and when you live in some places with some dynamics . . . I mean . . . in
the suburbs where I lived . . . well . . . from there you can’t really go any-
where . . . such neighbourhoods create a deep split between the ones that
actually seek for a chance and maybe they could eventually work it out . . .
and the ones that give up to their reality . . . and finally they start some ran-
dom job and they will remain stuck forever in this loop . . . you know . . .
While Marco saw his view of the future as a possibility to escape from institu-
tional weights and constraints that work to lock ‘his generation’ in the place of
uncertainty and precariousness, Filippo proposed a quite different narrative about
the future of his generation.
we are 20 years old now . . . in a society in which it seems that if you’re

20-something you’re not of value . . . but we know we have skills . . . espe-
cially in arts, music . . . and politics too . . . and in this little lab we try to
understand what we can do with such talents . . . the fact is that ever since
I was a child I’ve always been told that here in Italy . . . well . . . there is not
work for us . . . and you grow up thinking that as long as you’re only a young
man, you are not of value . . . then you start university, but you’re still too
young to be of value . . . and then maybe you get a degree, but you’re still
too young to make any difference . . . well . . . in such a place . . . it’s hard to
think that the world is your oyster . . . you know what I mean? . . . Yet, I’m
20 years old and I have in fact my life in front of me and it’s now the time to
really affect my life . . . we must continue to do so even if we do not make a
lot of money with this . . . this does not matter to me.
Clearly, Filippo reflexively deconstructed the hegemonic discourse about his gen-
eration that is reported to be not yet ready to properly participate in the world.
Eventually, he is able to manipulate the dominant categorisation about ‘age’ and
to convert his actual location in a sort of reservoir of agency and creativity, where
future becomes more and more a field of opportunities to catch than a cage of
constraints to battle.
Chiara and Loredana: on being part of a generation

The strong feeling of being stuck in the present and the possibility of eventually
overcoming such a constraint is often considered by young millennials to be a
legacy of the past generation. In fact, Chiara and Loredana deal explicitly with
such an issue. They are both born respectively in 1996 and 1995, and both their
parents are professionals. While Chiara was attending a design school, Loredana
was just concluding her first degree in philosophy and was about to start a mas-
ter’s degree program in performing arts.
Chiara highlighted how the fear and anxiety about the future are linked to the
conversion of the labour market within a frame of precariousness and uncertainty.
As she explained during the interview, while her parents could benefit from a
guaranteed path from education to work, she and her peers suffer from a general-
ised anxiety because of the break of such a path. Chiara also finds herself ‘split’ in
a sort of dilemma, between her confidence in her personal agency and her ability
to work out everything she wants; and, on the other side, the structural and objec-
tive limitations she kept encountering in the real world.
when I compare mine with other generations . . . well . . . my parents simply

got graduation at university and everything was easy . . . Take philosophy for
example . . . my uncle got a degree in philosophy . . . and then he worked
all his life at Corriere della Sera [national newspaper] . . . I mean . . . he
never suffer of any kind of anxiety . . . now . . . a lot of my friends studying
philosophy . . . they share the fear of the future . . . I can see a lot of people
around me who are lost and anxious about their future . . . and such a panic
eventually locked them to the present . . . so that they are not able to dream
big. . . . To me . . . I have conflicting opinions . . . on one side . . . when I think
about my future I feel like I’m doing well and sooner or later . . . I’ll find a
job or something . . . I’m pretty sure I’ll figure it out. . . . Yet, when it comes
to actually doing stuff . . . another part of me tells me exactly the opposite . . .
and eventually I find myself split in such a dilemma.
While Chiara experienced such a ‘split’ as an everyday condition of ambivalence,

Loredana elaborated even more on the question of comparison between genera-
tions. In fact, she is able to handle the social categorisation about ‘generation’ and
she separates the condition of anxiety and uncertainty from the definition of her
generation, that is, of what it means to be young in this moment in Italy.
the thing with attending a humanistic course is that after a while . . . it’s
natural to feel stuck . . . but that’s only because we, as a generation, are used
to live in the family longer and longer . . . and this gives us a point of view
which is not ours . . . It’s still the one of our parents . . . so we often look at
our future with those eyes . . . that are not the eyes of the contemporaneity . . .
and this thing . . . I mean . . . looking at my future through my mother’s anxi-
ety . . . it drives me crazy . . . in fact . . . if I consider what today actually
represents to me . . . it doesn’t look so terrifying . . . we often carry on what
are in fact the fears of the past generation . . . like . . . ‘have you already find a
full time job?’ but what if I don’t want that? . . . there is a generalized anxiety
which is inherited from our parents that influences too much our choices . . .
and it has to be overcome . . . I don’t know how but I really think we’re in
a middle of a fight between us and the anxiety of those who came before us.
Through her reflexivity on her actual generational location, Loredana actively

rearranged the meaning of precariousness and future uncertainty, attributing such
perspective to the vision of the past generation more than to hers. Yet, as she states
at the end of the extract, this does not mean that the ambivalence (‘the fight’)
between feeling stuck in the present and viewing opportunities is solved; rather,
it moves the issue of fragmentation from the structural gap between school and
the labour market, towards the reflexive redefinition of her generational location.
Serena and Nadia: on being young, female and educated

A very similar perception of ambivalence can be found also in the case of gender,
as the two cases of Serena and Nadia, both born in 1994, help to illustrate. While
Serena’s parents have working-class jobs, Nadia’s parents work as artists in the
film industry. While Serena is studying law at the university, Nadia works at a big
multinational fashion company.
During the interviews, both of them told me about the feeling of a trade-off
between what they could find after school in the labour market and what they are
interested in doing in their personal life. Yet, such a trade-off is experienced quite
differently from the two girls, exactly in the way they experience their gender. In
fact, Serena explicitly questions the dominant gendered categorisation of females
in the labour market and highlights how she feels the need of ‘something else’
outside the labour market, in order to become what she aspires.
It scares me a lot . . . I mean really . . . it scares me thinking that if I want to

work in something near to what I’m studying I will need to go away . . . from
Italy . . . I mean . . . I worked since before starting university . . . but when the
only job you can find is to be a hostess . . . I mean . . . take my word . . . as
a girl, sure there is few things worse than doing that job . . . even if you’re
doing it for a serious company and you’re not dressed up like a sort of doll . . .
I mean . . . the job would be to stay still, to shut up and that’s it . . . I mean . . .
what is it? . . . we’re ending up building a generation of waitress, hostess and
fashion lovers . . . right now, relying only on institutional supports like uni-
versity or high schools, it’s simply not enough anymore, it can’t make you a
person out of yourself . . . that’s why we need something else . . . that’s why
we start this lab.
In Nadia’s case, the question of gender is not so explicit. Nevertheless, the trade-
off between her personal agency and contradictory structures is even more deep.
What is at stake is something more than a structural gap between her subjective
aspirations and the objective solutions offered by the institutions.
Right now . . . I’m taking a road . . . I mean . . . I now work in the fashion
system . . . they hired me . . . so . . . well . . . I don’t know . . . it’s not that
I don’t like it . . . it’s just that I feel the contradiction between my personal life
project in the fashion system . . . and what I’m doing here . . . at Lume . . . in
fact . . . since recently . . . I never told the guys that I was studying fashion . . .
and I always thought I needed to choose between working in the fashion
system and political participation . . . but now that the fashion people hired
me for a full time job . . . I think at a personal level I would keep working
there since I love it and it let me to pay the rent, but at the same time I would
save my moral integrity keeping working here . . . and maybe eventually even
combining the two worlds . . . that would be what I really want to learn.
All in all, ‘the contradiction’ she feels ‘at a personal level’ concerns the possibility
to keep working in the fashion field, as it fulfils her personal desires as a girl; and,
at the same time, being an activist in the artistic laboratory, as it fulfils different
ambitions of her being a girl. In the end, as she neatly states, her main aspiration
is to be able to ‘combine’ the ‘two worlds’, which means to be able to live what
she feels as an ambivalence, without solving it anyway.
Conclusion
In his landmark study of working-class youth in England, Willis (1978) offered
keen insight into the process through which working-class students, the ‘lads’,
creatively set up an experimental counter-school culture, penetrated the dominant
ideology and eventually disqualified themselves from anything but working-class
jobs. Willis’s study is in fact a benchmark for understanding the processes of
social reproduction for the working class. Less understood, however, is the pro-
cess through which middle-class youth engages with the same ‘educational para-
digm’ from which the ‘lads’ tried to escape.
As the previous extracts have shown, the internal divisions and contradictions
that Willis was keen to highlight in the practices of working-class youth can be
found also in middle-class processes of identity formation (Kaufman 2003). Thus,
while social categorisation like gender, generation and cultural capital certainly
act as constraints and contribute to defining the specific social location of middle-
class young students, at the same time, such categorisations could be actively
manipulated and handled by this particular group of young people, contributing to
redefine the boundaries of the same social location.
In particular, three main themes could be underscored. First, social identity
of these middle-class young students is constructed against the ‘educational
paradigm’ very much like in the case of working-class youth; yet, in this case,
the frame of reference for their social identity is searched and found outside the
labour market. The research findings show, in fact, that middle-class young adults
opposed to the neoliberal aesthetics and discourse of hard work and discipline
(Franceschelli and Keating, 2018) find in the scholastic institution a discourse of
creativity and talent, and a mechanism of conversion from the constraints of pre-
cariousness into opportunities for creativity and cultural innovation.
Second, as the discussion of interviews has proved, there is a strong situational
management of generational, educational and gender contradictions. Uncertainty
is a structural factor in the contingency which millennials have to deal with.
Despite cultural capital and gender structurally affecting the possibilities in plan-
ning about the future and creating aspirations, however, the research indicates
that more relevant than possessing such resources is the practical possibility of
activating them. Hence, the active management of contradictory structures (like
family, school and work) can be driven by a different particular intersection of
dispositions (like age, gender and cultural capital) which in turn leads to engage-
ment with practical strategies towards complexity and uncertainty.
Third, the particular change of perspective at work in this specific case of
middle-class young activists who look outside the labour market in order to find
the resources to construct their social identity is in fact made possible thanks
to the exceeding space of sur-reflexivity, so to speak, opened by the same frag-
mentation of the habitus generated by the precariousness produced by the incon-
gruences between the school system and the labour market. This creates the
possibility of reflexive strategies for habitus integration (Silva, 2016), which
guarantee to keep the ambivalence without going back to any unity.
In conclusion, returning to the more general and core sociological issue of the
power balance between agency and social structure, two specific spaces for research
could be identified: to develop the potential of applying an intersectional approach
to the field of youth cultures, and to identify new areas of empirical research in this
sub-field; to call in question the category of millennials as a generation itself, to
show how this category is in fact unable to grasp the different situations socially
experienced by different components of the current young generation.
Notes
1 I rephrase such a term from the well-known definition of ‘sur-modernitè’ by Augè (1992)
in order not to highlight the supremacy of such a reflexivity over others, instead aiming
to show the ‘exceeding’ part of the such an agency.
2 All student names are pseudonyms.
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Chapter 2
Negotiating reality through the

prosumption of the ‘unreal’ self
Young people’s identities in an age
of economic precarity
Konstantinos Theodoridis, Steven Miles
and Kevin Albertson
Introduction
In what follows, we address the relative effect of the economic crisis on the chang-
ing nature of consumption. In particular, we emphasise the need to recognise the
ways that young people adjust when a primary source of their identity construc-
tion has been negatively affected by the economic hardships caused by prolonged
austerity. Since the onset of the global financial crisis, young people’s everyday
lives have been characterised by extreme levels of uncertainty across countries
and regions (Cairns, 2014). Such uncontrollable situations and ‘manufactured
risks’, which undermine the certainty of everyday life, according to Ulrich Beck
(1992), sit at the very heart of our everyday experience of a so-called risk soci-
ety. For young people, the implications of a risk society are expressed by a state
of affairs in which the complexities and uncertainties of the world increasingly
threaten their personal sense of well-being. This is perhaps best expressed as a
breakdown of ‘normal biographies’ (Furlong and Cartmel, 1997).
The impact of the economic crisis upon young people in Greece, and specifi-
cally the capital city of Athens, has been profound. Young people’s lives have
been affected in unprecedented ways during the social, economic and political
crisis of the last years (Triliva, Varvantakis and Dafermos, 2015). The condi-
tions have resulted in the creation of a newly emerged social stratum consist-
ing of underpaid youth apparently living in a state of precariousness (Kretsos,
2014). In this chapter we consider qualitative data emerging from a series of
focus groups that were designed to consider the relationship between young
people’s consumption in Greece and their efforts to construct identities in an
age of precarity.
Given that most young people have grown up in a digital world, it is likely that
most are active Internet and social media users, keeping pace with the practices
of their generations as digital citizens (Buckingham and Willett, 2013). Indeed,
young people are the early adopters of such technology (Lenhart et al., 2015).
Thus, over the past decade, social networking sites (SNS), or alternatively, social
media (Papacharissi, 2015), have become a space for negotiating various aspects
The prosumption of the ‘unreal’ self 33
of young people’s identities. As social media use has expanded, young people have
come, in response, to rely on it for the presentation of the self and for the active,
contemporaneous performance of self (Hogan, 2010). This raises questions about
how young people use their social media profiles under precarious economic and
social circumstances. In particular we are concerned with the purpose of shared
videos and photos which might be used, for example, to highlight the impact of
risk, or rather more instrumentally, to create an impression of continued affluence
during a period of economic downturn.
From consuming goods to consuming social media:

constructing coherent biographies
For many years, sociologists have considered the role of consumption as a context
for the creation of meaning and strategies for the construction of the self (Fried-
man, 1994). This meaning-making process is implied in the work of Campbell
(1987), who argues that individuals emerge without having an already ascribed
identity. In this way, in his analysis of the consumer revolution, Campbell sug-
gests that it is important to shed light upon the complexity of how the nature of
demand is shaped by individual actions. In the context of social media, for exam-
ple, the audience to ‘the show’ is effectively absent, and applause is delivered
in the number of ‘likes’ one is paid for one’s consumption choice. Thus, we can
begin to think of consumption as, what is in effect, a presentation of lifestyle,
although one that is not the only form of enacted self-improving optimism. Photo-
and video- sharing social media platforms can thus be argued to be the ‘mini-
cathedrals of consumption’ of our age.
If we accept that consumption constitutes a vehicle for the construction of
potentially meaningful identities and that consumption provides a key resource
that helps the individual construct a stable sense of self, it remains unclear how
such a vehicle can be maintained in a risk society (Beck, 1992) where consump-
tion resources are limited. Online forms of self-representation clearly tell us
something profound about the changing nature of consumption (Marwick, 2015),
but the most potentially beneficial line of enquiry is best focused on the way in
which online representations of self, composed of ‘moments of being’, can substi-
tute, to some extent, for the reality of consumption. Such moments may perhaps
be less about the reality of someone’s life and may rather reflect their aspirations
in this regard.
Under the gaze of their peers on social media, young people may be motivated
to compete in how it is they present themselves from one moment to the next.
Such moments may simultaneously buttress close relationships and increase feel-
ings of trust and belonging (Bayer et al., 2016). In this sense, the virtual arena in
which young people consume, and thus young people’s consumption in general, is
more liable to be about impression management than it has ever been before: the
power to empathise some aspect of consumption, to neglect to mention others; the
power, to an unprecedented degree, to control one’s own brand.
34 Konstantinos Theodoridis et al.
Young people and social media platforms

Young people can be said to be engaged in a continuous effort to represent the
self (Livingstone, 2008), and visual representations of self and the comments and
appreciation they attract play a perpetual role in shoring up an individual’s sense
of who and what it is they are. Meanwhile, as van Zoonen (2013) suggests, there
is not a singular representation of the self, but many different and fragmented
aspects of it. Social network sites provide an environment in which such diversity
can, in theory, thrive, as Lincoln and Robards (2014) point out in their discus-
sion of Facebook, a social network site which has already achieved 10 years of
operation. Yet, it may be that the competition for ‘likes’ will rather drive the user
towards a uniform and non-challenging presentation of the self.
The new digital tools that are broadly used in content-sharing platforms pro-
vide the flexibility and control that individuals utilise to modify both their public
and private identities (van Dijck, 2008). Moreover, Tiidenberg and Baym (2017)
demonstrate that, in the discourse of buying, and of commenting on the images
demonstrating appropriate consumption choices, social media provides a plat-
form upon which the appearance of excess can be effectively celebrated. Insta-
gram is potentially especially effective in this regard, not least given the fact that
50% of young people use it (Duggan et al., 2015). But the key to an understand-
ing of the role of social media in a so-called Network Society (Castells, 2010)
and its impact on young people’s identity construction lies in the question of why
elements of the fragmented self are played out through the spaces that social
media provides.
Papacharissi, Mendelson and Papathanassopoulos (2011) specifically consider
photo galleries as a tool of self-representation and as a way to maintain biogra-
phies online. They focus on the Facebook profiles of college students in order to
understand why young people use the photo ‘tagging’ via a collage of personal
images as a practice of self-reflection and identity construction. It is by no means
unusual today, for example, for young adults to incorporate multiple hashtags and
to ‘tag’ others as a key part of their online social media activities. The multiplicity
and the plurality of hashtags signifies feelings, emotions, situations and identifies
relations among peers. In addition, boyd (2014) points out that it is through social
media platforms that young people have been able to construct their own ‘net-
worked publics’. In this way, teens have established a space within which they are
able to gather and socialise in a way which does not conform to specific elements
of formality and conformity.
Choice profile as an expression of

‘choice biographies’
In modern times, one of the main assumptions about our experience of every-
day reality is that it is transforming at a rapid rate. What used to be static in
terms of the rhythms of life experience has now apparently been superseded by a
fragmented temporality. This increases the ephemerality of phases of the ‘project’

and moments of the life course. For instance, ‘InstaStories’, a feature which ena-
bles the user to share photos or videos which disappear after 24 hours, provides
impermanent moments of desirable biography, a biography which may or may not
accurately represent the reality of everyday life. Due to their fragmented nature,
such stories have to be constantly reinvented in favour of new ones which take
on significant meaning in the context of the individual’s lived reality. Here, it is
equally important to focus on the experiences of young people as ‘creators’ and
‘curators’ when it comes to their social media usage. The active creation and man-
agement of their profile represent constant work for the citizen consumer (Soper,
2007). It follows that young people are being reconstructed as ‘prosumers’ (Ritzer
and Jurgenson, 2010) insofar as they are producing and consuming in building
their online profiles and biographies. In so doing, they not only consume social
media, they reproduce it; social media thus becomes the stage on which one’s life
is played out.
It is difficult to try to analyse new periods of life and transformations which are
realised by today’s young people without using the term ‘choice biography’ (Fur-
long and Cartmel, 1997). For du Bois-Reymond (1998), ‘choice biographies’ are a
product of the friction between the freedom of choice and the coerced selection of
the most socially suitable. Today’s young people face changes in their life course
which have affected their transitions moving from linear to non-linear and reversible.
A similar mode of transition has affected the process of consumption. The structure
and content of consumption has changed from ‘normal consumption’ – that is, where
the act and its conspicuous representation occur sequentially or simultaneously – to
‘choice consumption’. Moments of consumption and their representations are no
longer linear. Not every moment of consumption becomes simultaneously a moment
of self-representation; a moment of consumption might be more valuable to the pro-
file of a user after some time. The representation of conspicuous consumption can
be, effectively, ‘banked’ for later use. Reflection, not on consumption itself but on
how the portrayal of it is received, is, rather, an ongoing part of the experience.
Consumption itself is commodified; it is presentation that counts. The uploading of
a photograph, for example, is as identity-supporting as a new purchase or the night
out that the photograph depicts.
Against this increased use of social media, we must also consider that young
people today, and not least in Greece, are facing many changes arising from the
2008 economic crisis. These may adversely affect their ability to consume in the
traditional sense. For example, they are less likely to be in a position to follow
their career aims due to structural problems associated with the labour market.
Such pressures leave young people in a precarious position. On the one hand,
they are culturally compelled to reproduce the lifestyles of previous generations;
on the other, they are forced to adapt to the new economic reality of precarity
(Standing, 2014), instability, badly paid jobs and uncertainty. The reality is that,
even as consumption plays a progressively more significant role in how young
people see themselves, its realisation is threatened by the impact of social and
economic change in their everyday lives. Its representation might not, however,
be so threatened.
Young people in an empirical context

We choose to undertake focus groups as a means of addressing the changing ways
in which young people in Greece are consuming at a time of technological free-
dom and yet of economic constraint. Given that social media operates in such a
thoroughly cultural context in which personal and social meanings are negotiated,
focus groups were considered to be the most appropriate tool. The sample we
interviewed were effectively post-adolescent: none of them were married or had
children. The key priorities for the young people we interviewed included having
a job, seeking opportunities abroad, achieving aspirations online, family, flex-
ibility and success. The role of social media is to provide a space in which young
people can assert their sense of identity through consumption in such a way that
the uncertainties and frustrations they experience in these other elements of their
lives can be at least partially offset by the admiration that representations of con-
spicuous consumption provide.
A number of our interviewees expressed difficulty in recognising the symp-
toms of the economic crisis. Evidence of crisis is, of course, statistically clear.
For example, in 2015 youth unemployment rates reached around 50% (ELSTAT,
2016). However, some of the participants spoke explicitly about the way, on the
one hand, that everybody talks about the economic crisis, and yet at the same
time they can see that many ‘places of consumption’, such as bars, cafeterias and
restaurants, remain full to the brim. Following this, a participant questioned how
it is so many people can afford iPhones and keep going to shops. Many of them
queried whether any such crisis actually exists. Vicky (21) questioned whether
she is the only one who cannot see the crisis:
I might not see the crisis. It might be the case that the neighbourhood where
I live isn’t the appropriate area but I think that consumption hasn’t been
reduced but it is increasing.
Many participants recognised that their generation’s economic prospects will not
change for the better, either during the crisis or after, and that, as a result, realising
similar consumption patterns as parents is, in general, less likely. The discussion
around the variation in representations of excess in consumption between genera-
tions continues to be a central concern. Iole had the impression that when it comes
to consumerism, young people about her age engage rather more than older gen-
erations. Antigone explained this as a form of inconsistency:
I believe that the crisis has hit more older people and at the same time, young
people behave as they can’t see it, as. . . . And their choices are specific and
related to their image.
Many authors have discussed the performative nature of image in the construction
of young people’s identities. For Marwick and boyd (2011), for example, young
people are the group most likely to exercise and interact with multiple audiences in
order to ‘improve’ their personal brand. From this point of view, self-branding and
micro-celebrity can be identified as prevailing types of youth ‘attitude’ (Marwick,
2015). In order to belong, young people must pay close attention to how they are
perceived, not least by their peers. Antigone claimed that there is a new mentality
among youth, but not to the extent that they take responsibility for the crisis. In
short, young people’s relationship to consumption, far from being reduced as part
of the material conditions associated with the economic crisis, are actually play-
ing a more prominent role in how they see themselves. Thus, Antigone describes
a young man’s consumption of an iPhone as a way that he can prove himself. The
fact he is able to do so despite the crisis makes what the iPhone signifies more
powerful than ever.
The consumption of mobile phones was a recurring theme in our data collec-
tion, and respondents referred to the compulsion for young people to buy the
latest mobile phone just so that they are seen to buy it. So Chris, for example,
makes a comparison between himself and ‘irrational’ consumers, who apparently
buy technological devices without a reasonable logic for doing so. Yet, Chris also
spoke about how he planned to save money for a year in order to get his new
mobile phone when it entered the market. Clearly, competitive portrayals of con-
sumption play a key role in how young people assert their status, and ideally as
soon as new technology comes onto the market. While buying an expensive car
or getting on the housing ladder is something of an impossible dream for young
people, the constant quest for innovation and other technological devices signifies
their intention to display relative affluence during times when people more gener-
ally are prioritising their essential needs while making more considered economic
choices. Consumption plays a similar role for young people today, but it does so in
more of a reactive than a proactive fashion. In this respect, young people are what
Bauman (2007) calls ‘flawed consumers’. They are defined through consumption,
but their relationship with it is about survival. Where ‘belonging’ is beyond their
financial means, to avoid not belonging becomes the goal.
Social media representations and consumption:

the shaping of the consumer self
Antigone, a 21-year-old Greek student who works as a dance teacher, spoke about
her friends and how they have to keep buying new clothes for going to night-
clubs in order to take pictures, upload them to their profiles and finally succeed
in their ultimate goal, that is, to get more likes on their social media platforms.
This reflects the fact that for young people, it is the online representation of the
event, rather than the event itself, in which the significance lies. The purchase of
new clothes provides a rationale for posting pictures and thus provides a vehi-
cle for attracting more viewers, followers and ‘likes’. In this sense, consumption
provides a means to an end; to feel one belongs to the group through the status
that such ‘likes’ engender. Yet such ‘likes’ are social media history tomorrow. This
motivates the ongoing quest for the innovative:
INTERVIEWER: Are there any examples of people like your friend who buys some-
thing new just for the sake of uploading a photo and get more likes?
ANTIGONE: Yes, of course!
GEORGE: Everybody!
CHRIS: Too many people!
VICKY: Yes!
ANTIGONE: Yes, because she will upload the photo and then she is not going to
wear it again, just after one year. [. . .] She will wear it and then won’t use it
for a long time, she will buy new stuff.
Despite a level of exaggeration in the last statement as regards the length of time
until the item will be used again, there is a consensus that this is a common prac-
tice amongst young people’s peers. Moreover, young participants’ increasing
emphasis on the way that they experience their entertainment has changed what
it means to go on a night out. For example, Chris mentioned how young people
would previously have gone but without the focus on taking selfies for the sake of
their public profile (Tiidenberg, 2016). On this point, Chris was absolutely clear
and made a kind of self-criticism after a moment of reflection:
I might sound a bit like a grandfather now, but in the past, there wasn’t
a ‘selfie time’ or that this photo goes so well on Instagram and it will get
200 million likes.
In discussing going out, the young adults we interviewed said that from the total
number of hours that they spend in a club, five as they estimated, they were likely
to spend at least two of those hours on their mobile phones. Our respondents also
talked about friends who ‘lived for likes’ and for social media appraisal. When
they speak about it, they have in their minds specific friends who are dependent
on the ‘performance’ of their online profiles. So, for example, a friend of Chris’s
puts so much emphasis on how he represents himself online that he actually feels
depressed when a photo doesn’t ‘perform’ very well and he can spend days reflect-
ing on how he can best improve his self-production in this regard.
There are several interesting aspects about the use of social media representa-
tions in the context of the choices young people make as regards their individual
biographies. Iole speaks about how social media structures and improves one’s
social position. It provides ‘evidence’ that young people can apparently afford
a specific lifestyle and are relatively comfortable financially. Our respondents
talked about how some of their friends go to specific bars and cafes and that these
reflect a particular lifestyle. They characterise these fellow consumers as ‘normal’
people, like them, but who try to communicate their choices through what is a
more glamorous lifestyle. As we have noted, conspicuous consumption, in this

case through its ostentatious online representation by young people in Greece,
plays a role even at times of genuine economic crisis.
Following the rules: ephemerality and the ‘unreal’

The process which young people follow in order to upload videos and photos and
to share their experiences on social media platforms is complicated and abides
by specific rules. This process effectively constitutes a freely available form of
consumption designed for the promotion of self. What is important here is that
this self does not exist in reality; it serves only to imply the reality a young person
wishes to present. This brings us to the question of what can be defined as ‘real’
and ‘unreal’ in this context.
Take for example Chris (21), who talked about staying at home and playing
online games with his friend. His friend is a person who we could characterise
as being addicted to the ‘logic of likes’. This friend constantly interacts with an
‘unreal’ world through 24/7 access to someone else’s private life through multi-
ple devices and platforms. For example, Chris’s friend’s passion and addiction to
social media engagement led him to upload a picture of himself near the beach,
supposedly taken at a time shortly after they had stopped playing e-sports and
talking on Skype. Chris knew that his friend was, in fact, at home at the time.
In fact, his friend had taken this picture two days previously and simply saved it
up to post later, thus effectively digitally time-managing the self. It was appar-
ently not just the beach trip, but the timing of it which was important in this
case. The notion of ‘unreality’ or ‘semi-reality’ sits at the core of our analysis in
the above respect. The performances that young people engage in is, in part, a
form of ‘impression management’ (Goffman, 1959), and the degree of effective
management that is possible, in turn, is dependent upon how ‘of the moment’ the
particular social medium may be; our respondents commenting, for example, on
the decline of Snapchat.
Another interesting example of how young people’s constructing a parallel real-
ity in their ‘consumer persona’ plays a key role is through personal relationships.
For example, one respondent described how a couple went on holiday abroad and
uploaded many pictures in which they apparently expressed their love for each
other. Yet on her return, the friend telephoned in tears to explain that everything
was not good between them. With unintended irony, Antigone put it, ‘the reality
on Facebook is totally different’.
Despite the knowledge that they themselves manipulate the presentation of
their consumption experiences, many young people seemed unaware that others
would do the same. For example, many of those we interviewed discussed the
pressures that young people were under to go out and to be seen to be going out.
One of our participants discussed her experience of staying home on a Saturday
night. She describes how she made a conscious decision not to go out. But when
she saw her friends’ shared videos and ‘InstaStories’, a wave of disappointment
came over her. Similarly, a male participant talked about his decision not to go out
to a club. He expressed his disappointment to his friends about not going out with
them. However, he was surprised when they claimed that they had not had a good
time after all despite what appeared online to be a great night. He joined them the
next time they went out but ended sitting alone near the beach checking his phone
for the whole evening. For him, the night was an ‘absolute disaster’, and yet the
posted videos suggested something altogether different. There is evidence here
of social conformity. As a young person, it appears that you are simply obliged
to upload momentary expressions of good time and happiness. You cannot admit
that a night out was a failure, as to do so would reflect entirely negatively on how
you will be perceived by others and, indeed, how you perceive yourself.
This misrepresentation/falsification of reality also happens in the case of shop-
ping. Several of the participants offered examples of their friends going to a cloth-
ing store to try new clothes and taking pictures in the fitting rooms. These pictures
were subsequently uploaded, thereby creating the impression that the items con-
cerned were purchased, which, in fact, they were not. A similar example is the
case of a group of friends going out to shop. One participant described how some
of her friends took pictures with many bags, implying that she had spent a lot of
money. The reality was that she had bought just one item, and all the other items
actually belonged to her friends. In this way, young people manipulate social
media as a means of presenting a fake reality to propagate the values with which
young people wish to be associated. The question here, though, is really, who
is manipulating whom? Of course, young people may experience happiness and
excess during moments of consumption. In such cases, social media is used as a
means by which young people confirm, validate and magnify these moments of
consumption. Consumption choices are no longer validated and justified through
word of mouth. The validation of successful ‘consumption-choices’ which fit in
with an individual’s overall biography must happen online if the person is to suc-
ceed in the social media market-place, where success is evidenced by ‘likes’.
We must bear in mind these conversations took place in a country and a city,
namely Athens, which has been tremendously affected by the disastrous effects
of an economic crisis the like of which has not been seen in Europe since the end
of World War II. In this context, our participants admitted that the excess they
present via social media is a necessity insofar as consumption can continue to be
signalled, even when its costs are being reduced. It is in this sense that they argue
that evidence of the crisis simply does not exist on Instagram.
INTERVIEWER: Can you see elements of the economic crisis on Instagram?

IOLE: It isn’t there.
VICKY: Instagram doesn’t show the crisis.
CHRIS: On Instagram I do not want to show my problems, I want to show that
I don’t have any!
VICKY: That’s it.
IOLE: Everything is perfect. I don’t know what you do, but I’m perfect.
The reality of these young people’s lives is that the sense of choice that they have
feels broad in its scope. Consumption gives them a sense of ownership of their
self-branding. But ultimately, the fact that they are obliged to define themselves
in this way means that they will always be disappointed: they will never reach the
point of satisfaction.
Conclusion
This chapter has begun to interrogate the interconnection between a consumerist
and a social media logic, or, put another way, the complementary narratives of
consumption and social media representations and the critical idea of ephemeral-
ity in the conceptualisation of the prosumer self. It is clear young people may
exercise agency and reap the benefit of choice through the online management
of the self. However, while social media simply makes more choices available
regarding the avenues of self-representation that are available for them to pro-
sume, in doing so, it limits that choice. It ties young people even more closely to
the orthodoxy of consumption and specifically to the notion that the authenticity
of the self can be established through the means by which that self is represented.
The financial crisis accentuates the role of social media as a financially viable
option in a world that otherwise limits the choices young people have as ‘flawed
consumers’ (Bauman, 2007). Thus, young people have little choice but to repre-
sent themselves through their online ‘consumer persona’. Such a persona provides
them with some semblance of stability; but by buying into the appearance of sta-
bility, they defer the need to deal with the very instability from which they seek
to escape.
Acknowledgements
Konstantinos Theodoridis’s contribution was supported by a scholarship from the
Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, Greece.
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Chapter 3
‘Flexi-lives’
Facing the mobility imperative
Valentina Cuzzocrea
Introduction
My starting point in this chapter is the acknowledgement that, in order to under-
stand the implications of precarity in young people’s lives, it is necessary to go
beyond the experience of employment. However, it is also necessary to go beyond
a dichotomy which considers life and work as two separate spheres in potential
need of harmonisation – commonly framed through the idea of work-life balance.
In my doctoral research, which is mainly brought together in Cuzzocrea (2011a),
I attempted to see this through an elaboration of the concept of ‘flexi-lives’ (as
opposed to ‘flexi-jobs’), which I used in relation to different contexts such as Italy
and the United Kingdom, focusing on the specific roles which individualism and
individualisation play within coping strategies. A somewhat similar proposition
was made more recently by Farrugia, Threadgold and Coffey (2018, p. 273), who
argue that in youth studies:
an ongoing focus on employment conditions such as relative security and

financial remuneration has obscured another equally critical dimension of the
relationship between youth and work – that is, the significance of the practice
of labour itself in the formation of contemporary youth.
In a context in which structural insecurity is widespread for young people, a ‘flexi-

lives’ approach promises to capture the sense of work and the sense of youth.
The chapter is structured as follows: (a) I will illustrate briefly the conceptual
basis which has sustained my elaboration of the concept of flexi-lives; (b) even
more briefly, I will examine the characteristics that it has taken in the case of
Italy; and (c) I will illustrate my proposal for an enhanced version of this concept
in light of recent progress which has been made on the importance of space and
mobility in young people’s lives. While the specific case of Italy is a strong, albeit
extreme, one (Bello and Cuzzocrea, 2018), given the particularly unfavourable
position that early career individuals occupy in the labour market and in the life
course (Cuzzocrea, 2011b), it is my hope that scholars reflecting on different case
studies may also find the enhanced, dynamic version of a flexi-lives approach
‘Flexi-lives’ 45
tantalising in relation to other contexts. However, my discussion here is mostly

based on conceptualisation rather than on empirical data. I will start by illustrating
what I mean by ‘flexi-lives’.
Flexi-lives as coping strategies

A wealth of empirical studies have been dedicated to understanding how young
people cope with constructing their path into adulthood in difficult socio-economic
circumstances (for some recent Italy-based studies, see for instance Bertolini and
Torrioni, 2015; Leccardi, Alteri and Raffini, 2016; Leccardi, 2017; Rebughini,
Colombo and Leonini, 2017; Spanò, 2017; Colombo, Leonini and Rebughini,
2018). In a similar vein, a ‘flexi-lives’ perspective has been elaborated as a mean
to avoid reductionism to the employment sphere and, instead, to build up a broader
picture, taking in contextual- and cultural-specific dimensions of individualism
and individualisation, and leave space to indicate in what ways these strategies
may differ in relation to scope, ambition, expectation and focus.1 In other words,
building a professional path is seen here not only in relation to its work component
but as part of a wide-ranging life perspective. Individualism and individualisa-
tion are at times used interchangeably in what can be almost-overwhelmingly rich
debates; I have argued that they can be enacted in diverging directions across the
course of a life path. To start my discussion, I will provide here a basic definition
of the two.
Individualism usually refers to the primacy of an individual’s interests (Mar-
shall, 1998) based on a ‘cult’ of agency and self-control, according to which indi-
viduals are owners of themselves and responsible for that which is theirs. This is
connected to ‘a particular type of culture associated with private property rights,
personal consumption and individual autonomy’ (Turner, 2006, p. 282), and, from
a political standpoint, to a ‘doctrine associated with liberalism that emphasises
the autonomy, importance, and freedom of the individual in relation to the state’
(Turner, 2006). Individualism is often said to be a salient aspect both of east-
ern culture and of modernity, and many early sociologists became very worried
by what they saw as the increase of individualism. Yet, as Martuccelli (2017)
stresses, for a figure such as Tocqueville, individualism did not mean egoism, or
a retreat back into the self, but instead functioned as a democratic glue. Leccardi
argues that ‘in contemporary individualism, not only does the private dimension
emerge, but there is an interrelation, within this dimension, of aspects tied to the
redefinition of public and private, new forms of political participation, even ethi-
cal aspects’ (p. 136; my translation). Bellah et al. (1985, p. 143) insisted on the
value of ‘think[ing] for [oneself], judg[ing] for [oneself]s, mak[ing] [one’s own]
decisions, liv[ing one’s] lives as we see fit’. Today, the relevance of individual-
ism for looking at how young people construct their paths is the way in which it
allows a perspective centred on the individual’s self in the planning of a life and
career, and a focus on the ways in which young people, as agents, are able to play
with the structures of opportunity (in the sense of Roberts, 2009). It presupposes
46 Valentina Cuzzocrea
a reflexivity which is self-confident and self-assuring through a belief in meritoc-

racy. This trait has been found in several works in youth studies, for instance by
Wyn and Dwyer (1999). But subcultural youth studies may use this concept, too,
for example to discuss certain kinds of contemporary selfhood such as the so-
called ‘Me-me-me generation’.
For Elliott and Lemert (2009), individualism and individualisation are two dif-
ferent analytical directions in relation to contemporary individualism. Here, I pro-
pose that individualisation be understood within its specific context of second
or reflexive modernity (Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim,
2002). The individualisation thesis stresses that, under current conditions, identity
is transformed into a task (Stevenson, 2006) in which everything has to be nego-
tiated, and everything has to be actively chosen. The ‘individualised individual’
is made free from belongings such as class and family, a phenomenon known as
‘disembeddedness’. While this can offer a certain amount of relief and freedom,
individuals do not find themselves completely unburdened in their self-propelled
search for their own sense of continuity. Biographies cease to follow standard
patterns and self-actualisation, and the expression of one’s personality becomes
a requirement (Giddens, 1991). The debate around individualisation has often
revolved around the so-called ‘choice biography’, a concept according to Wood-
man (2009) that resulted from a misread of Beck and that was put together in
order to criticise an overemphasis on agency.
In my own reading, reflection on individualisation is relevant to exploration of
young people’s processes of path-construction through the glimpses it can offer
into the extent to which young adults are willing and able to elaborate new strate-
gies outside of established routes. Depending on the context that they occupy,
young people will perceive different levels of risk in pursuing such paths, and
particular class, gender or family backgrounds, for example, will affect the sort of
flexi-life which is created. There is a link, here, to Furlong and Cartmel’s (2007
[1997]) famous reading of the struggles of young people in contemporary society,
which has become widely known in youth transition literature through the idea
of ‘epistemological fallacy’. This is a ‘disjuncture between objective and sub-
jective dimensions [. . .]’ which ‘obscures underlying class relationships’. More
precisely:
although social structures, such as class, continue to shape life chances,

these structures tend to become increasingly obscure as collectivist tradi-
tions weaken and individualist values intensify. As a consequence of these
changes, people come to regard the social world as unpredictable and filled
with risks that can only be negotiated on an individual level, even though
chains of human interdependence remain intact.
(Furlong and Cartmel, 2007 [1997], pp. 2–3)
Epistemological fallacy leads to a subjective exaggeration of the capacities of

individual agency. The interpretation that young people are ‘blind to the existence
of powerful chains of interdependency’ (Furlong and Cartmel, 2007 [1997],

p. 114) determined by structural issues has had wide success; however, it is not
empirically found everywhere. For instance, this aspect has been contested by
France and Haddon (2014) and Farthing (2016). In order to explore some nuances
of flexi-lives in context, I will now turn to offer an initial elaboration, focused on
individualism and individualisation which, as yet, lacks a spatial element. I will
then proceed with reflection on the role that spatial reflexivity can play in this
understanding.
Flexi-lives in Italy: poor individualism,

strong individualisation
Based on interviews conducted in 2003–2004, my first elaboration of flexi-lives
(see Cuzzocrea, 2011a) established a perspective on early career professionals
based in Italy which sees them acting and reacting in ways that reflect a typi-
cal mix of individualism and individualisation. This mixture, I argued, was
entrenched in specific cultural dispositions. The professionals described dem-
onstrated poorly individualistic, but strongly individualised tendencies in their
strategies. I made this argument on the basis that the individuals involved tended
to perceive the professional organisations within their chosen sectors as formal
entities in which they had no space to make a difference and, moreover, as bodies
which failed to provide them with any substantial provision for making a career.
Therefore, they formally joined professional associations when it was necessary,
but with the awareness that this formal requirement would not help them in any
substantial way and that further strategies were needed. In order to create a name
as professionals, such activities as working over weekends as a sailing instructor
were mentioned as more effective than displaying professional expertise. ‘Social
closure’ was portrayed as daunting in professional circles in a way which could be
particularly averse to newcomers. Likewise, when it came to discussing how they
fit into the organisational structures around them, individual paths were described
as lacking in purpose, as if external conditions could affect them at any time, in
any way. As new entrants, young professionals reported that they felt they were
assumed to commit to the organisation with total trust, which was not, however,
based on professional aspects. This involved for instance difficulty in negotiating
salaries, or even in expressing the wish to receive a salary at all.
The feeling of belonging to a certain place was very important in the eyes of
these young professionals, even though it clearly limited the opportunities avail-
able, given that it established a set of boundaries within which their strategies
were confined. An opposition between those who remained and those who left
seemed to help make sense of the material collected for this piece of research.
Informants spoke extensively about how their opportunities were bounded within
the territories in which they lived. In addition, this sense of belonging seemed
(broadly speaking) to guide every other strategy: for instance, when they felt in
need of money, they approached their parents, rather than taking out a loan from
a bank, which would have not been granted to them in most cases. This obviously
made them depict themselves as in a state of dependency rather than as able to
enact choices.
They did not tend to conceive themselves as free-floating individuals in the
graduate labour market, as if it was difficult for them to have a sight of some-
thing in front of them. They were usually aware of implications for their actions,
being reflexive, and inclined to ponder and speculate rather than to act. Their
approach to opportunity could be seen in negative terms, given that they tended
to identify what was not working, rather than taking opportunities. From there,
their narratives evolved around describing and justifying the strategies that they
put into action in order to avoid those very problems. This is the meaning of a
decisive individualised approach which is nevertheless not experienced in indi-
vidualistic terms. The assumption is that the structural conditions in which they
found themselves could not easily be manipulated on their own. They felt they
had to overcome them in some other way, but within the constraint of remain-
ing in a particular place. In that specific location, they mostly acted by avoiding
what they identified as difficulties in reaching their professional aim. This often
led to a great deal of creativity, but in a way that, as I have discussed elsewhere
(Cuzzocrea, 2012), was eminently precarious and therefore cannot be taken as a
celebration of individuals’ capacities.
For instance, the lack of an organisational structure, with specific goals to be
achieved and duties to be performed, was not perceived as offering the possibility
for free action, but the situation was instead understood as if the only remaining
alternative was the placing of oneself in someone else’s hands. With personal
connections prevailing over other considerations, the recognition of talent and
skills was constantly perceived as at-threat. Individualistic strategies seemed to
be impeded by a sense of the impossibility of making a difference, or of mak-
ing one’s own way, in the workplace. Structural conditions, therefore, would not
allow the flourishing of individualistic strategies, but the overall conditions nev-
ertheless forced them to elaborate individualised solutions. They ended up relying
largely on family and informal resources. While professional horizons were still
somehow possible to identify, the paths described to reach them were troubled
and tortuous (Cuzzocrea, 2011a, p. 134). I concluded that it was necessary to
adopt a broad approach in order to capture the salience of their strategies. In this
sense, mobility becomes a part of a general attitude, and it is to this aspect that
I now turn.
Flexi-lives facing mobility

While the concept of flexi-lives was originally elaborated in order to make sense
of differences in the ways in which young people in specific contexts constructed
a life path, adding the spatial element to a flexi-life perspective helps to put this
into a global scenario, encompassing issues of location for young adults caught up
in a periphery-core dynamic (King, 2015). In other words, the flexi-lives of young

people are increasingly mobile flexi-lives.
Since my previous research was conducted, individuals’ disembeddedness
from place – a derivate from ‘choice biographies’ – has been placed into question
by an increasing reference to the importance of ‘place’ in studies emphasising the
meaning of position within the life course (Cook and Cuervo, 2018; Cuzzocrea,
2018). It is now recognised that ‘physical environments are not inert backdrops
against which social life unfolds’ (Prince, 2014, p. 698), and that this ‘new spa-
tialization of the social’ (Shields, 2017, p. 533) is an important element of this.
In turn, studies of youth are increasingly considering issues of place, space and
mobility, partly coming out of mobility studies (Sheller and Urry, 2006). Concur-
rently, the interest in mobility has attracted growing interest. Sheller (2017) states:
like the spatial turn, the new mobilities paradigm challenged the idea of space
as a container for social processes, and thus brought the dynamic, ongoing
production of space into social theory across many different domains of
research.
(Sheller, 2017, p. 628)
The scope of this is huge for the study of young people: while the ‘mobility
dream’ was never unproblematic (Glick Schiller and Salazar, 2013; Yoon, 2014;
Cairns et al., 2017), not even the earliest scholars of mobility in the social sci-
ences argued for monolithic representations of it (Urry, 2000, 2007). It is in the
dynamism mentioned by Mimi Sheller that we can find a useful revisitation of
the flexi-lives perspective. For young adults, defining where their strategies will
take place means the solving of what Cairns (2014) calls ‘spatial dilemmas’ in a
transition phase. It is also apparent that for some young people, we cannot talk
about wanting to be mobile but more cynically about having to be such. In case
of countries where not only is youth unemployment dramatic, but where wider
cultural aspects which impede the construction of a career path and, more gener-
ally, the attainment of independence also exist, thinking about mobility as a pos-
sibility for solving one’s problem is far from extraordinary. Young people who
have grown up in peripheral locations, in particular, ‘naturally’ look at mobility
as a particularly crucial resource (Van Mol 2016; Cuzzocrea, forthcoming 2019):
mobility and migration are an immediate response for young Italians, especially if
they are highly qualified (Caneva, 2016; Assirelli et al., 2018).
Using a ‘mobile’ lens for the study of young adult lives can have several pur-
poses, which recent literature has investigated in some depth (Thomson and
Taylor, 2005; Crivello, 2011; Baas, 2012; Marcu, 2012; Cairns, 2014; Van Mol
and Timmerman, 2014). Within this, the mere imagination of mobility has been
deemed to be central for the construction of the future (Connolly and Healy, 2004;
Aynsley and Crossouard, 2010; Cuzzocrea and Mandich, 2016). In a recent study
on the Erasmus + program, I have argued that being ‘free to dream about what is
possible’ ‘should be regarded as a significant development, and the imaginative

power [of Erasmus] should not be dismissed or under-estimated’ (Cairns et al.,
2018, p. 15). I maintain this as a proposition in this chapter; one that may be most
efficient when studying strategies for mobility enacted through particular mobility
programmes. Urry (2007) has identified five different modes of mobilities, each of
which is located within specific social institutions and spatial practices: corporeal,
physical movement of objects, imaginative travel, virtual travel and communica-
tive travel. Cresswell (2010) talks about ‘constellations of mobility’, made by
movements, representations and practice. Baas (2012) talks about a way of life
which may be characterised by being ‘neither here nor there’ (p. 10) and which
can be seen as a process through which personal development and the transition
to adulthood happen. It is apparent that mobility, when considered in conjunction
with the elaboration of life strategies, is a further element of fluidity, but also
a disruption in young people’s lives. Moreover, mobile transitions are not alien
from injustices, marginalisation and exclusion; in fact, the willingness and readi-
ness to be mobile has been termed ‘mobility capital’ (Murphy-Lejeune, 2002),
with all the structural inequalities that this term evokes. We now turn to consider
how this issue is linked to individualisation and reflexivity.
Mobile individualism, mobile individualisation:

when reflexivity becomes ‘spatial’
In an enhanced version of the flexi-lives approach, individualisation should be
understood in such a way that young people can be capable of including a ‘geo-
graphical dimension’ (Cairns, 2014, p. 6) within their plans, aspirations, hopes
and strategies. This would constitute an element of self-improvement; in Cairns’s
words, ‘becoming mobile and being reflexive about mobility is of particular
importance to young people who aspire to better themselves through pursuing
higher education trajectories and professional career paths’ (2014, p. 28). Others
use the term ‘reflexivity’ to discuss the possibility of being mobile, for example,
for youth in rural contexts (Farrugia et al., 2014). Discourses about mobility have
long been seen as inextricably linked with success, as if it cannot happen without
mobility (Looker and Naylor, 2009). Yet the idea of permeability and flux which
has been theorised by such authors as Massey (1999) has modified this landscape.
For instance, in a study on how young Sardinians see their future, we argued that
in conditions of insularity, mobility may become a turning point, allowing young
people to take opportunities which are not evident or apparent in the local con-
text, and to see these as opportunities for self-experimentation (Cuzzocrea and
Mandich, 2016).
This discussion brings us to question if the complexity which characterises
individualised paths increases when an element of mobility enters the lives of
these young people. Not only do they have to tackle poor structural conditions (in
terms of organisational structure, unfavourable labour markets, poor institutional
support); mobility makes planning more complicated as it implies the potential of
tackling unknown realities and unknown modes of work. Additional issues then
emerge: is a now-established individualised approach facilitated by moving? Or it
is perhaps from the openness that it derives another layer of burden?
Obviously, additional empirical data are needed to address this. However,
spatial reflexivity can be seen precisely an as element of a ‘politics of the pre-
sent’. It is a way to see strategies enacted in the interconnection between different
discourses: ‘choice biographies’ and individualisation theses, as well as spatial/
mobilities dilemmas. It offers potential for re-elaborating the role of structural
factors alongside subjective orientations. In fact, while individualisation remains
a wide umbrella under which choice biographies are enacted, spatial reflexivity is
more precisely able to make us reflect on how young people ‘manage’ themselves
through engaging in exchanges as a practical capacity, and most of all to capture
the fluidity that these passages entail. Rarely do young people think that they are
moving on a permanent basis in the contemporary world. At the same time, they
do reflect on the possibilities that a variety of locations offers as possible desti-
nations in which to realise their ambitions, plans, dreams. I want to quote here
from an interview conducted for the original study (Cuzzocrea, 2011a, p. 91). The
informant here is an HR professional who, when asked to talk about his view of
his professional path, replied:
Everything is . . . cloudy, complex, because what I have seen in these years
is that your future depends a lot on those who run you. At this point, I could
be filling a managerial role, had I continued with the first managing director
I worked with, while for the current one the role I have now is more than
enough. . . . But someone else may arrive tomorrow morning and fall in love
with me!
This informant was firm in his decision, due to family reasons, to live and work
in a peripheral area of Naples. In this sense we can say that he enacted some kind
of spatial reflexivity, given that he was conscious of the limitation that this could
place on him compared to relocating to Milan – a city which he knew from previ-
ous experiences and which he used for comparison in his interview. We may ask
how his view would be different had he engaged more with mobility, or had he
decided to leave what he describes as a very difficult work environment for good.
But the unpredictability that characterises his experience in such a destructured
environment also makes him potentially less ready to enter into more structured
working environments, and to speak up about his goals and ambitions. As Dana
Prince (2014, p. 705) has noted, ‘hoped-for or aspired-to possible selves may be
supported, encouraged, and strengthened through positive interactions with peo-
ple and place. Or, they may be ridiculed, silenced, denied, or belittled’. The set
of expectations built up in Italian environments, and described in the interviews
conducted for this original work, do not make it easy for people to move from
one working environment to the other, impeding individualistic dispositions. This
may be a peculiarity that perhaps is not shared with contexts outside of Italy.
However, on the basis of this discussion, other equilibriums can be imagined for
other contexts, playing out on the basis of dynamics of individualism and indi-
vidualisation, and the resulting notions of mobile flexi-lives.
Conclusions
In thinking about possibilities for updating the flexi-lives approach, this chap-
ter draws on suggestions from several bodies of work, encompassing studies on
individualism, individualisation and the recent spatial/mobility turn. There has
been a plethora of studies praising youth creativity in solving the node of young
people’s uncertainty inside and outside the labour market – and there are several
focused on the Italian case. However, an important aspect for young people to
become aware of is that life can be ‘imagined in other terms’. Alongside this is the
importance of putting this into practice, temporarily and in unknown contexts. For
‘politics of the present’ based on flexi-lives to be incisive, too, a further complica-
tion of strategies of construction of one’s path through the mobile element can be
useful to grasp a more elaborated version of the picture.
If individualism and individualisation are both centred on ways to make agency
interact with structure in a way which makes it more proficient, then mobility can
come into play to disrupt existing mechanisms and render evident the efforts of
young people in finding a route which is suitable for them. Whether this is sim-
ply good news should not be taken for granted: for instance, in a previous study
of young people involved in international internships in Europe (Cuzzocrea and
Cairns, under review), the material collected through an online survey revealed
that mobility seemed to contribute to personal development. However, the same
young people who praised this possibility did not perceive, as a result of this
development, any clear improvement in their chances in the labour market. It
is interesting to note that increasing opportunities for mobility, whether through
structured mobile opportunities or through more improvised routes, are on their
way to becoming mainstream.
Through engagement with these arguments, this chapter has sought to provide
insights into how a ‘flexi-life’ approach can adapt to the presence of a strong
mobility discourse, and the new challenges which are likely to be imposed on
young adults as a consequence. This chapter has also reflected about the ways in
which individualism and individualisation can be transformed when young people
engage in mobile routes. It mainly discusses the possibility of generating research
questions around which a future research agenda can be built, considering contex-
tually the challenges of the mobility discourse alongside the challenge of precarity
in the lives of young adults.
Note
1 In the original conceptualisation of ‘flexi-lives’, I had also considered the ele-
ment of ‘self-entrepreneurship’ alongside individualism and individualisation, as a
means to further locate this disposition within the characteristics of local situations.
However, I will not go into that discussion here, as I aim to place ‘flexi-lives’ within
a wider discussion of the experience of precarity under current socio-historical
conditions.
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Part II
Uncertainty
Chapter 4
Fragile transitions from

education to employment
Youth, gender and migrant
status in the EU
Çetin Çelik, Fatoş Gökşen, Alpay Filiztekin,
İbrahim Öker and Mark Smith
Introduction
The current financial crisis has persistently affected youth across Europe by mak-
ing higher unemployment rates, precarious working conditions and uncertainty
‘normal context’ for them (Colombo, Leonini and Rebughini, 2018). Beck sug-
gests in his ‘second modernity’ thesis that the standardisation of life course by
major institutions that ensure riskless transitions for individuals between different
stages throughout their lives – such as education, work, marriage and retirement –
started to weaken decades earlier (Beck, 2016). The present economic crisis, how-
ever, gave this destandardisation process an important twist; the capacity of the
state institutions in distribution of various goods and services concerning health,
education and equitable forms of social welfare have incredibly shrunk (Colombo
and Rebughini, 2015).
Welfare states in Europe have responded to destandardisation, precarity, ambi-
guity and risks in different ways. In this chapter, we map vulnerability in school-
to-work (STW) transitions across the EU by the intersectionality of gender and
migrant status. By following Anthias (2013), we consider intersectionality as
social location such as gender, class, race, sexuality, faith, disability and so on,
not an identity, that create constrains, opportunities and strategies. The following
section discusses the conceptualisation of vulnerabilities and the intersectionality
of gender and migrant status for risks of vulnerability, and the third section relates
these discussions to the variations across institutional frameworks. The fourth
section outlines our conceptual methodological approach to the cross-national
analysis of vulnerabilities. The fifth section unpacks the variations and pathways
of school-to-work transitions of young women and men born inside and outside
the EU. The final section draws conclusions while highlighting the limits of cur-
rent policy making to address the vulnerabilities of young people.
Vulnerability, gender and migrant status

In the broadest sense, vulnerability refers to the situation of individuals, house-
holds or communities that are exposed to potential risks and their inability to
60 Çetin Çelik et al.
anticipate, withstand and recover from adverse shocks (Morrone et al., 2011).
Individual risks such as low income and dropping out of school are strongly asso-
ciated with ‘vulnerability to poverty’ (Dercon, 2006). However, ‘social vulner-
ability’, as opposed to ‘economic vulnerability’, identifies vulnerable groups such
as children at risk, females, the disabled, migrants and the elderly, and it under-
lines broad structural characteristics that define these vulnerable groups (Lough-
head and Mittal, 2000; Eurostat, 2016). This conceptualisation of vulnerability
allows us to consider the range of diverse factors affecting vulnerability of young
people, such as gender and migrant status.
The labour markets across the European Union (EU) remain clearly divided
along gender lines (Bettio et al., 2012). Female labour force participation remains
lower than male participation; women still account for most unpaid work in the
household, and when women are employed in paid work, they are overrepre-
sented in the informal sector and are among the poorest and lowest paid (Smith,
2012). These gender differences on and off the labour market create risks of
vulnerability that interact with other dimensions – for example, poor education,
and ethnicity – leading to potentially greater exposure to vulnerability over the
life cycle. One such significant dimension is migrant status (Meeuwisse, Sever-
iens and Born, 2010); young migrants generally face non-recognition of training
credentials resulting in ‘de-skilling’, where they can only obtain jobs beneath
their qualifications (Cortina et al., 2014). Rubin et al. (2008) show that migrant
women fare worse on the labour market than both EU-born women and migrant
men. Previous research has identified a range of factors that influence the suc-
cess of migrant women in European labour markets such as educational attain-
ment and skills, recognition of vocational qualifications, children and family
structure, type of migration and length of stay, language skills, social-cultural
environment and legal status (Peraccio and Depalo, 2006). When we disaggre-
gate migrant women into those born within the EU and those from third coun-
tries outside the EU, it becomes apparent that third-country women migrants
face even greater levels of disadvantage in the EU labour force than EU nation-
als and EU-born migrant women and third-country migrant men (Peracchi and
Depalo, 2006).
Vulnerability in institutional contexts

Such risks of vulnerability by gender and migrant status do not occur in a vacuum
but are influenced by the institutional environment in which young people find
themselves (Whelan and Maitre, 2010). Drawing upon the work of authors such
as Esping-Andersen’s (1990, 1997), Gallie and Paugam (2000), Korpi (2000) and
Walther (2006, pp. 124–129), we can categorise the regime types for the school-
to-work transitions to contextualise the risks of vulnerabilities for young people:
universalistic, liberal, employment-centred and sub-protective and post-socialist
regime. Universalistic regimes are characterised by a comprehensive educational
Transitions from education to employment 61
system with minimal streaming and flexible training possibilities (Esping-

Andersen, 1997). While it is typically associated with Nordic countries, such as
Denmark and Sweden, the Netherlands can also be considered in the universalis-
tic cluster, provided that the ‘hybrid’ nature of this country should be recognised
(see Walther, 2006, p. 129). In this regime, individual rights and responsibili-
ties are considered part of collective social responsibility. Counselling is highly
institutionalised at all stages of education, training and employment and serves
to facilitate school-to-work transitions (Walther, 2006). The vocational education
and training (VET) system, based on a dual training principle in school and work
with employers actively involved in the training, turns into a collectivist skill for-
mation in this regime (Crowley et al., 2013). Hence, the absence of early tracking,
availability of second-chance schools and continuing training provided by market
institutions prepares the ground for flexible and reversible school-to-work transi-
tions (ETUC, 2012).
Unlike a universalistic regime, a liberal regime emphasises individual rights
and responsibilities over collective provisions, and youth is a transition that
should end quickly with economic independence (Gallie and Paugam, 2000).
Typical examples would include the United Kingdom. The educational sys-
tem provides little vocational provision and the VET policy is highly focused
on relatively low-level qualifications (Hadjivassiliou et al., 2015). Employer
engagement with vocational education is also low and internship conditions are
generally poor. Young people, therefore, tend to stay in education if possible
rather than entering the vocational schemes or labour market at an early age.
Entrance to the labour market is structured rather flexibly with multiple and
flexible entry points, and this can make the school-to-work transition fragile,
uncertain and insecure (ETUC, 2012). Moreover, the educational system equips
young people with inappropriate or insufficient skills, causing a mismatch in the
labour market (Hadjivassiliou et al., 2015).
In an employment-centred regime, the state, as the key stakeholder, shapes the
school-to-work transition (Walther, 2006). Typical examples include France and
Belgium. Schools are organised more selectively to channel young people into
occupational careers and different segments of the labour market. This selectivity
can result in an accumulation of disadvantaged youth from migrant backgrounds
in weaker segments of the labour market (Alba, 2011). The limited involvement
of employers in the school-to-work system and the ‘institutional stasis’ that stems
from the central role of the state are barriers to smoother and more equal transi-
tions for youth (Smith, Toraldo and Pasquier, 2015). In addition, strict employ-
ment protection legislation provides protection for ‘insiders’ on the labour market
at the expense of new entrants and those with temporary contracts (Mills and
Prag, 2014).
The sub-protective transition regime is characterised by a relatively low per-
centage of standard contracts and a high share of young people in unprotected
living conditions (Walther, 2006). The family and the informal economy play
significant roles in this regime. Countries from the south of Europe are often used
as examples, including Spain and Greece. Typically, vocational training is not
well developed and, as is the case in employment-centred regimes, the involve-
ment of companies in vocational training is weak. Against this background,
school-to-work transitions are quite heterogeneous, non-linear and unpredictable
(Bradley and Devadason, 2008). In addition, transitions are significantly influ-
enced by social class, gender and ethnicity.
Post-socialist regimes might be regarded as a mix of liberal and employment-
centred approaches. Comprehensive education programmes are more widespread
than vocational education due to the latter’s poor reputation and rigidity. Therefore,
post-socialist regimes are characterised by a predominance of general education,
high levels of educational attainment and weak linkages between the education
system and the labour market, often resulting in a mismatch between skills and
market needs. In line with Wallace (2002), we include the Slovak Republic in this
category (see also Hadjivassiliou et al., 2015).
These five country groupings provide a framework with which to analyse
school-to-work transitions and the particular risk to vulnerabilities created for
young people. In the next section, we discuss the operationalisation of these con-
cepts in relation to young migrant women and men.
Methods, data and definitions

To explore the vulnerabilities of young women and men in Europe and the impact
of their migrant status, we use the EU-SILC (cross-sectional) waves from 2005
to 2013 (Eurostat, 2015), with a particular focus on the economic crisis of 2008–
2010. To capture cross-national differences in the duration of school-to-work tran-
sitions and the diffusion of precariousness into older cohorts, a broad definition of
youth is used to include individuals aged 16 to 29.
Using EU-SILC, we estimated a series of multinomial logit models and calcu-
lated the relative risk rates for labour market status of youth who are not in educa-
tion. Our dependent variable in these models depicts four different states: being
employed full-time (base state/category), being employed part-time, unemployed
and inactive. The independent variables of interest are gender, migrant status, and
education level and year dummies. We also control for age and years after finish-
ing school, as an approximation of potential experience. To assess the quality of
transition, we estimated simple linear regression models. In these models, the
International Socio-Economic Index (ISEI)1 developed by Ganzeboom, De Graaf
and Treiman (1992) is the dependent variable, and our variables of interest are
age groups, gender and migrant status. The ISEI scores occupations according to
their average educational and income levels, reflecting how occupational location
influences the ability to convert educational levels into income. It would have
been useful to integrate the social class of parents into our analyses; but unfor-
tunately, these data were available only for those young people who were living
with their parents – a weakness where migrants are concerned. Hence, we focused
on the occupational positions of young individuals as a dependent variable in our
econometric analyses to capture the quality of youth transitions varying across
vulnerable groups.
To show how school-to-work transitions vary across different institutional
settings, we picked countries that represent each regime type discussed in the
previous section. We chose Denmark and the Netherlands to represent the
universalistic regime; France and Belgium to account for the employment-
centred regime; Slovakia as the case country of post-socialist regime; the
United Kingdom as the pioneering example for the liberal regime; and Spain
and Greece to understand the STW experiences of young people under sub-
protective regimes.
Any analysis of ethnicity and migration is limited by the available data, and
one important limitation of European data is that we are unable to identify
second-generation migrants. The current EU-SILC survey includes a question
on country of birth, so it is only possible to consider the stock rather than the
flow of migrants, with no information on duration of residence. Thus, in our
cross-national analysis, we focus only on migrant youth born outside the EU.
Although we could not account for the heterogeneity of this group because of
data limitation, this choice is valid in an analysis of vulnerability since exist-
ing research has confirmed that ‘third country migrants’ tend to be among
the most-disadvantaged groups among migrant populations and within wider
society (Kogan and Müller, 2003)
A final methodological issue is the sample size of non-EU-born youth in the
EU-SILC data. Migrants constitute 5–11% of the population (pooled average
between the years 2005 and 2013) in the countries represented in this study,
except for Slovakia, where there are very few. The share of migrants is higher in
the United Kingdom and Spain, approaching 11%, as opposed to Denmark, where
they constitute only 5%. In all these countries, the share of migrants is higher
among the adult population.
Results
Vulnerable groups and labour market outcomes

Our multinomial logit estimates show that in all of the countries, higher educa-
tional attainment is associated with lower risk of unemployment (see Table 4.1).
Similarly, age and potential experience of an individual decrease the risk of
unemployment. When the results are examined to account for vulnerability, it
is observed that the most disadvantaged group in terms of unemployment is
migrant females in all countries (Table 4.1, Panel a). Skilled and unskilled female
migrants face intersecting gender and ethnic discrimination combined with risks
of low-paid employment and a greater share of unpaid domestic work. Research
Table 4.1 Estimation of employment status, relative risk rates (excludes students)
Panel a. Unemployment (relative to full-time employment)
DK NL FR BE SK UK ES GR
Educational attainment (ref. Lt. Upper Sec.)
Upper Secondary 0.417** 0.669** 0.345** 0.277** 0.248** 0.381** 0.515** 0.936**
Tertiary 0.275** 0.633** 0.127** 0.162** 0.221** 0.291** 0.414** 0.676**
Gender and migrant status (ref. EU-born males)
EU-born Females 1.103** 4.851** 1.905** 2.426** 1.589** 1.437** 1.864** 2.730**
Migrant Males 0.992 7.871** 2.001** 2.556** 0.326** 1.336** 0.762**
Migrant Females 1.899** 77.335** 1.948** 2.939** 9.474** 1.500** 2.168**
Interaction between level of education and gender and migrant status
Nat. Fem. * Upp. Sec. 1.125** 0.562** 0.859** 1.041** 0.732** 0.699** 0.917** 0.673**
Nat. Fem. * Tert. 1.539** 0.281** 0.728** 0.429** 0.483** 0.465** 0.749** 0.395**
Mig. Males * Upp. Sec. 1.733** 0.420** 0.887** 3.019** 2.833** 1.235** 0.952**
Mig. Males. * Tert. 0 0 0.881** 0.921** 3.183** 2.649** 2.237**
Mig. Fem. * Upp. Sec. 0.085** 0.058** 2.307** 3.872** 0.152** 1.862** 0.799**
Mig. Fem. * Tert. 0.997 0.006** 3.299** 1.180** 0.215** 1.401** 0.768**
Age 1.326** 0.563** 0.840** 0.867** 1.029** 1.008** 0.910** 1.216**
Sq. Age 0.995** 1.010** 1.002** 1.001** 0.994** 0.996** 1.000** 0.994**
Yrs. after Grad. 0.864** 0.895** 0.874** 0.796** 0.747** 0.880** 0.859** 0.733**
Sq. Yrs. after Grad. 1.010** 1.010** 1.004** 1.012** 1.026** 1.015** 1.008** 1.014**
Time effects (ref. year = 2005)
D.Year = 2006 0.866** 0.453** 0.903** 0.742** 0.911** 1.071** 0.910** 0.920**
D.Year = 2007 0.975* 0.241** 0.657** 0.550** 0.715** 0.728** 0.830** 0.898**
D.Year = 2008 0.950** 0.326** 0.790** 0.433** 0.552** 1.375** 1.002 0.776**
D.Year = 2009 1.800** 0.668** 1.330** 0.694** 0.961** 1.884** 2.309** 0.929**
D.Year = 2010 2.439** 0.473** 1.185** 0.808** 1.423** 1.827** 2.911** 1.530**
D.Year = 2011 3.058** 0.410** 1.196** 0.649** 1.618** 2.028** 3.456** 3.201**
D.Year = 2012 2.770** 0.663** 1.354** 0.756** 1.634** 2.748** 4.307** 4.124**
D.Year = 2013 2.602** 1.440** 1.486** 0.799** 2.064** 1.844** 5.544** 5.489**
Observations 8,356 13,927 20,187 11,915 18,766 14,251 31,246 13,822
** and * denote significance at 1% and 5%, respectively. Estimation uses population weights.
Panel b. Inactivity (relative to full-time employment)

Upper Secondary 0.379** 0.358** 0.297** 0.309** 0.092** 0.184** 0.854** 1.264**
Tertiary 0.127** 0.177** 0.209** 0.158** 0.043** 0.116** 0.569** 2.001**
EU-born Females 2.706** 6.925** 3.786** 6.604** 5.699** 3.715** 3.494** 8.343**
Migrant Males 2.362** 2.684** 1.303** 2.709** 0.462** 1.336** 1.075**
Migrant Females 4.253** 55.849** 9.136** 17.395** 32.743** 6.032** 11.940**
Nat. Fem. * Upp. Sec. 1.338** 0.871** 1.270** 0.737** 1.077** 1.286** 0.779** 0.306**
Nat. Fem. * Tert. 2.659** 0.712** 0.392** 0.423** 1.524** 0.999 0.600** 0.065**
Mig. Males * Upp. Sec. 0.136** 1.197** 1.770** 3.358** 4.168** 0.846** 0.346**
Mig. Males. * Tert. 0 0 0.287** 2.296** 7.057** 2.051** 0.761**
Mig. Fem. * Upp. Sec. 2.088** 0.285** 3.570** 2.357** 0.389** 0.827** 0.505**
Mig. Fem. * Tert. 2.032** 0.215** 1.806** 2.466** 0.305** 1.123** 0.172**
Age 1.255** 0.404** 0.359** 0.347** 0.431** 0.791** 0.284** 0.386**
Sq. Age 0.993** 1.018** 1.020** 1.020** 1.016** 1.002** 1.023** 1.017**
Yrs. after Grad. 0.892** 0.945** 0.953** 0.988** 1.105** 1.135** 0.942** 0.821**
Sq. Yrs. after Grad. 1.019** 1.007** 1.004** 1.005** 0.999** 1.002** 1.007** 1.013**
D.Year = 2006 1.038** 0.617** 0.902** 0.810** 0.908** 0.923** 1.063** 1.239**
D.Year = 2007 0.781** 0.620** 0.913** 0.732** 0.863** 0.933** 1.053** 1.339**
D.Year = 2008 0.539** 0.825** 0.908** 0.611** 0.761** 0.949** 1.018** 1.346**
D.Year = 2009 0.659** 0.776** 1.049** 0.931** 1.193** 0.940** 1.370** 1.227**
D.Year = 2010 0.810** 0.701** 1.218** 1.066** 1.331** 1.310** 1.457** 1.379**
D.Year = 2011 0.889** 1.070** 1.382** 0.867** 1.107** 0.935** 2.027** 2.152**
D.Year = 2012 1.541** 1.111** 1.288** 0.940** 1.181** 1.373** 2.044** 2.321**
D.Year = 2013 1.735** 1.548** 1.561** 1.168** 1.566** 1.432** 2.178** 2.571**
Observations 8,356 13,927 20,187 11,915 18,766 14,251 31,246 13,822
Table 4.1 (Continued)
Panel c . Part-time employment (relative to full-time employment)

Upper Secondary 1.351** 0.712** 0.669** 0.529** 0.307** 0.734** 1.504** 0.931**
Tertiary 1.367** 0.703** 0.468** 0.544** 0.231** 0.588** 1.668** 1.091**
EU-born Females 2.063** 7.454** 5.345** 7.548** 0.610** 3.121** 5.106** 2.530**
Migrant Males 1.613** 2.102** 4.252** 1.660** 2.420** 1.781** 1.166**
Migrant Females 3.465** 48.421** 2.842** 6.665** 10.234** 6.161** 3.973**
Nat. Fem. * Upp. Sec. 1.544** 1.192** 0.939** 1.098** 4.067** 1.048** 0.666** 1.382**
Nat. Fem. * Tert. 1.243** 0.726** 0.519** 0.391** 2.410** 0.722** 0.406** 0.757**
Mig. Males * Upp. Sec. 0.336** 0.977* 0.633** 1.673** 0.862** 0.795** 0.774**
Mig. Males. * Tert. 1.674** 2.175** 0.638** 0.960* 0.985 1.361** 2.912**
Mig. Fem. * Upp. Sec. 1.947** 0.233** 3.875** 2.646** 0.556** 0.684** 1.227**
Mig. Fem. * Tert. 1.696** 0.063** 1.816** 0.465** 0.559** 0.470** 0.776**
Age 0.546** 0.293** 0.571** 0.243** 0.911** 0.534** 0.966** 0.707**
Sq. Age 1.009** 1.024** 1.010** 1.029** 1.001** 1.010** 0.999** 1.005**
Yrs. after Grad. 0.937** 0.966** 0.918** 0.994** 0.725** 0.820** 0.864** 0.842**
Sq. Yrs. after Grad. 1.014** 1.003** 1.004** 1.000** 1.020** 1.017** 1.007** 1.011**
D.Year = 2006 0.884** 1.370** 0.965** 0.973** 1.370** 1.127** 1.250** 1.308**
D.Year = 2007 1.018* 1.222** 1.030** 1.238** 0.855** 1.134** 0.948** 1.154**
D.Year = 2008 0.762** 1.358** 0.995** 1.192** 0.752** 1.166** 1.017** 1.202**
D.Year = 2009 0.772** 1.557** 1.231** 1.380** 1.175** 1.415** 1.170** 1.102**
D.Year = 2010 1.157** 1.227** 1.246** 1.456** 1.393** 1.365** 1.419** 1.632**
D.Year = 2011 1.093** 1.762** 1.101** 1.246** 1.169** 1.570** 1.490** 1.740**
D.Year = 2012 2.178** 1.968** 1.148** 1.673** 1.927** 1.556** 1.889** 2.227**
D.Year = 2013 1.673** 2.273** 1.097** 1.449** 1.316** 1.637** 2.734** 2.336**
Observations 8,356 13,927 20,187 11,915 18,766 14,251 31,246 13,822
shows that female migrants are concentrated in unskilled, undervalued and low-
paid sectors, often employed as domestic workers in hard-to-regulate sectors
of the labour market (Evans, 2016). Female migrants may also be less able to
advance their own interests, they have less decision-making power within the
home and they are less likely to have the capabilities to engage with the political
decision-making and policy processes (O’Neill and Domingo, 2016). Further-
more, women, whether migrant or not, are more likely than males to be unem-
ployed. The lowest risk of unemployment, on the other hand, is observed among
the EU-born male population, in all countries other than the United Kingdom
and Greece.
Education provides some protection. Analysis of interaction terms between
education level and dimensions of vulnerability underline that more educated
EU-born females are less likely to be unemployed in all countries except Den-
mark. The risk of unemployment among the more educated migrant females;
however, is considerably higher in employment-centred countries and Spain.
The proportion of female migrants who hold a university degree is, in most
countries, almost on a par with that of immigrant men. Nevertheless, educated
migrant women have lower rates of employment relative to their EU-born
counterparts. Holders of foreign degrees may face problems of recognition as
well as factors such as country of origin language barriers and access to certain
sectors of the labour market, for example public sector jobs. The latter may
particularly affect women more than men, because the professions in which
women tend to be concentrated are those which are predominantly regulated
by the public sector.
Similar patterns are observed for the risk of inactivity, and higher educational
attainment reduces the risk in all countries. The only exception is Greece, where
labour market conditions have been very poor and young people have been
affected by a lack of job creation capacity of the market. Table 4.1 (Panel b) also
reveals that migrant females have the highest risk of inactivity. For example, in
the Netherlands, this group is 55 times more likely to be inactive compared to EU-
born males. Here, the interaction terms show that inactive migrant females consist
mostly of less-educated individuals. In Denmark, France and Belgium, however,
the reverse is true.
The school-to-work transition process may involve several intermediate sta-
tuses between learning and work, such as temporary jobs, or dual statuses, i.e.
combining learning and work, such as part-time jobs (Walther and Pohl, 2005).
Part-time work, however, might also be an important indicator of vulnerability.
Part-time work, particularly with short hours over an extended period, does not
ensure sufficient income security in terms of wages and pension incomes. Hence,
in our analysis of STW, we do not treat the part-timers as the ones who have suc-
cessfully transitioned to employment.
The results in Table 4.1 (Panel c) indicate that education in employment-
centred countries is associated with greater opportunities for full-time employment,
unlike in universalistic regimes. Yet in France and Belgium, females and migrants
are less likely to be in full-time employment than EU-born males. Yet migrant
females in the employment-centred countries are also less likely to be in employ-
ment, more like universalistic regimes, regardless of their educational attainment.
Even educated female migrants face difficulties while transitioning from school
to work. This finding is consistent with the literature that argues that disadvan-
taged youth are worse off in countries that can be characterised as having less
tightly structured education. When education is weakly linked to the workplace
and vocational education is obtained on the job, disadvantaged groups can be
more adversely affected (Gangl, 2001)
In the United Kingdom, higher levels of education are associated with better
chances of full-time employment. Again, as is the case in all other countries, UK
males are more likely than other groups to be unemployed or inactive. However,
the interaction between gender and education shows interesting results: educated
migrant males are more likely to be unemployed or inactive than educated migrant
women. To fully understand this finding, one needs to look at the labour mar-
ket outcomes of diverse ethnic groups whose level of educational and economic
resources vary significantly. Unemployment risks for highly educated immigrants
vary by gender. Employability and a period of unemployment might be more
stigmatising for immigrant males from poorer countries such as Bangladesh and
Pakistan, whereas unemployed women from the same countries may be perceived
less negatively thanks to gendered notions of nurturing and obedience (Mooi-Reci
and Ganzeboom, 2015).
The results for sub-protective regimes show that unemployment and inactiv-
ity are more common among women, and this is a more critical issue for young
migrant females. As in the case of the liberal cluster, young educated migrant
males are found to be least likely to make a successful transition from school to
work. Low vocational specificity in the educational system coupled with moder-
ate degrees of labour protection in sub-protective regime countries may explain
these findings.
The quality of school-to-work transitions

for vulnerable groups
Table 4.2 provides estimation results of our OLS models to assess the quality
of transitions for each country. The base line group in the estimation is EU-
born male adults with less than upper secondary education. As expected, educa-
tion plays a crucial role in access to a high-status job for all groups. Similarly,
potential experience on the labour market increases the chances of having high-
status jobs. In line with the gendered risks noted earlier, having controlled for
(potential) experience, females are more likely to have low-status occupations
compared to men.
Table 4.2 Determinants of occupation status across vulnerabilities (students excluded)
Young –0.075** –1.540** –3.084** –1.987** 0.141** –3.752** –3.416** –4.776**

EU-born Female –0.099** –0.606** –2.544** –1.351** 1.023** –0.995** –1.349** –1.602**
Migrant Male –2.160** –3.285** –2.341** –5.450** 3.572** –2.954** –6.348** –4.283**
Migrant Female –2.454** –3.815** –4.227** –5.822** –0.369* –1.804** –10.355** –9.744**
Young EU-born Female –0.270** 0.403** 1.942** –0.056** –1.129** 0.968** –0.082** 1.099**
Young Migrant Male 2.089** 0.336** 8.748** 6.079** –2.824** 4.077** 4.548** 4.257**
Young Migrant Female –2.659** 6.617** 5.184** –4.437** 3.437** 1.955** 18.562**
Upper Secondary 4.984** 7.110** 4.691** 4.094** 7.790** 7.331** 5.194** 7.812**
Tertiary 24.575** 22.763** 22.117** 21.083** 24.444** 21.280** 18.881** 24.773**
Yr. after Grad. 0.044** 0.031** 0.153** –0.232** 0.352** 0.262** –0.289** 0.047**
Sq. Yr. after Grad. 0.001** –0.001** –0.002** 0.005** –0.008** –0.005** 0.006** –0.003**
Constant 33.905** 37.247** 33.141** 38.920** 27.915** 33.381** 38.135** 31.882**
Observations 66,387 113,103 117,561 67,343 84,631 92,200 167,517 70,840
R-squared 0.380 0.370 0.329 0.375 0.323 0.251 0.362 0.447
In all countries, access to higher status jobs – higher occupational scores – for adult
migrants are lower than for adult EU-born, more so for migrant females than migrant
males. This finding is consistent with the findings of the previous research (Rubin et al.,
2008) indicating that migrant women are not only concentrated in a few sectors of the
economy, but these sectors are in the lowest-skilled segments, which usually involves
low status, low pay, and limited rights within the labour market. Some of these sectors,
like sales and services and care services, typically demand unskilled, interchangeable
and substitutable labour (Massey and Constant, 2005). It is likely that the lower occu-
pational scores of migrant women are a result of human capital factors – lack of lan-
guage proficiency, qualifications, unfamiliarity with the receiving country – combined
discriminatory processes that lead to disadvantage (Rubin et al., 2008).
Contrary to the disadvantaged positions of the older migrants, we observed
that young migrant males are more likely to have high-status jobs in all coun-
tries, particularly in France (Table 4.2). This might stem from the fact that, in this
analysis, we considered only a small subset of migrants, employed individuals.
Furthermore, less-educated migrants are less likely to be employed; hence, in this
analysis we observe mostly the more educated subset of migrants whose human
capital might provide them with opportunities to have higher-status occupations.
In addition to the quality of jobs, we provide another estimation of quality
outcomes by estimating a standard Mincerian hourly wage equation based on sal-
ary income, the number of months in full-time employment, and usual weekly
working hours during the reference period.2 Independent variables are as previ-
ously indicated, that is, gender, migrant status, age group, education level and
(potential) experience. The model also includes the IESE occupation score and
time dummies. The results are reported in Figure 4.1.
5%
0%
-5%
-10%
-15%
-20%
-25%
-30%
-35%
-40%
-45%
Young Nave Male Young Nave Female

Young Migrant Male Young Migrant Female
Figure 4.1 Predicted relative wage differences across vulnerable groups relative

to adult males (students excluded)
Source: Own calculations on EU-SILC using cross-sectional population weights of those
over age 16.
The wage gap between young males and females is widest in the Slovak
Republic. Controlling for education and (potential) experience, we found that
the wages for migrants are also lower in most countries than for the EU-born
population, although young migrants earn more than adult migrants, except
in Denmark. This finding might again be a consequence of the problem noted
earlier; that is, we considered only a relatively small subset of migrants who
have a comparative advantage in human capital. In the United Kingdom and
Greece, young migrants in work earn significantly more than any other group
in these countries. Note that migrants in the United Kingdom had a higher
education than anywhere else, a result that is likely driven by the very few
observations on young migrants with lower education in that country. From
our analysis of job quality outcomes, we again find that females and migrants
are more likely to be disadvantaged. Furthermore, even if these groups have
the ‘privilege to be employed’, the status of jobs they are hired for is lower,
as are their wages.
Summary and conclusions

The dynamics of vulnerabilities result in heterogeneous and fragmented transi-
tions between school and the labour market, with women and migrants often suf-
fering the most. Nevertheless, despite these common pressures, this chapter also
shows that school-to-work regimes, embedded in the specific structural, cultural,
historical and institutional contexts of various welfare states, reproduce different
inequalities to varying degrees.
Overall, our results suggest that low-educated migrant women may have fewer
options than EU-born women on the labour market and so take up the more lim-
ited range of jobs that are available to them given their qualifications, skills and
migrant status. The findings also indicate that less-educated EU-born women have
higher rates of employment compared to migrant women. As argued by Rubin
et al. (2008), this could be due to a variety of supply, demand and institutional
factors affecting the willingness or ability of migrant women to participate in
the labour force; unfamiliarity with employment opportunities available; lack of
language skills (supply factors); discrimination along gender and/or ethnic/racial
lines in the labour market (factors that may be influencing demand); lack of rec-
ognition of qualifications; or visa restrictions on employment (institutional factors
which affect both supply and demand).
Based on our findings, we argue that regimes characterised by an institution-
alised VET system and strong counselling support for training and employment
such as that found in Denmark tend to perform relatively well in facilitating
school-to-work transitions of different vulnerable groups. One of the major
strengths of the universal regime seems to lie in its minimal streaming and flex-
ible education, supported by broad second-chance options at local levels, both
in education and training. These polices play a major role in integrating vul-
nerable groups such as low-skilled and minority youth into education and the
labour market.
By contrast, France’s employment-centred regime, characterised by fewer

second-chance options, creates early disconnection of immigrant youth from edu-
cation and the labour market. The UK liberal regime is an interesting case in terms
of the effect of youth unemployment on vulnerable groups. Unlike in other coun-
tries, vulnerability is not directly correlated with immigration or minority status.
However, this finding should not hide the fact that low-skilled immigrant and
minority youth are particularly disadvantaged in a regime characterised by a rela-
tively weak VET system and a low level of employer engagement with training.
In the sub-protective regimes of Spain and Greece, transitions are more hetero-
geneous, non-linear and unpredictable. Limited standard workplaces, unprotected
living conditions, and a large informal economy combine with an undeveloped
VET system to make socio-economic status, gender and ethnicity strong deter-
minants of youth unemployment. Additionally, compared to other regimes, in
sub-protective regimes such as Greece, gender vulnerability is a highly distinct
characteristic.
In the countries considered in this chapter, there is some evidence of policies
aimed at narrowing the gaps, but only for the most disadvantaged and in a lim-
ited range of areas, namely, improving the level of educational attainment. The
gender gaps documented in this chapter actually reflect segregation of educa-
tional and training choices as well as a range of other processes both in and out
of the labour market that serve to reinforce gender roles and stereotypes. The
evidence suggests that gender differences open up early in the life course (Plan-
tenga and Manuela, 2013). and therefore, that a more comprehensive approach
is required.
Notes
1 Earlier versions of SILC data use the ISCO-88 classification at a more aggregate level.
Starting from 2011, the classification was switched to ISCO-08, with a larger set of 52
occupations that provides a better match with ISEI.
2 The dependent variable is a log of hourly wages for those who are employed full-time,
who have reported a positive salary income and whose usual working hours are fewer
than 85 per week.
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Chapter 5
Precarious and creative

Youth facing uncertainty in
the labour market
Sonia Bertolini, Valentina Moiso and Marge Unt
Introduction and theoretical background

Today, young people grow up in a context of extensive transformations in work
opportunities, which encourages innovative practices in the way they organise
their everyday lives. Most of these innovative practices are still individual efforts,
attempts to manage ambivalence and uncertainty. Nevertheless, they may antici-
pate the capacity to act and to speak in a pioneering way, to set up an original and
exemplary action that could become a model for the action of a wider part of the
population. In particular, those among them with high social and cultural capital,
more in tune with practices of mobility and interconnectivity, recognise it and put
it into viable schemes for interpretation and evaluation. The chance to take dis-
parate elements from these current models in order to put together one’s life in a
specific way depends on their economic and technological opportunities, on their
network of accessible relationships and on the individual’s own personal abilities
to choose. It requires the development of specific skills based mainly on access
to and management of the symbolic codes used and valued in various contexts,
and on the capacity to move from one context to another (Rebughini et al., 2017).
Difficulties in entering the labour market complicate the situation of young
people, who are already being sorely tested from the point of view of the transi-
tion into adult life. Literature (Blossfeld et al., 2005) stressed that job uncertainty
is not the same for everyone and in every context, because it is filtered by the insti-
tutions (employment system, educational system, welfare state system and family
system). On the side of the employment system, the spread of flexibility could
take place without a substantial reform of the welfare state system and without
the implementation of adequate active employment policies, as in Italy, increasing
the perception that if you lose your job, you are exposed to high income uncer-
tainty and a low probability of re-employment. Therefore, in changing jobs, a risk
arises not only for those going from atypical work to typical jobs, but also from
the atypical towards situations of unemployment or even inactivity, because in
the absence of a contract renewal, in times of economic crisis, many people stop
looking for work. The guidance provided by the educational system and proposals
for vocational training, with rare exceptions, does not yet seem able to help young
76 Sonia Bertolini et al.
people overcome work uncertainty by defining career paths that are consistent
with their skills.
The presence of policies inspired by the logic of de-commodification and de-
familisation is another relevant point in structuring the context of opportunities
for young people. At the meso level, the economic capital of the family of origin,
which protects them in the periods when they await work, as well as the cultural
capital that provides metacognitive resources (Berloffa, Modena and Villa, 2015)
and social capital, affect the ways and the times when one finds work and the
transition to a stable, good-quality job.
Therefore, the institutional, social and cultural contexts radically change the
perspective within which individuals make decisions and help reconcile the dif-
ferent transitions (Mayer, 1997; Heinz, 2001). Starting at this point, this chapter
focuses on the decisional mechanism and strategies at the individual level. The
focus is on investigating the link between uncertainty in the labour market and
autonomy, that is, leaving the parental home and being able to financially provide
for their own needs, highlighting the coping strategies youth put in place in differ-
ent institutional contexts.
The results come from a comparative qualitative analysis lasting three years
in the frame of the EXCEPT project – Horizon 2020 programme: 386 interviews
with young people aged 18–30 in nine European countries (Bertolini et al., 2018).
Evidence from recent research has shown that job insecurity leads to putting off
decisions regarding the transition to adult life (Blossfeld et al., 2005; Nazio, 2008;
Barbieri and Scherer, 2009; Bertolini, 2011; Jansen, 2011; Reyneri, 2011; Bloss-
feld et al., 2012; Bertolini, Hofacker and Torrioni, 2014; Rebughini et al., 2017).
The problem is that long-term planning for your career, and consequently private
life, becomes difficult, if not impossible, when working with short-term contracts.
However, having to halt planning because you do not know what will happen
next, once your contract has ended, may induce an attitude – that is, playing for
time – which then spreads to other dimensions of life.
Research design: highlighting creativity facing

precariousness
To take into account the context in analysing individual decisional mechanisms
means to take into account the influence the social fabric that surrounds them
has on the actor, without losing the reference to action with its own sense of a
Weberian paradigm. Deviations from standard rationality thus are not immedi-
ately defined as irrational behaviours but are traced back to the good reasons that
guide actions or to the practical sense that guides individuals.
We are referring to a model of rationality that is more complex than the stand-
ard one, so in our perspective, some distorting elements of the latter are no more
than alternative kinds of rationality. Individuals, first of all, encounter limitations
in resorting to explicit knowledge, i.e. when they implement ‘rational’ processes
of research, hypothesis verification and learning, thus arriving at simplified
Precarious and creative 77
representations of the situation. Therefore, we have sought traces of the intentional

meaning of their action, which does not coincide with the instrumental rationality
of the neoclassical economic paradigm. Such a level of analysis, however, also
highlights the use by individuals of tacit or paradigmatic knowledge that is part
of their experience and emotional baggage. The actors have a particular practical
sense, which they activate when encoding information and making decisions. The
baggage that allows individual action to be practiced (agency) is also composed
of a series of cognitive maps of reality definition, cognitive schemes to understand
and interpret the real, which constitute the link between the ways of doing and
those of feeling proper to the emotional sphere (De Leonardis, 2001).
In order to trace these cognitive patterns in our particular research object, a good
way may be to enter into the concept of heuristics developed in cognitive psy-
chology (compare Gigerenzer and Todd, 1999; Goldstein and Gigerenzer, 2002;
Monti et al., 2009), that is to say, those simple rules systems that people follow to
face problems and make decisions in the face of complex systems and incomplete
information. Giving attention to the practical sense of individual actors, and to the
simple rules that inform their actions, allows us to discover many mechanisms
that would not have emerged otherwise. In particular, we are referring to creative
solutions that youth put in place in order to face uncertainty in the labour market.
Literature has highlighted the role of creativity for the young generation, given
the changes in institutional setting – labour market and welfare state, but also
the production system (Armano and Murgia, 2012; Morgan, Wood and Nelligan,
2013; Rebughini et al., 2017). Particularly in more recent years, the literature
about creativity has moved ever closer to the studies on social innovation, which
is to search innovative solutions to social problems that affect contemporary soci-
ety, such as youth unemployment in Europe.
In this frame, the institutional actor – the state and therefore social policies –
becomes increasingly absent in providing opportunities for young people, who are
alone in facing the risk of uncertainty (Beck, 1986; Sennett, 1998). In particular,
we look at decision mechanisms and strategies of young people facing the tran-
sition of leaving the parental home and then looking for housing and economic
autonomy in an uncertain labour market.
The framework of the chapter is based on the following links (Figure 5.1). The
focus on subjectivity is important in order to allow the simple rules and the prac-
tical sense to emerge: in this way, it is possible to complete the information on
the impact of job insecurity on youth life that emerged from previous quantitative
studies. Job insecurity is accompanied by postponement of transitions to adult life,
non-default transitions order and reversible transitions (Rindfuss et al., 1988; Buch-
mann and Kriesi, 2011). The first consequence of job insecurity, which is having
an inadequate income, goes hand in hand with loss of sustainability of household
expenses, non-payment of fines and other expenses and over-indebtedness (Four-
cade and Healy, 2013; Perrin-Heredia, 2013). In the literature, there is a lack of
studies moving from qualitative approaches that at the same time take into account
the reconstruction of institutional contexts (see Moiso, 2018).
Figure 5.1 Conceptual map
Institutional context
In Italy, youth employment status shows a high level of unemployment compared
to the EU average: 35% in the 15–24 age group and 16% in the 25–34 age group
(Reyneri, 2011; Eurostat, 2017; see Bertolini, 2018). In the frame of flexibility,
several labour market reforms have introduced temporary contracts in the last
years, but adequate forms of social protection are not yet available (Bertolini,
2011). The risk of being trapped in a secondary and sub-protected labour market
is higher for young people with respect to older workers (Barbieri, 2011). The
crisis in 2008 has worsened this situation. The data show an increase in fixed-term
and atypical contracts especially for young people. At the same time, a higher
number of NEET among youth (Eurostat, 2017) and an increased risk of poverty
in comparison with other age groups are due to the uncertainty and the low level
of salaries linked to the atypical contracts (Eurostat, 2016). In the absence of a
minimum income scheme, in Italy, the family is still the main provider of welfare
and the first form of support young people turn to in case of unemployment or low
labour market attachment (Saraceno, 2014; Meo and Moiso, 2018).
In Estonia, the status of youth employment shows a lower level of unemploy-
ment than the EU average: 12.1% in the 15–24 age group and 5.2% in the 25–49
age group (Eurostat, 2018). However, the youth employment situation has been
volatile, as Estonia was severely hit by the last crisis when youth unemployment
was skyrocketing. However, Estonia recovered more quickly than many other EU
countries from the last recession, and its unemployment rate has been decreasing
since 2011. Since the employment protection legislation is relatively low for eve-
ryone, the temporary contracts are not widespread. It is also important to mention
the overall level of public funding available for activation and social protection. In
Estonia, the public spending on social protection and active labour market meas-
ures are well below the EU average. Although investments in active labour market
measures have risen since its accession to the European Union in 2004, they are
still less than half of the EU average in 2016 (0.18% of GDP in Estonia vs 0.42%
in the EU-28) (Unt, 2018). Thus, also in Estonia, the family is still the main safety
net in case of unemployment or low labour market attachment.
Data and method

We will compare the youth strategies of young people in Estonia and Italy. The
sample is composed of 103 interviews conducted during the period Decem-
ber 2015–November 2016 with young people aged 18–30, temporary workers,
unemployed or working ‘under the table’, balanced by gender and educational
qualifications.
The Italian sample consisted of 50 young people, balanced for gender and age:
there were 25 young men and 25 young women; 25 were aged 18–24, while the
other 25 were aged 25–30. Regarding their educational level, 26 out of 50 inter-
viewees had a secondary level of education (ISCED 3, only one ISCED 4), 12
had a low educational level (ISCED 0–2) and 12 had a tertiary education (ISCED
5–6). With respect to the well-known Italian territorial divide, 31 of them were
living in the city of Turin (in Piedmont, northern Italy) and 19 in Catania (in Sic-
ily, southern Italy). In terms of involvement in targeted policies, 27 interviewees
had been involved in policy measures, but only one with a form of economic sup-
port, and 23 participants had not participated in any such measures.
The Estonian sample consisted of 53 young people, balanced for gender and
age: there were 25 young men and 28 young women; 24 were aged 18–24, while
the other 29 were aged 25–30. Regarding their educational level, 23 out of 50
interviewees had up to a lower secondary level of education (ISCED 0–2), 21 had
completed upper secondary education (ISCED 3–4) and 9 had a tertiary education
(ISCED 5–6). With respect to the territorial divide, 29 were from the two largest
cities in Estonia, Tallinn and Tartu, and 24 were from counties located near the
south-eastern border of Estonia and a county at the north-eastern border. In terms
of involvement in targeted policies, 29 interviewees had been involved in policy
measures, and 24 participants had not participated in any such measures.
The interviews were semi-structured: leaving a free narration, the person inter-
viewed was given the opportunity to indicate the most important aspects for them
in relation to the uncertainty. Through the comparison with ‘control’ questions
that asked them to explain the moments, the problems and the most important
concerns related to this, we wanted to trace the heuristics activated by the actors
in the processes of information collection and maturation of choices.
With different variations between countries depending on the institutional
structure in Estonia and Italy, we have found creative strategies in the following
areas: housing choices, cost containment and savings.
Housing choices
In the frame of autonomy, the first problem for young people working in an uncer-
tain labour market is to face the income discontinuity. Regarding their housing
choices, the results showed some creative solutions: sharing a house, returning to
the parental house, having autonomy at intermittence or autonomy elsewhere or
a partial autonomy.
Sharing a house (for necessity) in both countries

Cohabitation allowed for sharing expenses with other people and lowering their
living costs. To share expenses and reduce living costs is widespread in countries
where you do not leave your parents’ home to live as a couple (Bertolini et al.,
2018), such as in the United Kingdom, Sweden and Poland. In Italy, the interview-
ees living outside the parental house told a different story with respect to the past.
In fact, the experience of living in a house shared with flat mates was quite com-
mon among them, and this result was something totally new for Italian youth, who
in the past were not used to doing so. Even some of those living in the parental
house at the moment of interviews had moved out for some periods in the past,
mainly to enter University or to pursue other educational/working experiences in
a town different from their own. However, the cohabitation seemed to work as a
temporary strategy.
In Estonia, cohabitation is considered more normal, especially among young
people leaving the parental home while they are studying. Still, seeing as the heat-
ing can be very expensive during winter, even cohabitation is not always enough
for young people to cover their expenses, and they are forced to move back to
their parental homes.
Sharing as a creative solution for young people facing uncertainty in the labour
market is a well-known issue in the literature, especially in analysing new solu-
tions to contain the costs of self-employed workers (D’Ovidio, 2016). Sharing
practices are presented in the frame of reciprocity, solidarity and the creation of
a virtuous circle of exchanges among people. In contrast, exploring motivations
and feelings on the basis of this choice in our sample, young people would prefer
to live alone and share their homes only for economic reasons.
Returning to parental house (always out of necessity)

against living with parents and redefining autonomy
In the event of unemployment, many interviewees who were already living alone
decided to return to the parental home. In Estonia, many interviewees had studied
elsewhere and then returned to the parental household because they could not
afford to live alone anymore. Thus, returning home in this case has been a way
to cover the break between the end of an educational path and the start of their
working path. Returning home is also a coping strategy in case of a breakup:

when the couple splits, it is much harder to cover the costs of housing alone, or
the apartment is left to the other partner.
Indeed, perhaps in connection with ever-decreasing job opportunities due to the
economic crisis, it appears that job insecurity in Italy prompts youth to consider
either the most immediate present or the foreseeable future. In this view, you have
to focus entirely on the present; consequently, autonomy is limited both in time
and space. That is exactly what prevents young people from deciding to leave
their family of origin. For our sample, being autonomous mostly meant managing
daily or short-term economic problems and decisions and paying for leisure-time
expenses and little more.
Autonomy intermittence, autonomy elsewhere

and partial autonomy
Asking for help from parents is the most common strategy, but with differences
between countries. In Italy, parents are a normal source of support for young peo-
ple before going to live alone.
I mean, I don’t know, to me it seems quite normal that a family, if they can,
would support their child during University. . . . I realize that to stay here in
Turin, outside from my parents’ house . . . I need the economic support of
my parents, in this very moment, I mean, partially at least, not totally, but
yes, partially. So . . . I mean I don’t, I don’t feel totally independent, that’s
for sure. . . . Now that I’ve worked a little bit . . . I still have some money left
(from my last job), so a little bit, I can make do by myself, but before (during
University) it was totally on them
(Veronica, F, 26, U, IT)
In Estonia, young people stay at the parental home for financial reasons, being
unable to rent their own flat. In order to leave the parental home, they often need
parental backup and support, because costs of renting, especially in big cities, are
perceived as very high. All the young people who had purchased their own home
had received strong support from their parents or other close relatives. One way
to reach housing autonomy is via inheritance. For instance, Mai lives in a one-
room apartment without a kitchen with her two children. She owns the apartment,
which was bought for her with her grandmother’s inheritance when she was 16.
She understands that at the moment she wouldn’t manage financially if she didn’t
own her apartment, so this is a very important protective factor.
I would rather live in a 16 square-meter place, which is mine, than in a rented

apartment . . . it is small, but it’s mine.
(Mai, F, 28, U, EE)
In Estonia, home ownership is considered desirable among vulnerable youth even

if they realise that without a stable job, it is not feasible to have a mortgage. There-
fore, only those whose parents are able to guarantee the mortgage and support the
payments can opt for the strategy of buying a place to live in. Therefore, young
people dream about home ownership, but no one has managed to take concrete
steps towards it without strong parental involvement. For instance, Kaidi (F, 22,
U) and her partner had saved enough money for the down payment of a flat in Tal-
linn, but they were unable to get a loan from a bank because only one of them is
working. Kaidi’s partner’s mother was ready to take out the loan in her name for
them. They will be paying the loan payments themselves.
Cost containment and savings

Regarding the cost containment and savings area, results shows these strategies:
saving, containing, accounting and programming.
Neither cicadas nor ants

The youth interviewees were well aware of the inadequacy of their income and
were really active in money management strategies. In particular, saving is rep-
resented as a necessity for young people. Saving is often related to the lack of
income support to help atypical workers in facing periods of unemployment.
Saving was a common strategy across the two national samples. Youth inter-
viewees appeared to be able to adapt their material living conditions to their con-
text and its socio-economic features. However, their ability was strongly limited
and conditioned by their job insecurity or low salary level. Despite these difficul-
ties, there were differences among countries given the institutional contexts. In
Italy, saving could be a strategy to cope with job insecurity only if losing housing
autonomy:
the simple fact of being able to save something, to know that someone pays
you to do something . . . this is something that makes you more responsi-
ble. . . . Seeing as I live with my parents, my housing expenses are almost
non-existent.
(Dario, M, 28, permanent employed, IT)
To sum up, for the young interviewees, saving is a short-term strategy to face
uncertainty and income discontinuity, without establishing the conditions for a
future stability. Therefore, this strategy is necessarily short-term, to buffer uncer-
tainty and discontinuity of income. In other words, it can be seen as a strategy
of ‘maximization of minimum’, according to which, individuals prepare for the
worst situation and choose the best option among the worst. The advantage that it
offers is that it is not necessary to evaluate all the possible alternatives, but only
the worst and the usefulness associated with it.
Containment (if you are alone)

In money management, the role of opportunities and constraints given the con-
text in which the individual acts is particularly relevant. In our two samples,
institutional differences matter in the following terms: first, income support lev-
els, which are particularly low in Italy, and the legitimisation of family support,
higher in Italy. Where income support is limited, the strategy is to consume
without spending too much. Many strategies did not include accounting and
were limited only to shopping: in these cases, interviewees bought goods only
at a sale or else cheap items, avoided expensive shops and looked for free rec-
reational activities. It is a sort of ‘readjustment of preferences toward the down
period’ (Elster, 1999) and/or they construct a new rhetoric to justify their situa-
tion, as in the case of Andrea:
I act . . . like this week, I’m not going out . . . or if I go out . . . I meet my
friend, sometimes he comes to get me, sometimes I go to get him . . . we don’t
go very far . . . maybe to the nearby park . . . if the park, we take the Frisbee
or football . . . or we go to the centre, we walk around . . . without spending
money, without spending anything . . . we get around by our own means so
we spend even less, in hindsight . . . we spend ONLY on Saturday evening
(Andrea, M, 19, temporary job, IT)
Accounting and programming

Using cash money, writing expenses and using technology are common strategies
among the young people interviewed. Indeed, budget constraint emerged as the
most widespread strategy and was enforced in its most literal and direct meaning:
some young people used cash only and spread their salary across the entire month
by limiting its availability in the house. Therefore, strategies based on accounting
were an optimal solution for some young people in order to keep both expenditure
and its planning in check:
I support myself financially . . . I created a file, in Excel (laughing), I put in

income and expenditure, so that I can make a forecast.
(Emma, F, 20, temporary employed, IT)
Some interviewees described how they divided their income into days or weeks
in order to manage until the end of the month, so they knew exactly how much
they could spend:
It is like, normal . . . for me that . . . I don’t have an income all the time. . . .
Well and, as I have like, in the previous years, been to America (several
times) [to sell books] then it was also like that that I earned most of my
income during the summer. . . . And during the rest of the year I didn’t have
much income . . . so then you have to know how to distribute your finances
for the whole year.
(Sergei, M, 26, permanently employed, EE)
Reframing autonomy
As for the mechanisms which link a weak attachment in the job market to post-
poning an exit from the parental home, the interviews showed that attitudes have
changed compared to those highlighted in previous research. Indeed, job insecu-
rity is likely to make it impossible for young people to make optimal decisions
concerning their lives: halting decision-making appears to be the mechanism
young people use to manage high insecurity and uncertainty. Moreover, it’s not
just that juveniles postpone decision-making about the transition into adulthood
(because it requires time and money), since their decisions are also, and most
importantly, affected by a range change: decision-making becomes short-term,
and self-binding decisions become problematic.
It is possible to say that, rather than making their decisions under risk condi-
tions (i.e. in situations where they can take into account and estimate the prob-
ability of each possible result), young people make their decisions under insecure
conditions (i.e. some probabilities are unknown). Simply, the institutional context
they are embedded in doesn’t allow them to understand why and how to get a
steady job and a secure income, which they nonetheless deem essential for even
planning on leaving their family of origin, let alone starting their own.
Searching for a link among the previous strategies, it is possible to find a
common thread among the interviewees from the two countries. Young Italians
are in some sense forced to share housing with other people, and they prefer
to return to the parental house. This preference is linked to a widespread and
important strategy for the Italian interviewees: saving. For Italian young people,
staying at home is a waiting strategy that can be analytically seen as a norm of
sustainability. This situation leads to a redefinition of the concept of autonomy
and one’s own level of autonomy. For the Italian interviewees, ‘Autonomy’ is
not living alone. The re-composition of resources requires the support of one’s
peers:
A person can be autonomous, not necessarily because they live on their

own, in a small flat or house, but also continuing to live with others.
(Edoardo, M, 31, temporary job, IT)
Moreover, ‘Autonomy’ is not only supporting oneself, because wages are so low
that to be economically autonomous, one would have to give up living.
For Estonians, autonomy is highly valued, seeing as it has been a general norm
to move out of the parental home rather early. However, it is very challenging to
obtain housing without a stable and sufficient income, and therefore, living with
one’s parents for longer is perceived as a new normality, especially by males, the
unemployed and those living outside of the biggest towns.
It’s just different nowadays. Before you left home, left school, got married
and a job, got an apartment, stuff. Well, um things are different now. People
just continue living at their parents’ home, their parents work and they then
live off their parents’ income.
(Erki, 24, M, unemployed, EE)
To sum up, this implies important consequences in terms of representation of

autonomy among young people with lower social and cultural capital.
Comparing states in which the value of the norm is very different – in Estonia
it is very important, in Italy less so – has shown that at the moment young people
in Europe are facing similar problems. In both countries young people’s creativ-
ity has a function of resilience in dealing with the economic consequences of job
insecurity: creativity lies in actively re-composing available resources. On the
other hand, our analysis has shown the character of short-term strategies of these
behaviours. In both countries, there is the lack of specific policies dedicated to
young people both in terms of labour, housing, access to credit to sustain their
transition to adult life and their short-term strategies for creating conditions for
youth to plan their future.
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Chapter 6
Youth and precariousness

in Spain
Beyond a waiting time
Benjamín Tejerina
The analyses of precariousness in Spain

The issue of precariousness has attracted the attention of numerous researchers
in recent decades, to the point of turning the concept of precariat into a way of
defining the living conditions in contemporary societies (Standing, 2011). Some
research studies have focused on the loss of centrality of work and its repercus-
sion on the identity of young people (Pérez-Agote, Santamaría and Tejerina, 2005;
Santamaría, 2009). Other studies have contributed to institutionalising concepts
such as weak employment (Alonso, 2000, 2008), flexible and precarious workers
(Bilbao, 1998; Díaz-Salazar, 2003) and work crisis (Castel, 1998).
A research line on precariousness has focused on the construction of subjects
whose most relevant characteristic is the lack of some social attribute, in terms
of identity or in terms of material assets: single mothers (Tobío and Fernández
Cordón, 1999; González, Jiménez and Morgado, 2004) or reconciliation of work
and family life (Carrasquer and Torns, 2007; Prieto, Ramos and Callejo, 2008).
Another line of analysis has focused on youth understood as a rite of passage
(Van Gennep, 1986; Turner, 1988) and as precarious identity: wage conditions and
work flexibility (Santos, 2003; Sánchez Moreno, 2004) that make youth emanci-
pation and the fulfilment of life projects difficult, reinforcing dependent family
relationships. The situations described by these research studies are the result of
a shortage of resources necessary to become independent (Casal, 1996; Jurado,
2007; Pérez-Agote and Santamaría, 2008). According to these studies, the main
difficulties are related to the housing market, the wage situation, the temporary
nature of work, and also the role of the Mediterranean family, which condition the
strategies to reach adult life (Olivares, 2002; Rico, 2005; Trilla and López, 2005;
Machado, 2007) and the process of construction of identity (Sánchez Moreno,
2004; Díaz Moreno, 2007; Sánchez Moreno and Barrón, 2007).
The problem of employment in certain circumstances leads to situations of
social exclusion. Several authors have called attention to the effects of working
conditions on new generations, in sharp contrast with those lived by their previous
generations (Pérez-Agote et al., 2001a, 2001b; Cal Barredo, 2002; Casal et al.,
2006; Jiménez et al., 2008).
Youth and precariousness in Spain 89
A fifth line of research has dealt with the political dimension of precariousness
understood as the relationship between the labour market, processes of emancipa-
tion and political option, which, albeit having weakened in recent decades, still
has an influence. Similarly, special attention has been given to political culture,
from the approach of youth behaviours, especially the relationship established
between voting orientation and work situation, as well as the repercussion that
both ideology and the economic situation have on this relationship (Lago, 2007;
Salido and Martín, 2007). There are also studies that focus on the historical pro-
cess and the way young people socialise within the context of the culture of pre-
cariousness (Gálvez, 2005, 2007a, 2007b).
Along the same lines, the studies related with the topic of social capital, vol-
untary work, associationism and social movements are worth mentioning. These
aspects are important if we take into consideration that from the onset of the crisis
in 2007, there has been a considerable increase in mobilisation around social pre-
cariousness (Tejerina et al., 2006, 2008; Tejerina, 2010).
Special mention should be made of Montero, Font and Torcal’s studies on polit-
ical confidence, social capital and associationism (2006). Likewise, the issues of
participation and associationism (Ariño, 2004) have been studied more in depth.
Within the context of political action, analysis has been made of the way in
which mobilisation against precarisation is produced and the context of political
structure and opportunity in several European countries (Mosca, 2006). Some of
the most recent political mobilizations, like those taking place in Arab countries
such as Tunis, Egypt and Morocco, and more recently, those of the 15-M move-
ment in several places in Spain, have had great ownership among youth sectors.
The anti-austerity mobilisation has had a remarkable response among young peo-
ple in different geographical contexts (Jiménez, 2016).
Definition and methodology

The term precarious,1 formerly reserved to fields such as health, construction,
government action and peace, is now often found in colloquial language refer-
ring to a particular type of juncture, situation or state of things characterised by
a lack of strength and stability. It can be considered a condition when associ-
ated to something permanent or a situation experienced in a context of greater
or lesser availability of means and resources. As pointed up by Le Blanc (2007),
the anthropological sense of precariousness is associated to the uncertainty and
contingency that characterise the human condition.
The discourse on precariousness has been present in social sciences in catego-
ries such as anomie, alienation, marginality and poverty. An element that appears
regularly in the conceptual development of precariousness is that of insecurity,
a concept that in the contemporary era we find associated with risk, uncertainty
and complexity. Precariousness regularly appears linked to the welfare state and
its integration and exclusion policies (Castel, 2004, p. 324). Within the French
context, the expansion of the term takes place first in relation to poverty linked to
90 Benjamín Tejerina
vulnerable families (Pitrou, 1978), then with employment status (Schnapper and
Villac, 1989) and, in the 1990s, in relation to work (Paugam, 2007). In the mean-
time, in the Anglo-Saxon context, from the 1990s on, precariousness is related to
flexibility and corrosion (Sennett, 2000).
Precariousness experiences a semantic shift from marginal towards a pro-
gressive approach to the field of work and employment, and with authors like
Bourdieu (1999), Beck, Giddens and Touraine, its meaning moves towards the
social structure or structuring processes of contemporary societies.
Precariousness is a concept that encompasses many aspects of life, but its recent
development has taken place through processes revolving around the labour mar-
ket and its constraints on the life and social relationships of subjects (Beck, 2000;
Sennet, 2000; Prieto, 2007).
Precariousness can be understood as a structural situation or a circumstantial
context in which people find themselves forced to act. Precariousness coming
from the labour context, which then extends to other areas of people’s lives, has
mainly been analysed from this approach. Life precariousness can be defined as
a situation of a structural or circumstantial origin characterised by a restriction,
impossibility or limitation of access to the conditions, requisites and resources
considered necessary in order to plan, carry out and manage an autonomous
life. The level of restriction or limitation can reach different degrees of intensity
according to the average available resources in a given society. Thus, precarious-
ness is a relational category in a double sense: (a) in relation to the average of the
given society, group or social category; and (b) in relation to the different areas of
life (Tejerina et al., 2012, p. 22).
Precariousness is a concept that brings together the personal condition and situ-
ation in the relationship between an individual and the environment. Precarious-
ness is the state one reaches through processes of precarisation understood as
de-institutionalised life spaces. Precarisation processes affect identity insofar as
individuals lose the modalities of attachment of the ‘I’ to the ‘us’ and the ‘you’,
or see them altered.
Precarisation as a process reaches different dimensions related to entries and exits
into and from risk zones, which refer to the limitations of individuals’ resources
and capacities: work, remuneration, consumption, residence, educational qualifica-
tion, environment, family and emotional life, social relationships, health and civic
engagement. Institutions also participate in precarisation as a process, through the
practices of public action or by its absence, and through the regulation of precari-
ousness insofar as institutions teach individuals to move within it.
In most cases experiencing precariousness, managing a daily existence filled
with constraints and the strategies developed by individuals and collectives
encompass very negative social consequences. However, there is still the possi-
bility of understanding and analysing such strategies under the principles of social
creativity and innovation, from the imaginative search for solutions in a situation
of restriction of resources.
Considered from this perspective, precariousness is not only a restrictive

or punctual shortage but also a structural and generalised factor that becomes
inserted in social life. Precariousness appears, not just like a failure of the system
that needs repaired (discourse of exclusion/integration); rather, precarious situa-
tions are a mechanism associated with society’s way of functioning.
It is worth noting that this mechanism has at the present time been accelerated
in what we could call late modernity, settling at the very core of social life. Ulti-
mately, precariousness does not operate only as a generator of residual, marginal
spaces for exclusion; it has rather become a definer of daily social situations. Also,
in the same sense, it has become a concept that articulates sociological definitions
that cannot be explained anymore using the classical vocabulary of the social sci-
ences (Tejerina et al., 2012, p. 23).
The various processes of precarisation and their multiple formulations can be
put in order around a distinction between two theoretical–methodological defini-
tions: that of simple precariousness, and that of generalised precariousness or
complex precariousness.
Simple precariousness is understood as a synonym of shortage, in the closest
sense to the common use of this word. It is therefore a negative feature, something
punctual that needs solved: shortage, lack, instability, insecurity and insufficiency.
This way of understanding precariousness corresponds with situations of regu-
latory crisis that produces highly vulnerable, deficient and disintegrated social
spaces.
The second type of precariousness is understood as tenure, as a positive
feature. Precariousness is not seen as something to be solved; rather, it is
defined as life world that, having instability as a factor, requires managing and
forces the development of singular strategies. In this way, precariousness is
not a temporary situation but becomes a generalised precariousness or com-
plex precariousness.
The interest of complex precariousness resides in that it allows us to better ana-
lyse the presence of the different managing strategies that, from a creative point
of view, develop those who find themselves facing life precariousness, giving
room to new ways of being and thinking precariousness. Our hypothesis is that,
youth being one of the worse-hit sectors by precarisation processes, the worlds of
precariousness are present in a generalised manner, or become present in a more
intense manner, in certain situations of young people’s social life.
The methodology involves the interpretation of data obtained using quali-
tative techniques. For the analysis of the definitions and experiences of pre-
cariousness, the metaphors young people use to narrate their situation and
their biographical strategies, we conducted 45 semi-structured interviews and
10 focus groups with young people, between the ages of 20 and 34 at the
time of the interview. For this study we selected only verbatim from nine
personal interviews and one focus group, whose characteristics are presented
in Table 6.1.
Methodological annex
Table 6.1 List of individual interviews and focus group
E1 Female, 29 years. Holds a degree in teaching. Working as shop assistant.

Living as a couple in an apartment with a mortgage.
E2 Female, 29 years. Holds a degree in law. Preparing for a job selection test.
Living with her parents.
E3 Male, 29 years. Holds a degree in business administration. Unemployed.
Living with his parents.
E4 Male, 29 years. Vocational education. Environmental technician. Living in a
rented, shared apartment.
E5 Male, 25 years. Student. Temporary jobs. Living with a partner in a rented
apartment.
E6 Female, 32 years. Holds a degree in translation and interpreting.
Freelance translator. Living with a partner in a rented apartment.
E7 Male, 29 years. Vocational education. Has a temporary contract as a
docker. Living with a partner in an apartment with a mortgage.
E8 Male, 28 years. Civil engineer. Has a temporary contract in equipment
building. Long working days. Living with a partner in a rented
apartment.
E9 Female, 30 years. Holds a diploma in social education. Temporary jobs.
Health problems. Living in a rented, shared apartment.
E10 Male, 33 years. Has a supervised job. Living with his mother.
E11 Female, 30 years. Single mother. Receiving Income Support Benefit (Renta
de Garantía de Ingresos, RGI). Living in rented social housing.
E12 Colombian female, 30 years. Single mother. Jobs without a contract.
Living in rented accommodation.
G1 Group of five women, around 30 years, emancipated and non-
emancipated.
The information used in this chapter comes from four investigations in which
the author acted as director between 2009 and 2018: (1) CSO2008–00886, ‘Vital
precariousness. The processes of precarisation of social life and identity in con-
temporary Spanish society’; (2) ‘Vital precariousness and Basque youth. Social
conditions and biographical strategies to lead a normal life’; (3) CSO2011–23252,
‘Social responses to the crisis and processes of precarisation of life in contem-
porary society: Belgium, Spain, France, Italy and Portugal’; and (4) CSO2016–
78107-R, ‘Sharing society. The impact of collaborative collective action’.
Meanings, narratives and experiences

of precariousness
There is a rather general consensus among social scientists about the diagnosis of
the importance of risk and uncertainty in contemporary societies (Giddens, 1984;
Beck, 2000; Bauman, 2001, 2003, 2005). The core idea in this diagnosis is that
we find ourselves in a society characterised not by the administration of risk, but
rather by radical uncertainty.
The question we seek to answer in this section is whether this general uncer-
tainty is part of how young people define their situation today because it has
become part of their everyday experience. With this purpose, we will use the
verbatin from the interviews carried out with young people throughout more than
a decade. Let us remember that the people interviewed do not suffer extreme situ-
ations of precariousness; they have a middle or high level of education and, in
most cases, they can get family or public help.
The use of the term precariousness in colloquial language appears associated
with or as a synonym of different elements. The most frequent is that of job insta-
bility. If we take into consideration the testimonies gathered in the interviews,
people tend to position themselves in a scale ranging from stability to instability.
Instability tends to be associated with the lack of continuity or duration in time:
‘I get temporary things, but stable jobs don’t come up’ (E5), or ‘I have always
had jobs, but I have not had a stable job’ (E2). The challenge significant groups
of young people are facing is how to reach job stability, especially at a time of
increasing job market flexibility. Thus, the aim of some young people is to find out
how to construct a life based on unstable stability.
Secondly, precariousness is defined as an experience of not fitting: I am not in
the right place, I have wasted my time and the capabilities I have acquired are
being lost: ‘I studied for seven years, and I feel like I’ve lost those years, if I had
studied a module’ (E3); and ‘I have studied for tomorrow to have a job . . . not to
be in a store. I want to have a job for what I have studied all my life!’ (E1).
The experience of precariousness is becoming subjective in a process of inter-
nalisation of the situation and the responses to get out of it or avoid the lack of sta-
bility. According to the testimony of the young people interviewed, this is achieved
in two ways. The first way is through the permanent updating of the knowledge
and competences acquired during education, which extends throughout the whole
of the productive life: ‘Today, training is a trade . . . what you studied four years
ago has already become obsolete. . . . They ask you for more and more of every-
thing’ (E3). The second way is by resorting to entrepreneurial capacity, investing
in one’s own capacity: ‘Everything comes to you if you are an entrepreneur’ (E7);
and ‘more training, so I will be more competitive’ (G1). Ulrich Beck has called
these subjects ‘proletarians of self-realization’; Michel Foucault used the term
‘entrepreneur of the self’, and Isabell Lorey (2009) referred to ‘self-precarisation’
to define the situation of cultural producers (Carbajo, 2016, p. 1).
The experience of insurmountable difficulty pushes many young people to seek
help or cooperation from other actors, mainly relatives or the public sector. Most
testimonies point out the difficulty in getting through, in living with sufficiency:
‘I have to tighten the belt a little, because with the salary and the public subsidy
(RGI) it is still not enough’ (E12). This situation can lead to the person’s deacti-
vation, to feeling overwhelmed and impotent: ’I feel bad, impotent, I cannot do
anything’ (E11); ‘work can consume you, you’re cannon fodder’ (E10).
In the narratives about young people’s everyday life, we find continuous refer-
ences to the cliché of misfortune ‘I’ve been lucky that where I am I’m fine’ (E10).
This also applies when they refer to the possibility of getting residential autonomy
through the purchase of a home, which can only happen if you’re lucky or you
get a home from social housing drawing lots: ‘It is very difficult to buy a house if
you are not lucky’ (E4).
Resources to alleviate precariousness come from two main sources, the family
and public subsidies. The first is widely accepted and is generalised among young
people who do not live far from their relatives or visit them regularly: ‘When we
visit the family we return home with Tupperware’ (E4), and ‘I managed in that my
family supported me financially’ (E6). The second one is highly stigmatised, to
the point that receiving these types of support is like living on ‘crutches’, becom-
ing a prosthetised subject who cannot live without his prosthesis: ‘I do not like
having to make an appointment with the social worker, I do not like to receive
this (social help)’ (E12), and ’I do not like to receive this (help) . . . I feel sorry,
anguished and in the end this tires me’ (E11).
The definitions of what is precariousness are subject to variations according
to the social position of the young people interviewed; but at the same time,
the experiences narrated tend to point to a common territory, known and visited
frequently or permanently, and a present time defined by the uncertainty which
makes it difficult to think about the future.
Metaphors about precariousness

Where the meaning of common words cannot reach, metaphors can, by occupying
the place of that which is being represented and helping to render visible some
elusive elements. Both individual interviews and focus groups are riddled with
such secondary references, which bring closer the meanings and consequences
of precariousness, and the situations it produces with great economy of language.
I shall develop this through six metaphors and images of how they experience
precariousness: ‘living from hand to mouth’, ‘being on a tightrope’, ‘stressed like
crazy’, ‘in stand-by’, ‘taking a step backwards’ and ‘I want to be normal’.
The absence of long-term income stability among young adults is a source of
unrest that each person copes with in their own way. As we mentioned earlier, it
is the main source of uncertainty. The expression used to refer to this situation is
quite a graphic one, ‘living from hand to mouth’. Let us look at two testimonies:
‘I do not have money in the bank, but I can live daily’ (E4), and ’Tight, there are
months that I live better, months that I live worse’ (E6). Living day by day, week
by week or month by month, but without a blue sky on the horizon, is a consider-
able part of a stage of transition, redefinition, positioning and search, but also a
stage with an absence of the need to plan for the future, of basically thinking about
the present, a nowism (Muñoz, 2007).
We find a second way of referring to uncertainty in the expression ‘being on a
tightrope’. The metaphor of the tightrope walker, trapeze artist, or the slackline
refers to situations of lack of safe anchoring, of swaying that makes one’s way an
existence full of oscillations. The testimony of this young person explains it very
clearly: ‘Being a bit out there, on the wire, like the tightrope walkers . . . some-
thing precarious is something that does not have much balance, I do not know
how to define it, that it can come down’ (E5). Being on a tightrope prefigures a
present that can sink at any time. This dimension of ‘being on a tightrope’ has
become more pronounced among young people as a result of the financial and
social crisis of 2008, but its roots predate this. The difficulties are faced as they
arise, and one of the first consequences is the impossibility or difficulty in elabo-
rating mid or long-term projects.
This way of living configures a mentality and a series of patterns to psycho-
logically confront its consequences. The experience of precariousness also has
implications for the body that generates resilience in young people to get through
difficult and stressful situations, but also fears and processes of medicalisation to
live with it day by day. Anxiety is a characteristic syndrome in precarious situ-
ations. Let us stop briefly in both dimensions. The lack of achievement of life
expectations, especially when they are not realistic, reinforces resistance and the
capacity to cope with these situations: ‘The tolerance to frustration is barbaric, the
management of stress to the maximum’ (E9); ‘I lost my tendency to get fat, but
I’m not happy with myself’ (E11). On the other hand, when the situation becomes
uncontrollable from a personal point of view, the individual feels overwhelmed by
the situation, as E12 expresses, ‘it’s killing me, it’s really killing me’; and if one
seeks professional help, medicalisation of anxiety increases the uneasiness and
lack of confidence towards the health system, ‘when they ask me the question,
what are you afraid of? Of the doctors . . . they have made me such tricks’ (E9).
The most common situation among Spanish young people is the experience of
playing a waiting game, a situation where the plot is about to end, but while the
good times and the good news arrive, the subject is in ‘stand-by’ mode; connected
but at a standstill. This situation means an extension, sometimes desired, but gen-
erally not wanted, of being at home with the family, not being able to emancipate
and have an autonomous life alone or with a partner. The lack of a stable job and
the impossibility of living independently extend the transition into adult life. E2
expresses it in the following statement: ‘I am already 30 years old and I feel like
it a lot, to be able to leave home I need a stable job’. Also, couple projects are
affected by this waiting situation: ‘We have been together 11 years as a couple
and you have the urge to have your own home’, as E8 says; and ‘I have already a
desire, I wanted to go and live with her’, in the words of E3.
Our testimonies represent experiences, which are generalised among contem-
porary young people, not just affecting a minority, and hence concepts such as
transition into adult life or what it is to be an adult are called into question and
require, at least, a redefinition (Furlong and Cartmel, 2007). We find a clear exam-
ple of the crisis in the concept of transition from training to work. Testimonies are
abundant on the mismatch between training and jobs occupied. The mismatch is
between capacities and opportunities. The most frequent response is that of ‘tak-
ing a step backwards’ in order to take a step forward, the only way of reassem-
bling the mismatched pieces: ‘I think I should have studied something different’
(E2). On other occasions, people go back into education, especially when one is
overqualified, to try to get some training more in tune with what one wants to do
or to increase the opportunities of finding another job, entering a spiral of requali-
fication, excess of education, excess of qualification (Budría and Moro-Egido,
2008; Nieto and Ramos, 2010).
If precariousness is present in contemporary society, we should ask ourselves:
what does normality consist of? Normality is defined as the absence of uncertainty
and is identified with the common and ordinary actions, practices and desires of
everyday life: ‘I would like to see myself as a parent, with two children, and tak-
ing my children to see Athletic [of Bilbao, local football team]’ (E3), or simply,
‘Leave home and live my life’ (E2).
Debate
The relationship of Spanish youth with precariousness is not all that different
from that experienced in other European countries or in other geographical areas
by young people born from the mid-1980s onward. It is, however, possible to
identify two differential aspects: first, higher unemployment rates and difficulties
in finding stable jobs, if we compare these magnitudes with other countries in
central and northern Europe; second, the greater impact of the financial and social
crisis of 2008 in Spain, compared with that experienced in other countries.
Nevertheless, precariousness (in a wider sense), uncertainty and the absence of
normality are present in the lives of contemporaries. It is possible that, if Inglehart
is right, those who have been socialised at a specific time of scarcity or prosperity
construct clearly differentiated visions of the world and social values.
Six axes allow us to analyse the biographical strategies of contemporary young
people’s biographical strategies faced with precariousness, and are presented here
for debate.
One, although there are important differences between the different types of
precariousness, as there are higher or lower degrees of precariousness, we find
that, in all cases, young people experience a mismatch between their capacities
and the practical realisation. This gap makes them take a step backwards in order
to keep going forward: going back to education, training in something different,
re-qualifying, changing their place of residence, reinventing themselves. The idea
pursued with this is to reassemble two realities that are perceived as mismatched.
Two, individual precariousness is not perceived as coming from a structural
origin, so that the management of such situations is oriented to individual changes
and processes of personal transformation.
Three, the responsibility of the situation is almost always attributed to each
individual and demands a resilient response. This leads to working on one’s own
identity, a non-stop activity of investing in oneself, what we have come to call
entrepreneurship of the self and, in some cases, a hyperactivity that leads to doing
things non-stop.
Four, family solidarity is key in understanding how young people can get sta-
bility in situations of precariousness, as is the existence of social support through
public aid and subsidies. As stated in other research studies, it is reasonable to
think that in southern European countries, the welfare state is more dependent
on family help; while in other geographical areas, the state has more solid and
developed mechanisms to deal with misfortune. But while family help is accepted
without any difficulties, the second can be accompanied with social and personal
stigma.
Five, the temporality in which young people are nowadays installed make it
practically impossible to plan for the mid term. Living day by day and conjugating
existence in the present tense is the correlate of the trivialisation of uncertainty.
Six, the transition from dependence to independence that used to occupy a short
period of time in the past has been extended in recent decades. Extending the
years devoted to education, together with the current working conditions and the
difficulties in finding job stability, expand the time used to carry out this transi-
tion. The result is that new youth figures appear and the category of adult itself
becomes blurred, as in many cases it does not establish a clear break with previous
stages. Far from just waiting in this prolonged youth, what we usually find is a
non-stop activity to withstand or overcome the impact of precariousness.
Note
1 A detailed development of the relationships between crisis and vital precariousness, as
well as the definitions used in this chapter, can be found in Tejerina et al. (2012).
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Chapter 7
The myth of flexibility

Young adults’ expectations of
work in the digital economy
in Milan
Alessandro Gandini and Luisa Leonini
This chapter aims to expand the existing knowledge about cultures, attitudes and
opinions of work of young adults who aspire to pursue a career in the knowledge-
based, digital economy. Often referred to in the popular press as ‘millennials’ – a
term that is controversial in and of itself, due to the flexible demographic bounda-
ries by which it is connoted (see Howe and Strauss, 2009) – this generational
cohort is invested by a popular narrative that describes it as broadly characterised
by a ‘different’ approach to work if compared to older generations, being largely
uninterested in ‘jobs for life’ and instead aspiring to greater independence and
flexibility (see Macky, Gardner and Forsyth, 2008). This, however, goes as an
unchallenged assumption also in the existing research on the topic, that is con-
noted by sparse empirical analyses and a largely oversimplified approach to the
issues at stake (Deal et al., 2010; Hershatter and Epstein, 2010; Myers and Sad-
aghiani, 2010).
To the aim of unpacking and questioning this assumption in greater detail, this
chapter presents an empirical exploration of the cultures of work among young
adults in Milan. Considered the ‘economic capital’ of Italy, a country that has
among the highest youth unemployment figures in Europe (Eurostat, 2018), Milan
is an important hub for what concerns the tech economy, digital innovation and
creative work in southern Europe (Gandini, Bandinelli and Cossu, 2017). The
main questions this chapter asks are: what are the attitudes towards work that
young adults seeking to pursue a career in the knowledge-based, digital economy
in Milan display? What are their values, beliefs and expectations of work and the
work life? How do these reflect in their personal and professional choices, and the
way they see their future careers? To answer these questions, we administered a
questionnaire to a group of 19- to 25-year-old students enrolled at various univer-
sities in the urban area, who take academic courses in disciplines such as com-
munication, digital culture, management, sociology, political science, advertising
and public relations. The questionnaire remained open for four weeks, circulated
in the form of an online link, and it received 397 complete responses.
Findings put under question the often-unchallenged assumption that so-called
‘millennials’ are more interested in the pursuit of independence and flexibility, as
opposed to job stability, than previous generations. Young adults aspiring to work
102 Alessandro Gandini and Luisa Leonini
in the knowledge-based, digital economy in Milan see independence and flex-

ibility as one important aspect in a broader trade-off they seek to strike between
job security on one side, and professional aspirations, passions and interests on
the other. Despite the popular narrative that proclaims their disinterest in ‘jobs for
life’ and a ‘native’ predisposition to exploit the chances of mobility and flexibility
offered by the digital economy, their ideals and expectations about work seem
in fact to be more nuanced than how they are often portrayed. The young adults
surveyed in this study value independence and flexibility but not at all costs, and
are fully aware of the constraints posed by the pursuit of a career in a context
they recognise as highly fragmented. They see themselves as part of a ‘transi-
tional generation’, being the first cohort that fully experiments the work-life bal-
ance options offered by the digital economy, and thus take a realistic stance about
their future prospects. These insights suggest that cultures of work in the digital
economy among younger generations appear to be more complex than what exist-
ing accounts about millennials and work tend to promote, and henceforth deserve
more rigorous investigation and analysis.
The chapter is structured as follows. In the next section, we present a review of
the emergent issues about the cultures and meanings of work in the knowledge-
based, digital economy, as these appear in the international scholarship on the
topic. Subsequently, we illustrate the design and administration of the survey at
the centre of this work, while at the same time providing greater justification of
the context in which this research was undertaken. Then, we look at the main
findings emerging from the survey, and finally, we reflect on future research on
this issue.
Millennials and work in the digital economy

An interdisciplinary body of research has questioned the evolving meanings and
cultures of work in the rise of the ‘new economy’ (Castells, 1996). Between the
late 1990s and the early 2000s, the idea of a radical change in the way people
work, following the diffusion of email communications and, later, of the World
Wide Web, seen as harbingers of a new era of innovation and prosperity (Lead-
beater, 1997) gained popularity together with an emphasis on entrepreneurialism
and the necessity to develop a personal brand as key aspects to establish profes-
sionally in a dynamic context (Gandini, 2016).
Scholars in areas such as cultural sociology and critical theory soon raised
a critique to the enthusiastic accounts portrayed by this narrative, noting how
these implied the prominence of individualistic values applied to work, prin-
cipled on an ‘entrepreneurial ideology’ that was deemed to bring cultural and
artistic labour closer to business and management professions (McRobbie,
2002, 2004, 2016). This also entailed a critique to the loosening of the bounda-
ries between leisure and work (Neilson and Rossiter, 2005) and to the increased
instability, insecurity and precarity (Ross, 2009) of work that characterised this
emergent context.
The myth of flexibility 103
Later, with the rise of social media, this further evolved in an interpretation that
envisaged how work was undergoing a process of delocalisation, displacing and
‘untethering’ (Johns and Gratton, 2013). The mere fact that work could be exe-
cuted anywhere, anytime as long as an Internet connection is available led some
to proclaim an upcoming ‘shift’ in the cultures of work (e.g. Botsman and Rog-
ers, 2011). As a consequence of this ‘shift’, workers were suggested to become
a ‘startup’ of themselves and to make full use of digital media for professional
promotion (Hoffman and Casnocha, 2012). Work in the ‘new economy’ of the
Internet was deemed to be a case of ‘venture labour’ (Neff, 2012), with this notion
intending the outsourcing of the economic risk on individual workers who engage
in rampant entrepreneurial ventures. This coincided with the rise of co-working
spaces and their popularisation as alternative, non-hierarchical workplaces that
cater to the needs of a workforce that seeks to be independent and to escape estab-
lished professional pathways to pursue their passions and interests and engage in
collaboration and ‘sharing’ (Gandini, 2015; Gandini et al., 2017). Some imagina-
tive categorisations of new categories of workers also emerged, such as ‘nomad
workers’ (O’Brien, 2008) and, more recently, ‘digital nomads’ (Reichenberger,
2018), a term that identifies a group of young, highly educated international work-
ers who exploit the mobility offered by the digital economy and work remotely,
on a global scale, in sectors such as digital marketing or the tech industry.
In the midst of this debate, less attention was posed instead on whether this actu-
ally constituted a broader cultural shift about work and workers aspiring to pursue
a career in the digital economy. This has resulted in the widespread assumption
that, because of their digital savviness and their somewhat ‘natural’ disposition
towards taking advantage of the opportunities offered by mobile digital media, the
younger generations of workers would by definition be more interested than its
predecessors in pursuing the available option of a flexible, independent, entrepre-
neurial and international career. The few empirical studies available on this matter
are, however, contradictory at best. Deal et al. (2010) argue that ‘(m)ost of the
research on employed adults that examines attitudes at work among generations
at the same age over time finds a few small statistical differences’ if compared to
younger generations in terms of work centrality, and conclude that ‘what you do
not see in the literature is evidence of the types of sweeping differences in atti-
tudes, orientations, and work ethic that populate the popular press’. Others have
suggested the existence of a set of assumptions around the changing relationship
with work across generations, with older generations being more engaged and
committed to the workplace, and younger generations being described as more
collaborative but also more impatient, disloyal and disengaged (Myers and Sad-
aghiani, 2010). Some (Cennamo and Gardner, 2008) instead have pointed at the
paucity of empirical data to support the claim of a generational divide on the
basis of work values. More recently, Pyöriä et al. (2017) have evidenced how
young adults appear to be more flexible in terms of changes to their occupational
field than older cohorts, but do not seem to be less work-oriented than previous
generations.
These, however, are still contested claims that require further empirical verifi-
cation, as they seem to suffer from excessive generalisation and oversimplifica-
tion. This chapter aims to contribute to this ongoing debate, providing a baseline
of empirical data on cultures of work characterising young adults in a context of
high youth unemployment that might shed further light on the criticalities behind
the categorisation of workers and their attitudes, perceptions and aspirations on a
generational basis.
Case justification and methodological note

In this section we detail findings emerging from a questionnaire distributed to
young adults aged between 18 and 25, enrolled in various university courses in
the areas of sociology, digital culture and media-related disciplines at the Univer-
sity of Milan, Milan Bicocca, and the Catholic University of Milan. The survey
consisted of 22 questions written in Italian, was distributed between October 2017
and January 2018 via a web link through the platform ‘eSurveysPro’ and gathered
397 complete responses.
There are particular reasons as to why Milan was chosen as the context for this
research. Milan is historically considered an important city for the ‘new econ-
omy’ as here framed, due to the presence of a notable creative and cultural sector
(Arvidsson, Malossi and Naro, 2010; d’Ovidio, 2010) and has been a lively centre
for communications work since the 1980s (Gandini, 2016). In recent years, the
local municipality has dedicated attention to the digital economy and the pro-
cesses of innovation around it (Bonomi and Masiero, 2014), as exemplified by a
public co-working scheme that lists shared work spaces ‘approved’ by the local
authority (see Mariotti, Di Vita and Limonta, 2015).
A lively conversation around the impact of atypical work and precarious forms
of employment on the younger generations has also animated the Italian public
debate for more than a decade (see Armano and Murgia, 2012). In the tradition
of the Italian sociology of work, a number of researchers looked at the features
and specificities of the Italian labour market (see for instance Biagioli, Reyneri
and Seravalli, 2004; Barbieri and Scherer, 2005), also focusing specifically on
the changing notions of work for young adults (Bertolini, 2012). This showed the
decline of permanent employment opportunities in a context in which the ideal of
‘jobs for life’ is historically strong (Accornero, 2001) but where self-employment
is also among the highest in Europe (Ranci, 2012).
Another interesting aspect that characterises the Italian context is the existence
of a highly felt public discourse around the ‘crisis’ that emerged in the aftermath
of the 2007–2008 economic recession, and particularly after the 2011 state debt
crisis (see Sacchi, 2015). The aftermath of the recession has particularly impacted
the Italian population, both in terms of the actual shrinking of employment oppor-
tunities as well as in the public perception as a permanent condition of economic
downturn (see Gallino, 2013). As part of this project, therefore, we also wanted to
explore the extent to which this popular narrative has penetrated in the cultures,
expectations and attitudes towards work that characterise the younger segment of
Italian working population.
Findings
Sample and demographics

The sample is composed of 61% females and 39% males. In terms of age, the
vast majority of respondents belong to the target cohort of young adults, with
the youngest respondents being 19 and the oldest respondents being 28 (median
values 19 and 20). While the study is based in Milan, and almost all respondents
are Italian, many of them are actually not originally from Milan, having migrated
from other parts of the country to study, especially from the so-called ‘hinterland’
(suburban areas surrounding Milan) and from the southern regions of Italy. This,
therefore, reflects an ample picture in terms of geographic variation across the
Italian context. The sample mainly consists of undergraduate students (79%), with
a smaller representation of postgraduate students (20%). Only 1% of participants
already have a postgraduate degree.
In terms of familial demographics, the majority of respondents declared that
their parents have a high school diploma as the highest education title (28% for
both parents, 22% for one of them). Around 22% of the surveyed participants say
at least one of their parents has a degree (22% at least one, 11% both of them),
but almost 14% of respondents declare their parents’ education title is inferior to
a high school diploma. In terms of occupations in the family, fathers of respond-
ents work or have worked a clerical job (‘impiegato’, 31.5%) or as self-employed
(28%), with an equal percentage of factory workers and managers (18%). Regard-
ing mothers, 51% work or have worked a white-collar job (mostly administrative
or clerical occupations), while around 14% were reported as ‘teachers’.
What kind of work?

Concerning the respondents’ existing work experience, a relative majority declare
(42.5%) to be a full-time student with some previous work experience. A 37.5%
of participants both study and work at the moment of answering the survey. This
fits the narrative of working students who either develop work experience dur-
ing their studies or work to earn money and sustain their income while studying.
A minority (19%) of participants have never worked. Among those with work
experience, a majority work or have worked part-time (66%), while 34% have
worked or are working full-time. Internships seem to be a common route to work
in the sample (25%).
In terms of employment relation, 46% of participants work or have worked as
dependent employees while 37% are or were employed as external collaborators
(‘lavoro parasubordinato’). A minority (9%) of students surveyed declare to work

or have worked as self-employed. Concerning the channels through which they
accessed work in their existing experience, a vast majority of participants seem
to have found their job via personal or family ties (61.5%), while 32% responded
to a job ad (either offline or online). Interestingly, online networking was also
mentioned as a quite important channel to find work, albeit in relative terms (7%).
Perceptions, attitudes, values

The vast majority of participants declare they have chosen their discipline of
study according to their passions and interests (84%). Only 7% of participants
say they decided their academic path on the basis of career perspectives and irre-
spective of their personal interests. In many cases, however, the work experience
they achieved seems to be related to a field in which they do not want to end up
working.
The vast majority of the young adults surveyed in this study (66%) actually
aspire to work in a different sector from the one they have worked in already.
Around 9% of participants want to work a different job in the same sector they
already experienced, while only 15.5% of the students surveyed want to continue
with the exact same job. A vast majority want to work in the corporate sector,
that remains a considerably attractive option to many (57%). Interestingly, the
portion of students aiming to work in the Third Sector or for an NGO (30%) also
seems to be relevant in relative terms. Only 10% aspire to work for the public
administration.
In terms of employment status, an equal number of the participants surveyed in
this study declare they have a preference for dependent work as well as to work
as self-employed (27%). This is an interesting insight considering that this figure
is higher than Italy’s already higher-than-average figures for self-employment,
which sit between 14% and 17%, (see EEOR, 2010; Ranci, 2012). This further-
more shows that interest in self-employment is actually high in the younger gen-
erations. However, it is also interesting to note that 43% in fact do not have a clear
preference. This may indicate, on the one hand, that young adults in our sample
aspire to work no matter what; nonetheless, it might also suggest a deeper disillu-
sion towards the search for permanent employment (more on this later).
In terms of channels to get work, the internship route remains strongly per-
ceived to be a key pathway to employment opportunities (37%). Also, personal
contacts remain strongly perceived as important (22%). Job centres (18.5%) and
university career centres (12%) seem to be perceived as less important or useful;
however, it is interesting to note that online social networking stands at a high
10.5% as a channel that participants expect to use in order to find a job (this is
consistent with Pais and Gandini, 2015).
In addition to closed, multiple-choice questions, the survey included two
open-ended text questions aimed to gain a broader set of qualitative insights
on the expectations, aspirations and perceptions of young adults towards work
aspirations. The first of these questions, in order of appearance in the survey,

asked participants to specify what kind of job they aspire to, and in which sector.
The body of text containing all responses to this open-ended question has then
been polished and processed to the aim of producing a mapping ‘content cloud’
(see Cidell, 2010) and thus devises an exploratory semantic content analysis. Fig-
ure 7.1 displays the outcome of this analysis. Word size identifies the recurrence
of the tag (the bigger the word, the more times it recurred).
The elaboration presented suggests a widespread interest in our sample around
two broad professional areas: socially related work and communications/market-
ing. While this does not come as a surprise considering the academic courses our
respondents are attending, a few things are interesting to note. One is the relevance
of the tag ‘azienda’ (corporation), which suggests that working a white-collar job
remains a desirable option for young adults in their future career. A second aspect
concerns the words ‘internazionale’ (international) and ‘estero’ (abroad), which
grasp both the aspiration of working in a transnational, global environment and
the perceived necessity to emigrate abroad to pursue a successful career.
On this same topic, the survey subsequently included two questions where
participants were asked to determine the degree of agreement they had with the
Figure 7.1 What work do you aspire to do?

statement proposed, in a range between 1 (I strongly disagree); 2 (I partially disa-

gree); 3 (Indifferent); 4 (I agree); 5 (I strongly agree). Answers to these questions,
taken together, unveil some important insights.
First, the vast majority continues to see a permanent, full-time job as something
to aspire to, for a combined 76% (option 4 = 30%; option 5 = 46%). This, how-
ever, is counterbalanced by the overwhelming relevance of one’s passions and
interest, that score a combined 91.5% (option 4 = 24.5%; option 5 = 67%). At the
same time, there seems to be a degree of scepticism among participants for what
concerns whether they will be able to apply on the job the skills learned in their
studies. Respondents seem to be confident about this, for a combined agreement
of 64.5% (option 4 = 44.5; option 5 = 28%), yet we see also a relevant portion of
responses indicating indifference to the topic (option 3 = 22%). Economic safety
is also perceived quite strongly as a very important element in the mix, thus par-
tially disproving the flexible and entrepreneurial narrative described earlier (com-
bined value of 84%, option 4 = 28.5%; option 5 = 55.5%).
In line with the content cloud presented earlier, the portion of participants who
aspire to do a job that has some kind of societal impact is relatively high (options
4 and 5 to this question account together for around 50%). At the same time, there
seems to be limited interest in developing a career only for the sake of social
prestige (option 3, ‘indifferent’, was the most chosen one for this entry, at 32%,
followed by option 2, ‘I partially disagree’, at 26.5%). While these results must
be taken with caution due to a possible social desirability bias, they nevertheless
suggest a more nuanced attitude towards individualism than what the literature on
young adults and work actually suggests, particularly in regards to the debate on
‘social innovation’ and ‘collaboration’ (e.g. Bandinelli, 2015).
For what concerns the question of whether participants prefer full-time employ-
ment over a less stable but more fulfilling job in an area of interest, the answers are
quite mixed, with options 2 (‘I partially disagree’, 32.5%) and 3 (‘indifferent’, 35%)
being the most selected ones. Independence seems to be an important value for
many participants – however, it is not a predominant or exclusive one. Participants
seem to value autonomy in a permanent, full-time job (answer 4, ‘I agree’, the high-
est in relative terms at 34.5%) but to slightly prefer the security of employment as
opposed to the complete independence given by self-employment or entrepreneur-
ship, with their related risks and insecurities (all middle values roughly equivalent).
At the same time, the possibility to work a 9-to-5 job in order to have free time over
the weekend is not perceived as highly attractive (option 3, ‘indifferent’, the highest
value at 30%). On the contrary, the innovative options of ‘smart working’ and co-
working seem to be moderately attractive (option 4, ‘I agree’, at 38%, and option
5, ‘I strongly agree’, at 24.5%, for a combined 62.5%). All in all, results seem to
suggest that independence and flexibility do not appear to be a straightforward pref-
erence for the sample of young adults here surveyed. Yet, the option to undertake a
totally independent, entrepreneurial activity (e.g. managing one’s own company) is
connoted with nuances of insecurity, and remains a scattered aspiration.
It is also interesting to note that the prospect of emigrating to another coun-
try in order to pursue one’s dream job is perceived as a favourable option for
many of our participants (option 5, ‘I strongly agree’, the highest value at 35%).
This seems to be more preferable than looking for any job close to one’s fam-
ily or place of birth (option 3, ‘indifferent’, the highest value at 32%). Finally,
when asked about their perceptions of work in the present, if compared to the
context of work in the past and particularly the career options available to their
parents, results are also mixed. A significant 39% of participants declare that in
their views, the present context is more stimulating and engaging that that of their
parents, but also underline that permanent employment is no longer an option
to count on. An equally significant 32.5% believe that it was easier to find work
in the past, but this often entailed contenting with ‘any’ job, a compromise that
seems to be overall uninteresting for the vast majority of the sample. Yet, around
18% of participants believe the context of work was more favourable in the past,
because it was easier to find jobs. Slightly less than 10% believe it is too difficult
to find work at all in the present scenario.
A second open-ended question (the last question in the survey) asked partici-
pants to describe the work scenario from the perspective of a young adult. Similar
to the other open-ended question, the body of text originating from this entry
was processed to produce a ‘content cloud’ and an exploratory semantic analysis
was performed. The word cloud in Figure 7.2 visually represents this analysis.
Figure 7.2 How would you describe work today?

Likewise, word size identifies the recurrence of the tag (the bigger the word, the
more it is recurrent).
The visualisation ostensibly displays the trade-off between independence and
job security discussed in this chapter. The words ‘difficile’ (difficult), ‘compli-
cato’ (complicated), ‘precario’ (precarious) and ‘incerto’ (uncertain) juxtapose to
the tags ‘stimolante’ (stimulating), ‘opportunità’ (opportunity) and ‘possibilità’
(possibility), to render a scenario that evidences how young adults in Milan are
largely aware of the difficulties and constraints they are likely to face in their pro-
fessional life, but equally recognise the stimulating and engaging side of starting
a career in spite of these constraints and, overall, seem to aim to strike a balance
between these two broadly opposite poles.
Conclusion
This chapter has sought to expand the existing understanding of cultures, mean-
ings, expectations and values about working in the knowledge-based digital
economy displayed by young adults, commonly referred to also as Millennials
and often advocated as a ‘different’ cohort, that aspires to independence and a
flexible worklife. The observation of the Milanese case as an interesting exam-
ple of a lively digital and tech context in a country that is marked by high youth
unemployment and diffused precarity suggests that, contrary to the generalisa-
tions and oversimplifications connoted by the popular narrative (and sometimes
by research), the notions of a generational difference between younger workers
and older cohorts should not be taken as an uncontested assumption. Data offer,
instead, a rather nuanced and complex spectrum of opinions by young adults
about work that sometimes contradict one another. On the whole, young adults
see themselves as in search for a trade-off between independence and flexibility
on one side, and job security on the other, as they seek to start a career that gives
them a stable future but equally fulfils their passions and interest. These attitudes
blend with the continuing significance of the ‘jobs for life’ ideal, which remains
strong in the Italian context, and seem not to have been replaced completely by a
narrative of independence and digital mobility, despite the discursive framework
of innovation and collaboration by which this generation is connoted and that is
also, to some extent, present in this sample.
In an open-ended conclusion, this chapter suggests that wider, rigorous
empirical examinations of the issue of a ‘cultural difference’ in approaches
and expectations towards work on a generational divide are strongly needed.
It seems interesting, for instance, to investigate further – perhaps in qualita-
tive terms, through interviews or focus groups – why permanent employment
remains so relevant in the Italian context (and perhaps beyond) despite at least
two decades whereby the younger generations have been exposed to a ‘cool’
narrative of entrepreneurialism and flexibility that advocated the irreversible
evolution towards an entirely mobile, flexible and ‘nomad’ workforce. Also, it
may be interesting to question the extent to which, in the Italian case, the media
discourse around the economic crisis – which has been strong and extensive for
a decade and especially across the Italian state debt crisis of 2011 – may have
had an influence in these perceptions, on a par with established familial expecta-
tions and class backgrounds.
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Chapter 8
Uncertainty management
strategies in the process of
identity formation of Polish
young adults
Monika Banaś
Introduction
The Polish politics and economy between 2007 and 2015 were shaped by political
groups with centre- and socio-liberal tendencies as well as a Christian-democratic
core. The party that held power at that time, the Civic Platform (PO, Platforma
Obywatelska) was hardly interested in ideological activity (Kolczyński, 2008;
Kowalczuk, 2011; Polska Times, 2011). The main issues emphasised in PO’s
political programme were the economy and the continuation of projects aimed
at deepening the integration with the European Union (EU). The vast majority
of the supporters of PO and the PO-PSL coalition (PSL, Polish People’s Party)
originated from large and medium-sized cities, less often from towns and vil-
lages, and they had considerable income and higher education (Kowalczuk, 2014;
Newsweek Polska, 2015; parlament2015.pkw.gov.pl,). Eight years of PO-PSL’s
governance resulted in changes in the Polish economy (i.e. liberalising the market
and reducing the supervisory role of the state towards economic processes), which
on the one hand were expected by a part of the society – especially the wealthier
one – but on the other hand, they also led to progressive deprivation of groups
already economically disadvantaged. This was reflected, among other things, in
growing migration of young people seeking employment in other EU countries.
Interestingly, the Polish economy, loosely linked to Western economies, did not
feel the shock caused by the economic and financial crisis of 2008 to such an
extent. Relatively good ratings of the Polish economy on the international market
and its positive evaluation by international rating agencies did not translate into
the perceived financial and social security of all citizens (OECD Economic Sur-
veys: Poland, 2014; Polish CSO – Central Statistical Office, 2015). The deepen-
ing social stratification seemed to remain unnoticed for the ruling coalition led
by the PO. The above was in contrast to the views of the opposition party, Law
and Justice (PiS, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość), which, in its programme and elec-
tion campaigns in 2015, clearly stressed their intent to fight poverty and social
inequality as well as direct greater attention towards young people and their better
future on the domestic labour market. Stopping the outflow of the young labour
force has become one of the priorities of the PiS, which in 2015, in the course of
114 Monika Banaś
democratic elections, finally took over power in Poland. According to analysts, it

was precisely the postulates addressed to young people, containing specific solu-
tions regarding the labour market, which were an attractive argument for young
voters.
Young adults and the market

In 2013, in the entire EU community, nearly 21% of young people aged 25–29
were outside the labour market, not continuing any form of education or appren-
ticeship. Moreover, young people were often exposed to lack of jobs or limited
access to jobs, not only because of their lack of experience. This tendency became
more pronounced after 2008 and was characteristic of the vast majority of EU
member states (EUROSTAT, 2015, p. 11). It is also worrying that young people
experiencing long-term unemployment, which is not a rare phenomenon in this
cohort, lose the opportunity to actively participate in society, not only economi-
cally, but also culturally and socio-psychologically.
In the case of Poland, statistical data from 2013 regarding employment of young
people, considered in the context of the total workforce (28 million people aged
15–74) and the total number of economically active people (16 million), are as
follows: among people between the ages of 20 and 24, 40% of them were learners
only, 11% combined learning with work and 29% were only working. For the EU,
these figures were respectively: 32% for learners only, 18% for those combining
learning with work and 30% for those only working (Eurostat, 2015, p. 140). This
comparison shows that in Poland, young people aged 20–24 more often chose (in
2013) not to combine their educational and professional paths. Several factors
may stand behind this; inter alia: the traditional way of upbringing, but also the
market with its limited labour supply. Traces of this tendency can be found in the
answers given by the respondents in the research that I have carried out.
The problem of young people being outside the labour market is not unique
to the Polish economy. Unfortunately, this unfavourable phenomenon is also
strongly present in other EU and European countries in general. European youth
aged 15–24 are, on average, twice as often devoid of job opportunities in com-
parison to the so-called mature adults, as evidenced by statistical data for the EU
area – if, for the total population of people able to work, 7.3% were unemployed,
in the case of youth in 2016 it was as many as 18.7%. For Poland, the total unem-
ployment rate was then around 4.5% (the same as in the Netherlands), and in the
cohort of young people – 17.7%. For comparison, in the previously mentioned
countries such as Greece, Spain, Italy and France, these numbers were much
higher, reflecting a critical state of affairs: 21% and 47%, 16% and 44%, 11% and
38%, 9.2% and 25%, respectively (EUROSTAT, 2017).
The high unemployment rate among young people, which is a result of inad-
equate supply of jobs, correlated with the highly competitive market, is a set of
factors influencing the decisions of young adults on the issue of trying to get
more and more education in the hope that this will increase their chances on the
Uncertainty management strategies 115
labour market. Besides, it is not uncommon that taking an additional field of study,
another professional course or extending one’s studies is seen as a way of defer-
ring the moment of entering adulthood. This moment, as the experience of the last
decade, may prove to be an unpleasant rite of passage, often fraught with disap-
pointment and frustration as youthful dreams or ideals are lost in everyday reality
(Beck, 1992; Giddens, 2002; Majerek, 2012; Hryniewicz, 2014).
Junk contracts and precariat

The economic crisis of 2008 resulted in the emergence of specific system solutions,
among which there were forms of short-term (up to three months) employment,
primarily allowing employers to significantly reduce labour costs. The so-called
junk contracts have become a popular form of employment in the economies most
affected by financial turbulence of the end of the first decade of the 21st century.
Less than a decade later, in 2016, the highest percentage of people employed in
this way, forming the European precariat, was present in Croatia (8.6% men and
8.2% women), France (5.2% and 4.4%, respectively), Spain (4.5% and 4.8%),
Poland (4.8% and 4.2%), Finland (3.9% and 4.8%) and Slovenia (4.2% and
4.9%); and for the entire EU, 2.2% for both sexes (EUROSTAT, 2017).
It is worth noting that for a country outside the EU structures, Iceland, charac-
terised by a high HDI ratio, many people were employed under such contracts:
4.1% men and 4.2% women. In the case of economies that were the first to experi-
ence the effects of the 2008 crisis, the so-called PIIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Iceland,
Italy, Greece and Spain), only Iceland and Ireland managed to overcome financial
difficulties relatively quickly. The other four are still struggling with problems
that are a direct repercussion of the economic shock of the end of the first decade
of the 21st century (Comston, 2017). In this context, the Portuguese precariat is
made up of 3.3% of the overall number of working men and 3.1% of working
women; in Italy, the numbers are, respectively, 3.2% and 3.1%; in Greece – 1.8%
and 1.4%; and Ireland, 0.6% and 0.8% (EUROSTAT, 2017).
Only a cursory look at the above numbers allows seeing a certain characteristic
feature, correlated with the economic and cultural conditions of these countries.
In five of them – Spain, Finland, Slovenia, Ireland and Iceland – women are more
present in precariat; while in Croatia, France, Poland, Portugal, Italy and Greece,
these are men. For the analysed case of Polish young adults, the masculine face
of the precariat will be of significant importance (for more about junk contracts in
Poland, see Mrozowicki, Krasowska and Karolak, 2015).
Uncertainty, insecurity and ambivalence

Uncertainty, as well as endangered economic, psychological and physical secu-
rity (bearing in mind terrorist attacks happening since 2001), are the hallmarks
of the post-modern and post-industrial era. The transition from industry-oriented
production to service production was intended to bring to Western countries more
116 Monika Banaś
favourable solutions in the economic and social spheres, resulting in rapid devel-
opment and progress against their eastern rivals. This transformation, progressing
in waves, resulted in accelerated information exchange, multiplication of com-
munication channels and new forms of communication, using the achievements of
modern technologies (Toffler, 1980; Castells, 2009; Lang and Lang, 2009; Vinge,
2013). Acceleration of the pace of development forced in turn the modification
of forms of work, which resulted in the change of lifestyles both in their indi-
vidual and collective dimensions. One of the characteristic features of the above
was, as Toffler states in The Third Wave, the need for faster knowledge acqui-
sition and the acquisition of competences that meet the requirements of highly
competitive markets, including the global market. The acceleration of the pace of
change has resulted in and continues to require ongoing replenishment – or even
replacement – of the knowledge already acquired with new knowledge – hence,
for instance, educational programmes marked with the acronym LLL (Life Long
Learning). The necessity of constant learning, ‘being up to date’ with the latest
tendencies and market trends, may be on one hand an inspiring challenge, main-
taining the mental and physical fitness of the individual; but on the other, a source
of stress, frustration, tension and even suffering – especially existential suffering
(Bauman, 2000; Halcli, 2000; Giddens, 2002; Paul, Vastamäki and Moser, 2016).
Keeping up with the high pace of life requires constant mobilisation and activ-
ity of both the individual and the community. To achieve and maintain this state,
extraordinary measures are needed to ensure the adequate potential – i.e. natural,
human/personal, infrastructural (including technological) and systemic resources
(power and management). Accelerated use of these resources, frequently ignor-
ing the consequences, often leads to destabilisation and loss of balance in many
dimensions: economic (economic and financial crises), social (protests, unrest,
riots, revolts), ecological (contamination of the natural environment: drinking
water, air, soil) or health-related (diseases of civilisation, including obesity, diabe-
tes, cancer, alcoholism, etc.) (Radandt, Rantanen and Renn, 2008; Wittchen et al.,
2011; Hryniewicz, 2014). The risk of the appearance of these negative phenomena
is high, and reality provides sufficient evidence that they have become an imma-
nent element of modernity (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 2002; Hier, 2003; Bischoff,
2008).
The world divided

Highly developed societies of the beginning of the 21st century have made their
functioning dependent on high technologies, including the Internet. The digitisa-
tion of individual and community life has become so obvious that for young gen-
erations it is an immanent feature/disposition without which efficient functioning
is impossible. This also applies to the majority of adults (source: Internet access
in the EU). It should be noted, however, that access to high-speed Internet con-
nections must be correlated with access to adequately functional devices that one
must be able to use. And it’s not just about a computer, a laptop or an iPad, but
above all, mobile devices like smartphones, which are almost a 24-hour compan-
ion for a young person (often a child, definitely a teenager and young adult). In
the European Union in 2014, 9 young people out of 10, aged 16–29, use network
resources on a daily basis. For Polish teenagers aged between 12 and 15, the rate
was 95.4% (Statistics Poland, 2016). It is significant that the higher the formal
education, the more frequent use of the so-called ‘net’. (EUROSTAT, 2015, p.
12). The availability of devices and connections that allow the use of electronic
resources, however, is not the same for everyone. The so-called phenomenon of
digital exclusion, associated in the first place with older people, also affects chil-
dren and young people living in less developed regions of Poland, mainly the
areas along the eastern border. For them, the first barrier to overcome in personal
and later professional development is the barrier of access to information, which
is now increasingly taking the form of electronic information. The attributes of
this state of affairs are partially reflected in the responses from the questionnaires.
Self-identification and identity in crisis

The opportunities provided by the Internet and the use of resources available in
electronic form improve individual and collective life. Unfortunately, the Internet
can also carry a whole set of threats, among others of a psychological nature,
also affecting the processes of individual formation as well as community self-
identification. Identity or self-identification as phenomena which are in constant
‘becoming’ are subject to multiple factors having a source both in the individual
(the actor) themselves and in the environment in which the individual (actor) acts
or appears. An important role in this process is also played by the context of a spe-
cific moment of the subject’s presence (Bauman, 2001; Brukaker, 2002; Castells,
2004; Szwed, 2007). The process of constructing identity is necessarily an activity
divided over time, absorbing above all the psychological forces of the individual
or community, often requiring also physical involvement (the case of, inter alia,
migrants, displaced persons, refugees, people subject to gender reassignment,
etc.). Becoming is a permanent element of this process, often occurring in a way
which is imperceptible for the subject. It happens, however, that some phases,
or stages of this process, may be felt by a subject – individual or collective –
particularly painfully as changing/destabilising the current state. The loss of bal-
ance or harmony, described in the scientific discourse of the last few decades
very thoroughly (Erikson, 1970; Marcia, 1980; Giddens, 1991; Jawłowska, 2001;
O’Brien, 2001; Vandenberghe, 2014), gave this phenomenon the name of the cri-
sis, adding a negative value to the notion. This is to some extent right, if the state
of destabilisation persists for a long time, but in the case of a short-term loss of
stability, this condition does not necessarily mean something negative. Accord-
ing to Reinhart Koselleck, the widespread use of the term crisis separates it from
its original meaning referring to ‘disputing’, ‘facing something’, ‘testing one’s
strength’ or ‘fighting’ (Koselleck, 2009, p. 22). Returning to this primary meaning,
crisis in the case of an individual or collective identity would mean negotiating
118 Monika Banaś
one’s own image or own place in social reality, both with oneself and others. This
particular ‘dispute’ or ‘confrontation’ has its perceptible costs of psychological
nature, often physical, economic and, above all, cultural, designing the shape of
future societies in an individual and collective dimension.
Empirical study of Polish young adults

The research which is the subject of this chapter was aimed at providing approxi-
mate preliminary data regarding the way of feeling and identifying the level of
uncertainty that may accompany young adults on a daily basis (students studying
at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków – one of the three universities located in
the city).1 In addition, it was important to obtain feedback on how students deal
with uncertainty, whether they have some uncertainty management strategies such
as reducing the level of the phenomenon, and whether the experienced degree of
uncertainty affects their self-identification and the perception (categorization) of
these individuals by external observers.
Two hundred and thirty students of the Institute of Intercultural Studies at the
Faculty of International and Political Studies took part in the research carried out
in November and December 2017. Students were asked to complete an anonymous
questionnaire consisting of 19 extensive questions (during classes, most often at
the end of a class). From among the paper-based questionnaires, the feedback
information suitable for scientific analysis was returned in 198 cases. The remain-
ing answers did not meet the requirements of high-reliability information – the
reason was the failure to complete a significant part of the survey, leaving ques-
tions unanswered, giving a contradictory answer, or providing answers indicating
that the questionnaire was completed in an automatic way. For these reasons, 32
questionnaires were excluded from the analysis.
The answers obtained from the properly filled questionnaires allow construc-
tion of the following assumptions, leading to the formulation of several basic
hypotheses:
H1. It is doubtful that the individuals, subject to the study, had strategies to
deal with uncertainty or strategies to reduce uncertainty level; rather,
these are spontaneous actions, reacting to the ‘here and now’, not involv-
ing a longer time perspective.
H2. Sources of obtaining information aimed at reducing the degree of uncer-
tainty remain traditional: it is the immediate environment of the respond-
ent in the sense of importance (a person for some reason important to the
respondent); very rarely the source in this case is an institution, an admin-
istrative body, more often it is an environmental interview and gathering
information to analyse further.
H3. There is a moderate correlation between the perceived degree of uncer-
tainty and self-identification, and to a lesser extent, the identification of
the individual by their external environment.
The hypotheses result from interpretation of the responses characterised as

follows.
Among 198 completed questionnaires, 26 were filled by men. This is a reflec-
tion of the sex proportions of students studying at the Institute of Intercultural
Studies.2 Both fields of study, ‘intercultural relations’ and ‘cultural studies in
international perspective’, are highly feminised.
Among the male respondents, the reason for taking up studies was primarily the
desire to expand their competences, develop further and also to gain (literally) a
well-paid job. In two cases, it was added that taking up studies was an alternative
choice – without elaborating on the issue. Male respondents came mostly from
southern Poland, from medium and large cities, in contrast to female respondents
coming from small or large towns, with smaller towns under 25,000 residents
dominating.
Twelve men presented themselves as a self-confident person who has a clear
vision of what he wants to do. Ten, in turn, indicated a moderate degree of self-
confidence – they placed themselves at three on the scale, that is, half way between
‘strong self-confidence’ and ‘self-confidence’ and ‘lack’ self-confidence and ‘a
strong lack of self-confidence’.
Four respondents saw the everyday element of uncertainty as destabilising
their normal acting, that is, de facto strongly hindering their harmonious (soci-
etal) functioning. In a group of 26 people, this is not a high number, but it should
be noted. The vast majority of men do not feel that uncertainty about the future
disturbs their functioning, or feel that it does only to a certain moderate degree (20
responses). Two respondents did not answer this question.
In the case of a question about discomfort in the face of uncertainty as to their
immediate future, the answers were evenly distributed: eight for each category:
strongly, moderately, not very much. Two people did not answer this question.
Regarding the strategies of dealing with uncertainty about the future, the
answers indicating the choice of one option dominated, i.e. consulting the issue
with the closest surroundings (people considered important by the respondents).
Interestingly, despite the possibility of choosing several answers in this question,
the majority chose one answer only.
The next largest group were men who based their strategy on the issue in
question in an attempt to recognise the situation and consult with other people
(important for them). Two people pointed to the replication of proven solu-
tions as a way to reduce uncertainty; the same number considered giving up
the decision to the so-called fate, and four admitted that they do not apply any
strategy.
Regarding the impact of uncertainty of the future on self-identification, the
majority of male respondents (12 people) answered that this happens only to a
small extent. Slightly fewer people (8) stated that uncertainty affects the con-
struction of their self-identification to a significant or definitely significant
degree. The smallest group (4 people) did not state that uncertainty affected their
self-identification.
120 Monika Banaś
The issue of the impact of uncertainty on how the external environment per-
ceives the respondent is slightly different. It turns out that 6 people described this
relationship as very strong, 12 as weak but still occurring, and for 6 it did not
occur at all. One respondent did not answer this question.
In cases requiring consultation or advice, the respondents first indicated the
closest friends, then colleagues, followed by the parents or parent, then those
whom they casually met. Interestingly, it was not uncommon to share doubts and
concerns about the future with casual people online – 14 respondents chose such
an answer.
These were the answers given by male students, young men studying in the
field of humanities and social sciences, as both ‘cultural studies in international
perspective’ and ‘intercultural relations’ have such a character.
As far as female respondents are concerned, the information received from
them, in several respects, slightly differs from the aforementioned cohort.
The reason for taking up studies in the case of female students was similar to
the answers obtained from males, that is, the desire to broaden their knowledge, to
acquire higher education, to satisfy their own ambitions and those of the immedi-
ate environment (family). It should be noted, however, that no respondent indi-
cated the financial reason for taking up studies – a well-paid future job. Perhaps
this argument is also important for young women, but it has not been explicitly
articulated.
The vast majority of the respondents defined themselves as a self-confident per-
son with clearly defined goals (88 people). A moderate degree of self-confidence
and clarity of plans was demonstrated by 64 female students. Twenty women
saw themselves as insecure and devoid of clearly defined goals for the future.
The distribution of these answers correlated with another criterion – a place of
origin (small, medium, large city/town) of individual respondents allows to put
forward a hypothesis (which may be possible to verify by in-depth individual
interviews, IDIs) that people originating from small towns or rural areas show a
greater degree of determination in constructing their own broadly understood (not
only in the professional sense) career.
The uncertainty of tomorrow as an element which is destabilising and strongly
or very strongly hindering their normal functioning was indicated by 40 female
students, almost two times fewer than respondents who do not seem to mind
uncertainty (98 responses). The least numerous group were people perceiving the
uncertainty of tomorrow as an element affecting their functioning to an average
degree (32 responses). Perhaps ‘taming’ uncertainty is one of the methods (strate-
gies?) of functioning in the modern world. Young adults, probably, have become
accustomed to this permanent state and treat uncertainty as a permanent element
of their world. This assumption can be verified by in-depth interviews.3
Uncertainty as causing discomfort to normal functioning was declared by 36
respondents; 54 women indicated a moderate state of discomfort due to the uncer-
tainty of tomorrow, while the majority, 81 students, answered that they felt only a
slight degree of discomfort or hardly any.
The strategy of dealing with uncertainty in the vast majority of responses indi-
cates the combination of ways of reducing the element of lack of proper infor-
mation. The most frequently mentioned were, at the same time, consulting with
people important to the respondents, and coming to grips with the situation by
collecting data. There were also answers indicating the use of solutions previously
tested by other people. No strategy was applied by 28 students, while the next six
stated that the issue was not important to them and they left things to fate. It can
therefore be concluded that for a relatively large group of young female students
at this stage of life, planning, anticipating and undertaking the effort to develop
solutions that reduce the risk of failure, are absent. It is difficult to determine to
what degree these youthful attitudes will take the form of behavioural habits in the
mature life of an individual.
As regards the issue – subjectively perceived – of the influence of uncertainty
on their self-identification in the face of tomorrow, most respondents saw only
a small degree of such influence. The vast majority indicated that uncertainty
affects their self-identification to a small degree; for 28 people, it did not do so at
all; for 44 female students, this relationship was significant (a significant degree
of dependence) and for 6 respondents, it determined their self-identification (the
uncertainty about tomorrow strongly affected their self-identification).
According to 74 young students, uncertainty of the future, to at least a small
extent, affected their identification by the external environment. For 32 respond-
ents, this happened to a significant or strong degree, while for 64 this dependency
did not exist.
When it came to consulting someone or seeking advice in the case of anxiety
and/or doubts about the future, female students most often indicated the parent or
parents and a friend, and in the next sequence colleagues or acquaintances. People
who were met in real life were not a very popular choice, and online connections
were even less popular. Only 16 answers mentioned consulting a psychologist as
the first instance.
Conclusion and further research

The results presented in this chapter lead to the conclusion that young adults, full-
time students of humanities and social sciences, seem to have no special strategy
of dealing with the uncertainty of the future. Research carried out on a relatively
small group of respondents, 198 individuals, may provide only an illustrative pic-
ture of the state of affairs – whether or not the uncertainty management strategy is
in place. It follows in this case that the majority of young adults do not have such
a strategy at all. However, another interpretation is possible that the strategy is the
lack of one, since the late modernity is undergoing transformations that are ever
faster and sometimes even difficult to keep up with. Developing a strategy that
quickly turns out to be out of date in the context of Bauman’s ‘liquid modernity’
or Vingean ‘singularity’ may therefore seem like a pointless activity. This strategy
could be defined by the Polish saying ‘things will go somehow’.
122 Monika Banaś
Three hypotheses proposed in the paper and verified in the light of the data
obtained through the questionnaire allow to conclude the following:
a Hypothesis 1 (H1) proposes that young adults, subject to the study, have nei-
ther strategies to cope with uncertainty nor strategies to reduce uncertainty
level. Rather, the students prefer to produce spontaneous solutions by react-
ing to the ‘here and now’, which excludes a long-time perspective applied to
management of their future lives and future careers.
b In the light of hypothesis 2 (H2), sources of information to reduce the degree
of uncertainty remain traditional. Information is obtained from the immedi-
ate environment of the respondent, in most cases a person or persons most
immediate, i.e. parent or parents, friends, colleagues, peers. This source is
further complemented by environmental interviews and information obtained
from other non-institutional sources. Very seldom would the information to
reduce the degree of uncertainty be looked for in an institution or an admin-
istrative body. This suggests very limited trust to official entities or even lack
of trust which in itself may require separate research and more thorough
investigation.
c Hypothesis 3 (H3) claims there is a moderate correlation between uncertainty
and self-identification of the respondents. The majority of young adults indi-
cated that subjectively perceived uncertainty did influence their lives, although
to a small but still noticeable degree. For 44 female students this relationship
was significant and for six individuals uncertainty determined strongly their
self-identification. As regards external environment and its identification of
the individuals in question, uncertainty played a much smaller role.
The outcomes of the research raise a set of further, more detailed questions con-
cerning inter alia the profound reasons of such a state of affairs. Advanced exami-
nation should therefore be based on the qualitative element; in other words, the
research carried out in November and December 2017 should be continued and
complemented by qualitative study, taking the form of in-depth interviews with
individual students. The number of interviews to obtain the most reliable data
should correspond to at least half of the number of collected surveys, and certainly
should equal the number of the so-called saturation of the sample, i.e. the moment
when subsequent answers do not bring anything new but merely repeat previously
obtained information. This is the next stage of the project in progress, as it sheds
more light on the real cause of the problem of uncertainty and its correlation with
identity formation and identity cohesion of young adults or, while applying Jef-
frey J. Arnett’s terminology, emerging adults (Arnett, 2004, 2000).
Notes
1 The Jagiellonian University (www.uj.edu.pl) is the oldest university in Poland, founded
in 1364. Nowadays around 40,000 students study here in 16 faculties.
2 The Institute offers two fields of study: intercultural relations (BA and MA programmes)
and cultural studies in international perspective (BA).
3 The in-depth interviews were still in progress at the time of preparation of this text for
publication.
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Part III
Involvement
Chapter 9
Young women of Muslim

background in France
and Britain
Personal and public projects
Danièle Joly
This chapter examines women of Muslim background in France and Britain with
a focus on young women1 and investigates the parameters framing their action
towards the realisation of their aspirations.2 The data feeding my comments derive
from a long study about the civic and political participation of women from Mus-
lim communities.3 In Britain, they mostly find their origins in the Indian Subcon-
tinent, although a smaller number comes from other regions of the world, such as
Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and East Africa. Their French counterparts largely belong
to families coming from North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, to which must be
added more recent settlements from Turkey and the Middle-East. The vast major-
ity of the women considered in this chapter grew up in their family’s society of set-
tlement and enjoyed a medium-to-good level of education. The chapter explores
the women’s capacity of action to pursue both personal and social projects and
pays particular attention to the women’s voice in the light of a feminist approach.
My analysis rests on a combination of premises with respects to the ontology and
the epistemology adopted, based on Archer’s social realism (1995) and Touraine’s
sociological intervention (1973, 1978) which are summarised as follows. In the
first instance, the women are situated within an objective structural and cultural
environment which is not of their making and creates a set of constraints and
enablements wherein they develop their action. However, the influence of this
environment is not deterministic because they are subjects and actors of their
own life. This research challenges common stereotypes and prejudices regarding
Muslim women’s passivity and home orientation. On the contrary, those women
display a capacity of action which rests on two attributes: first, they are capable
of critically assessing the environment surrounding them, whether it be within the
ethnic group, majority society and/or Muslim circles; second, they are sensitive to
and concerned with a number of issues which motivate their commitment in the
public arena through civic and political initiatives.
Structural and cultural framework

The environment presiding over these women’s life is articulated as two large
interconnecting sets. The immediate circle within which they have been socialised
130 Danièle Joly
consists of the family and the community while they also evolve within wider
society in Britain and France. One good reason for separating the two does not
only reflect the habitual discrepancy existing between family and society-wide
modes of socialisation; it proves more salient in this case, since the subjects of
our study belong to immigrant communities, and since they are faced with specific
features of the society of origin which may contrast as well as overlap with the
characteristics of the society of settlement.
The modes of social relations pre-dating migration were imparted through the
family and community which for many women of Muslim background involved
the extended family. Meanwhile, those women also worked out a life within wider
society and in interaction with it. This complex concatenation of parameters must
be taken into account in a study of Muslim women’s action to develop their pro-
jects. In addition, one central element and a sine qua non for the development of
autonomous action is to be found in the women’s self-reflexivity (Archer, 2007)
that underpins the meaning of action and lies at the heart of the analysis, rendering
possible what Alain Touraine calls subjectivation (Touraine, 2013). The women
nurture projects, hopes and aspirations which come up against constraints and
enablements. Notwithstanding, those are not cast in stone, as freedom of interpre-
tation is available to groups and individuals (Archer, 1995, p. 208), thanks to ‘one
of the most important differentiating powers proper to people [. . .], their inten-
tionality’ (p. 198) and their capacity of subjectivation (Touraine, 2013). Values,
affects and subjective weighting intervene in the equation of choice, on the basis
of discretionary judgements.
In the first instance, the women faced restrictions within their immediate social
circle, which was still often structured along a patriarchal model pertaining to
the country of origin. Indeed, the extended family model brought over from the
homeland tended to subordinate the individual, and in particular the women to
the collective; the latter comprising the extended family and the ethnic commu-
nity dominated by traditional elder men. Moreover, women came under scrutiny
as holders of the family honour (Van Bergen et al., 2009). In wider society, the
women were confronted with yet another package of constraints related to their
origin. These populations were at the receiving end of racial and religious dis-
crimination concomitant with various prejudices. Moreover, at least in the early
stages of migration, most of them were slotted in socially disadvantaged strata,
and many did not master the English language, especially if they came from poor
rural backgrounds. The women partook of all those disadvantages but also suf-
fered from a further set of prejudices pertaining to an orientalist vision of Mus-
lim women which portrayed them as passive, subdued, confined to home making
and child bearing (Guénif-Souilamas, 2000). Furthermore, general gender ine-
quality subsists in majority society. It could be argued that the double bundle of
constraints emanating from two societies of reference multiplied the difficulties
encountered by the women. In reality, the situation was more complex. The two
respective social entities, the ethnic group and majority society, could palliate
relative disadvantages insofar as they also awarded benefits. On the one hand,
Young women of Muslim background 131
the ethnic group provided a comfort zone of familiarity and support in both coun-
tries of settlement. Thanks to its associations and mobilisation, it had secured a
recognition of its cultural and social needs and contributed to the promulgation
and implementation of laws and policies against racism and racial discrimination
(Rex and Tomlinson, 1979), Muslims also subsequently gained a place for Islam
in British society (Joly, 2007), although this scenario was not quite matched in
France where issues related to laicité4 and the non-recognition of communities
thwarted this process. With respect to majority society, the women found some
advantages in laws against sexual discrimination and in the welfare state which
awarded opportunities for education, health and social services. Albeit, this pres-
entation of objective social settings comes short of accounting fully for the pro-
cess of Muslim women’s autonomisation wherein they exercise their subjectivity,
and to which we now turn.
Awareness and self-reflexivity

What was evidenced throughout our investigation was the women’s ability to sub-
mit their frequently adverse circumstances to a sharp scrutiny. The key of self-
reflexivity opened up avenues of emancipation and active participation which
rested on the women’s capacity to analyse their position within their environment.
Consequently, the package of constraints and enabling factors stemming from
family and wider society also operated as an eye opener which equipped them
to gain an understanding of their circumstances. In the first instance, they were
recurrently confronted with contrasting views deriving from, one the one hand,
the regions of origin and, on the other hand, the society wherein they lived: in
addition, their situation as ethnic minorities enhanced the consciousness of dif-
ferentiated visions. Furthermore, they belonged to communities of Muslim back-
ground on account of their country of origin, a feature which could not be ignored
whether or not they identified with that religion. Indeed, events involving inter
alia wars and terrorist attacks had projected Islam into the limelight both world-
wide and in national settings, feeding considerable debates within and outside
Muslim communities’ circles. The women could thus position themselves from
the vantage point of the minority and/or religious group to analyse majority soci-
ety, from the viewpoint of majority society to submit minority and religious refer-
ences to scrutiny; and they could carry out the same exercise between the latter
two, thus being placed in a position ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, akin to that described
by Simmel about the ‘stranger’ (1964). All those factors led many of the young
women to decrypt their social environment and its discourse cogently, over and
above the smokescreen of culture and ideology.
The ethnic group

With respect to the ethnic group, it was clear to the women that the order in
place derived from a specific form of patriarchy brought over from the country
132 Danièle Joly
of origin. They denounced the relations of power which subordinated women to

men in general and to elder males in particular through a complex hierarchy rank-
ing people according to their place in the immediate and extended family; they
unpacked the control mechanisms and obligations which varied in keeping with
one’s position as daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, mother, sister, etc., complete
with differentiated constraints. They wrote the persistence of this model within
the prevalent role played by the wider group, the community. Altogether, young
women brought up and educated in France and Britain were not submitting to this
model and challenged it vehemently whenever it interfered with their aspiration to
pursue personal life project or civic and political initiatives. In contrast with their
readiness to accept accommodation with their close family, the women’s attitude
to the extended family and community testified to their determination to challenge
the latter’s influence. They perceived that one significant obstacle to their aspira-
tions was embodied in the wider group comprising the extended family. Indeed,
although our informants did not indiscriminately discard ethnic cultural charac-
teristics and much valued the immediate family, they rejected the legitimacy of
the wider group’s authority. Many of the women commented on the critical domi-
nation attempted by the extended family if they happened to live in the commu-
nity; they remarked that the denser the community networks in the district where
they lived, the greater were the impediments to an extension of their autonomy.
The interference of the extended family and community tended to remain more
noticeable in Britain, where communities were more tightly structured. In France,
the norm seemed to be established that those young women’s decisions on their
projects were debated within the nuclear family and largely supported; in Brit-
ain, mutatis mutandi, the women were also increasingly attaining this goal. One
ardently pursued project was education with the aim of achieving a good position
in employment, and this was predominantly well supported by the nuclear family
in both countries. The question of marriage also figured prominently, especially in
Britain where the tradition of arranged marriages was prevalent amongst groups
from the Indian Subcontinent, and this was mostly resolved through a compro-
mise with respects to our informants who, as mentioned earlier, benefitted from
a certain level of education. Another issue related to castes, in Britain among
people from the Indian Subcontinent and in France among Sub-Saharan Africans,
a custom which could affect the choice of a spouse and which the young women
vigorously challenged on both sides of the Channel.
A variety of strategies were embraced by the women in order to realise their
projects: they were partial to compromise but confrontation could also be selected,
such as Husniya who had divorced despite her parents’ strong disapproval (Cov-
entry), or Safa (Paris) whose sister had totally broken links with her family.
In addition, a variety of other methods were adopted. Several women pursued
what I have called a reversal strategy which inferred turning the very arguments
of their opponents against the latter. For instance, several women called upon
sacred texts which family or community would not venture to reject, namely the
Quran, to defend their rights to education, the choice of a spouse, engagement in
associations awarding social care, etc. Others used an avoidance approach, side-
stepping obstacles rather than standing up to them. This is illustrated by Tahani,
who, in a context where marrying one’s daughter is an utmost concern, humor-
ously relates her sister’s manoeuvres:
My sister is now 24, my mum is having kittens, saying ‘she’s not married
yet’, because all the good guys have gone and people have stopped asking
her. She, my sister was 18, 19, and people knocking on the door, and my sis-
ter said, ‘no, I’m not ready, I’m studying, I’m not ready yet’. At the moment
she’s busy having her fingers in every single charitable pie possible [volun-
teering in charities], and she always argues ‘why is it we have to wait before
we can do anything, to wait until we get married before we can travel, or
before we can do this, we can do that, it’s a cultural thing’. She says ‘why
should I not be able to go and help out the people who have been affected by
the Tsunami’.
Although most of the young women enjoyed much flexibility in their choices,
a few of them had experienced dire control and violence. For instance, one young
women had grown up in a family where her father beat her mother and exercised
on both mother and daughter utmost control on any activities outside home, bar-
ring working for a salary (Andala, Coventry). Another young woman had been
raped and beaten repeatedly by her husband 30 years older than her, in a mar-
riage which had been forced upon her by her parents (Ezina, Paris). On a differ-
ent question, clarity on the obstacles to their autonomy caused by their cultural
environment did not hide to the women the role of politicians who collaborated
with traditional males, leaders of communities, and who had reinforced patriar-
chal modes for the sake of securing ethnic communities’ votes.
Majority society
The women were well aware of the many facetted discrimination and prejudices
which pervaded society. In the first instance, they pointed to the persistence of
racial and ethnic-based discrimination which raised obstacles in the path of their
projects. However, they noted that this kind of discrimination had been superseded
by a novel type based on religious criteria, namely Islam. It did not detract from
the fact that, in Britain, the vast majority of them felt comfortable in being both
Muslim and British; they valued the fact that British society permitted the display
of religious signs in all public arenas (schools, politics, courts of law and in all
the professions) and they clearly identified as British Muslims. Notwithstanding,
they pointed to the upsurge of anti-Muslim prejudice which soared after the 9/11
events in New York. Undoubtedly, the twin tower terrorist attacks had constituted
a salient watershed in Britain which had thrown its full military support in the US
military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Women in Britain also noted that
military action abroad was matched by laws building up a securitisation of Islam
134 Danièle Joly
inside the country, which was thereafter further stoked in the wake of the London
terrorist attacks on 7 July 2005. France had not joined in the intervention in Iraq
and the women pointed to a different landmark, namely the 2004 law banning
‘ostensible’ religious signs in schools, a law which had been designed to outlaw
the wearing of the hijab in state schools In 2007, it was confirmed that this was
also forbidden in all public service employment (30% of total employment in
France). A 2010 law thereafter banned face concealment (namely the full-face
veil) in all public spaces including streets, shops, etc. These measures were much
quoted by the women as levers of hostility against Islam, conveying negative
messages about that religion and pinpointing them as prime targets of discrimina-
tion. Although the women in both countries were aware that young men suffered
more severely from the security-led public discourse and measures directed at
Muslims, they also took note of their own greater visibility when they adopted a
dress code linked to their religion and, in France, signalled the gender discrimina-
tion which was attached to it, the law singling out women alone. Meanwhile, they
were not taken in by what they called the ‘hypocrisy’ of politicians who did not
hesitate to manipulate racial and religious issues to further their own interests,
and they proved particularly perspicacious when it came to dissecting politicians’
discourse and manipulations. They identified without hesitation that Muslims and
Islam constituted useful scapegoats in the race for electoral gains. Moreover, the
women were well-informed about and particularly attentive to economic and geo-
political interests world-wide. Politicians’ discourses on human rights, women’s
rights and opposition to dictators as a justification for military intervention did not
carry much weight for most of our informants who categorically attributed West-
ern military intervention and involvement in the Middle-East to the competition
for resources. Several also refuted the religious basis often advanced to explain
the situation of Palestinians in Israel, affirming instead that it was a question of
territorial possession.
Although some of the women stated that they had not experienced discrimina-
tion, almost all of them pointed to disadvantages linked to discrimination based
on racial, ethnic, religious and gender criteria in French and British societies.
They also spent a good deal of time attempting to explain the increased salience
of Islam in Western societies, a theme that we feel is worth developing here. They
took note of the widening adherence to forms of Islam that adopted a literal inter-
pretation whose source they located originally outside Europe. In the main, the
women attributed such a type of re-islamisation to widespread feelings of rejec-
tion, humiliation and exclusion among young Muslims. According to Fatouma
(Paris), Muslims had been led to what she called ‘the most extreme practices’ as
a result of ‘rejection’ by French society. Aman (Paris) advanced that young peo-
ple responded to organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood because they could
not turn either to France or their region of origin to feel that they belonged; this
was compounded by ‘ignorance and poverty’ so that Islamists offered an alter-
native identification in the shape of the umma. Aman felt that it gave a ‘mean-
ing’ to young Muslims’ life while also fostering ‘hatred against everyone’. Tahira
(Coventry) similarly reckoned that Islam was reclaimed because it offered a sense
of belonging. Wahida (Fontenay sous Bois) argued that Islamists capitalised on
both the sentiment of failure among young people and on their quest for identity.
On the whole, those comments mostly focused on young men, but it was noted
that these explanations could also apply to young women. Souhila (London) con-
cluded that social disenchantment had led to Islamic radicalisation and that the
appearance of the niqab was associated to aggressive foreign policy against Mus-
lim countries. In Wahida’s opinion (Fontenay sous Bois), the greater number of
women wearing a hijab was related to political manipulation by certain groups
while she argued that this derived both from a search for identity and a quest for
dignity in the aftermath of events like 9/11 whereby Islam was further disparaged
and demonised.
Islam and the Muslim group

Although overlapping largely with the ethnic group, Islam and the Muslim group
elicited separate consideration by most of the women. The prominence of Islam
in the public arena led Muslim women to examine religious practice within the
community and to apprehend the closely enmeshed cultural versus religious
dimensions involved. Whether transmitted by the family or emanating from other
sources, Islam was not taken for granted but had become the object of a close
enquiry exploring innumerable features of it, either from an atheist or religious
standpoint. The women who were believers commented at length on the multiple
branches and schools of Islam, the spirit and the letter of Islam. Many women
exposed how it had been turned into an ideological instrument to better control
women, whether through the prism of ethnic tradition or that of Islamist politi-
cal reformism. The young women easily discerned that these developments had
not taken place in a vacuum. They realised that international events had had an
impact on their own awareness as Muslims since the emergence of Islam had
thrown them into the limelight, particularly when they wore a dress code which
displayed their religion. Finally, several of them posited that living in a non-
Muslim-majority country awarded a greater capacity to interrogate their own reli-
gion. In France a polarised spectrum of views opposed two broad categories of
women: those who refuted any affinity with Islam on ontological grounds (for
instance, if they were atheist) and/or protested against what they perceived to
be an instrument of gender oppression; and those who claimed some identifica-
tion with Islam either on religious, cultural and/or political grounds. In Britain,
most of the women were believers, although not all practiced their religion and
many challenged the ascribed subordination of women following widespread con-
temporary interpretations of the Quran. Several common features were shared by
believers in both countries: they rejected what they called ‘cultural Islam’ steeped
in traditional customs and called upon sacred texts to defy traditional practices.
They also disregarded categorically the series of injunctions imposed by reform-
ist political organisation which they deemed aimed inter alia to control women.
136 Danièle Joly
Altogether, they mostly claimed an individualised form of Islam whereby they

developed their own choice of practice and vestimentary code, independently
of Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Many thus strove towards an application of
their religion divested of cultural traditions and removed from the grip of Islamist
interpretation. They turned Islam into a tool of autonomisation and into a lever of
action. More remarkably, for all the believers in both countries, Islam represented
an ethical guide for action, towards engagement in civic activities of a social,
humanist and often universal character. Where Um is concerned, ‘it’s Islam that
has sown the belief that life is either about justice or injustice and that justice must
be increased and injustice done away with’ (telephone interview).
Several of our informants had engaged in some form of civic and political ini-
tiatives which were underpinned by a strong sensitivity to all manner of injustice,
within the ethnic group and in majority society with respect to national and inter-
national scenes. This was based upon their own experience and observation of dis-
advantage on gender, social, racial ethnic and religious criteria, either personally
or indirectly. This interest extended beyond their country of residence so that they
denounced the poverty engineered by imperialist domination and corrupt politi-
cians in developing countries; they were concerned with issues of deprivation as
much as situations of repression. While they were outraged by the international
offensive against Muslims in connection with geopolitical and economic interests,
they also condemned extremist Islam, advocates of terrorism and dictatorial Mus-
lim regimes such as in Saudi Arabia. Many of the women declared their motiva-
tion to take part in civic and political action, putting forward their strong ethical
sense, holding up values above norms, solidarity against individualistic interests,
and humanitarianism in the face of material greed. This constituted a catalyser of
action and a powerful instigator of emancipation.
Social actors in the public arena

While the subjects of our study had increasingly been able to deploy their auton-
omy in the sphere of education and employment through negotiating with the fam-
ily, it was a taller order to participate in civic and political activities, for women
in general and in particular for Muslim women. It is customarily also the mark of
the highest level of emancipation to be able to take part in the shaping of one’s
society. Our research showed that our informants displayed clear aspirations to
engage with the public domain in diverse ways (Joly and Wadia, 2017). Although
we had sought out and found a number of women who had scaled the echelons
of ‘classical’ politics, namely in political parties, in parliamentary or municipal
government, we found that only a few had acceded to such level of politics. None-
theless, the women’s engagement spanned a great diversity of activities which
can be categorised as follows. Several have joined the rank and file of political
parties, many of which were minority parties mostly, although not only, on the
left of the spectrum. Many women had taken part in campaigns and demonstra-
tions either on foreign or national questions: against the war in Iraq, in support
of Palestine, in marches against education reforms, against racism, etc. They had
joined organisations that could be called transversal, like SOS Racisme, Réseau
éducation sans frontières (in support of undocumented migrants), charities in aid
of victims of natural disasters in developing countries; and they animated inter-
cultural or interfaith fora. Several women were members of trade unions, more
particularly students’ unions. A few were involved in action concerning countries
of origin: an organisation against fundamentalism in Algeria, an association aim-
ing to combat excision in Guinea, a project supporting education in Pakistan. The
bulk of the activities most attractive to the women related to social issues, either
within institutions or in associations and charities: health, social care, Resto du
Coeur, education, handicap, etc. In addition, some women had become active
in what broadly covers culture and media, including social media. The question
of Islam elicited various forms of activism. Some became active in initiatives
combatting discrimination against Muslims, others in projects to support Muslim
women against ethnic or religious constraints. Finally, a few had founded their
own study group to examine sacred texts and interpret them from a women’s
viewpoint so that they could challenge ethnic or ‘fundamentalist’ interpretations.
Finally, the question of women’s well-being mobilised much interest, as seen in
the following.
In Britain, the most critical catalyser of action was Britain’s military interven-
tion in Afghanistan and Iraq which, in its wake, had projected Islam centre stage
in the media and in political debates. Several of the women we interviewed took
part in Stop the War demonstration and local committees, sometimes taking on
leadership positions. This involvement had worked as a launching pad for action
as explained by the women who had thereafter expanded their arena of civic and
political activities. Um provides a telling example of such a process.
The news that the USA and its allies had invaded Afghanistan provoked abso-
lute fury [in her]. Following the events of 9/11 and the Afghan invasion, there
were lots of stories of Muslims in the community being attacked verbally and
physically – taxi drivers, friends of friends. It’s the pursuit of justice that has
made [her] want to make changes for the better in society and to help those
who are disadvantaged.
Um explains how her political engagement thereafter rocketed in a few months.

She described how she worked 40 hours a week as personal assistant to a Respect
party MP (a party arising from the mobilisation against British military interven-
tion and in opposition to the Labour government), plus another 15–20 hours a
week working in the community, mainly helping women who needed help with
form-filling (applications for various school matters for their kids, for driver’s
licence, benefits, etc.). She also volunteered with an association, talking to moth-
ers and daughters about the importance of education, civic engagement, etc. Rana
(London), who had started with student politics as education officer in the NUS,
had initially focused on issues of racism; she was then prompted to join Stop the
138 Danièle Joly
War because ‘9/11 was a life changing event for everyone in Bradford’ where she
came from. None of the women in France quoted the war in Iraq as of particular
significance in their engagement, although several took note of the deleterious
effect of the New York 9/11 events on the situation of Muslims. In France, one
significant area of mobilisation was related to the prohibition of wearing a hijab
at school and other public institutions. As a consequence, several of our French
informants had been active in campaigning with the Collectif Une école pour
tous-toutes (to protest against the banning of the hijab at school).
One important theme mustered the concern of young women on both sides of
the Channel, namely gender domination and violence and any kind of gendered
inequalities to be found in majority society which were often enhanced where
Muslim women were concerned. Although only a few of our informants had
encountered such episodes themselves, most were acutely aware that it took place
commonly, and several joined or founded associations that addressed issues such
as unequal treatment, domestic violence, forced marriages and excision. They
imparted advice to victims of violence and worked with refuges for women: for
instance in Britain, Shadia, who subsequently ran as a candidate for Respect in
Birmingham, had started with volunteering in an Asian women refuge centre
for women who faced domestic abuse; Walad (London), Parliamentary manager
for an MP, had raised £126,500 from the Home Office to tackle the question
of forced marriages. In France, Ezina (Paris) had founded an association espe-
cially to combat forced marriages and domestic violence, Aman had created the
‘pole welcome to women victims’ in Ni Pute Ni Soumise (NPNS, an association
founded in 2003 to respond to violence against women). Wahida (Fontenay-sous-
Bois) had set up the project ‘logement relais’ for young women victims of
domestic violence and forced marriages; in addition, she collaborated with Afri-
can local associations in Montreuil to mediate on these questions. In addition to
questions of violence, several women dedicated their effort to counteract other
kinds of inequalities. They took part in a number of initiatives destined to make
available activities which young Muslim women found difficult to access. In
Birmingham, Nadeema founded a theatre/music troupe addressed to Muslim
women. Naima (Paris) had joined an association imparting educational support
to girls excluded from school on account of their hijab. Asala (Mantes la Jolie)
took part in and then led a project developing sports activities for young Muslim
women. Other triggers of motivation were specifically related to the country of
origin: women who had run away from Algeria such as Asala, whose brother
had been killed by the Front islamique du salut (FIS), and Hayat (Paris), whose
father had barely escaped an assassination attempt also by the FIS. Finally, mat-
ters of faith gained the interest of several women. However, it is worth signalling
that they tended to keep away from invariably male-run mosque associations or
political reformist branches. On the contrary, they generally opted to avoid estab-
lished male-dominated entities and preferred to form their own groups to deepen
their knowledge of Islam.
Conclusion
The young Muslim women in our study demonstrated their versatility in their
endeavours to gain ground towards the realisation of their personal and social
projects. The women navigated within a changing hierarchy of priorities accord-
ing to the conjuncture in the relations of power surrounding them, whether within
the ethnic group or majority society. Our study evidences their capacity to ana-
lyse their environment critically and their concerns for a variety of public issues.
Their self-reflexivity equips them to devise modes and strategies of actions which
enable them to pursue their personal life projects and their participation in civic
and political initiatives.
Notes
1 This includes women from 18 to 35 years of age, in keeping with the agreed age bracket
for the whole book.
2 The criterion for inclusion in the sample was that the women were part of communities
whose backgrounds lie in Muslim-majority countries independently of their degree of
practise or belief; Muslim communities in Britain and France being considered as a
sociological category in this piece of research (Bowen et al., 2014, p. 4). The women
from Muslim communities who are the subjects of this study are thereafter called Mus-
lim women in this chapter.
3 This chapter is based on an ESRC-funded research project led by Danièle Joly and Khur-
sheed Wadia: Women from Muslim Communities and Politics in Britain and France
(Award Ref: RES-062–23–0380. My thanks go to the MSH, the IEA and the CADIS.
Because of constraints linked to funding, most of our informants were women with a
certain degree of education, either attained in Britain or prior to migration. However,
our research is in keeping with most studies on women’s emancipation which reveal
that this category of women are those who pioneer the development of autonomy and
emancipation in the private and more particularly in the public domain (Githens, Norris
and Lovenduski, 1994).
4 The separation between the church and the state, as per the 1905 law.
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Chapter 10
Occupying the city

From social housing to the theatre
Antimo Luigi Farro and Simone Maddanu
Introduction
This chapter retraces the experiences of three different collective mobilizations
carried out in Rome by young adults, activists and artists. Based on interviews and
participant observations, the research1 came across occupying groups in Rome,
like Blocchi Precari Metropolitani, Action, and Teatro Valle collective group. In
some observed cases – in this chapter Metropoliz and Spin Time – they combine a
‘deprivation based squatting’ (Pruijt, 2013) – squatting as a way to face a housing
crisis in the city, especially for migrants, precarious or disadvantaged people – with
so-called ‘entrepreneurial squatting’, based on a counter-cultural perspective – a
politically oriented practice that aims at producing alternative social relations and
artistic performances (Mayer, 1993). Taking place during years characterised by
un unmanaged presence of asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants,
these occupied spaces represent a sanctuary of salvation while sending a political
message in favour of social housing, and against gentrification and private prop-
erty. A multicultural community-based cohabitation remains at the core of these
daily experiences.
As for Teatro Valle’s experience, some activists and artists engaging in the thea-
tre occupation are from similar squatting experiences in the city, Social Centres or
occupied and autonomous spaces, and they keep a strong bond with those move-
ments that claim the ‘right to the house’ (Martinez, 2013), and the ‘right to the
city’ (Mayer, 2009; Harvey, 2012; Novy and Colomb, 2013). Nevertheless, Teatro
Valle is not a squat. Artists and activists run new forms of management of the the-
atre schedule and laboratory while organising political meetups. As observed in
other occupied theatres (Satta and Scandurra, 2014; Valli, 2015), at first they con-
sider the occupation as a symbolic form of protest. Then, they create an organised
artistic and political project that aims to rebuild or refund a cultural institution
cognisant of the commons (Maddanu, 2018). As we will observe, the commons-
based practice introduces a new political narrative in the occupation experience.
By relating the original theories of Elinor Ostrom (1990) with updated political
analysis on urban commons (Harvey, 2001, 2012; Garnett, 2012) and cultural
commons (Hess and Ostrom, 2006; Hardt and Negri, 2009; Negri, 2012; Dardot
142 Antimo Luigi Farro and Simone Maddanu
Laval, 2014), occupied Valle Theatre aims to refund a cultural institution through
its self-managing experience. ‘Valle Theatre as a common good’ is an attempt to
legitimize, and eventually institutionalise, an occupied common good (Bailey and
Marcucci, 2013).
This chapter demonstrates how all these agencies, though through different
everyday practices and forms of self-management – autogestion (Lefebvre, 1975;
Brenner and Elden, 2009) – do not aim to integrate into the system or to get
absorbed by the existing institutions, but to create alternative institutions and to
assert a sense of justice (Sen, 2009), social rights, creativity and ethics (Touraine,
2015), in opposition to neoliberal system and gentrification dynamics.
Common social spaces

Occupying public and private buildings and facilities has been considered a politi-
cal practice since 1960 in many Western countries (Castells et al., 1974; Daolio,
1974; Crouch and Pizzorno, 1978; Farro, 1986). On the one hand, the rise of the
urbanisation process after World War II resulted in a new wave of domestic as
well as foreign migrants in the city. The lack of housing and social housing is
counterbalanced by a spontaneous creation of slums – in Italy, for instance, Fer-
rarotti (1979). On the other hand, a class conflict rose in order to cope with these
issues and reclaim what at the time was called ‘the right to the city’ (Le droit à la
ville, Lefebvre, 1968). These activities included traditional left-wing narratives,
conducted by radical left-wing groups (Della Pergola, 1974). In the wake of these
phenomena, the idea of autonomy and autonomous space, including prestigious
historical examples such as La Commune of Paris, was backed by Henri Lefebvre
(1970).
Following the rising of subjective, cultural and identity concerns, new waves
of movements have introduced creative and, in different ways, artistic practices.
Counter-cultures and alternative artistic productions infiltrate and animate new
forms of occupation and squatting. In Italy, these experiences are well known as
Social Centres. By self-financing artistic products, especially music and litera-
ture, they project a political message with a radical discourse (Famiglietti, 2006;
Famiglietti and Rebughini, 2008) against capitalism and the state (Balestrini and
Moroni, 1997). On the other hand, they have characterised the urban space by
creating subcultures, defining cultural trends and leisure habits in the cities.
Self-produced alternatives proposed by the Social Centres have been success-
fully absorbed by the city amid different social classes. They have offered new
political and cultural options, including relatively free-zones for drug consump-
tion. The occupied spaces, especially public abandoned buildings, such as schools,
administrative offices or former factories, exalt the logic of temporary liberated
zones, which reflects Hakim Bey’s idea (1985) of the Temporary Autonomous
Zone (TAZ). By doing so, these practices set up practical alternatives in which
a group of people (mostly young) can experience a cultural as well as political
Occupying the city 143
everyday life. All these experiences have been promoted and inhabited, practi-
cally and indirectly, on the one hand, by members and activists – young adults,
politically or culturally inspired by Social Centres and the idea of an autono-
mous, alternative space; and, on the other hand, by the consumers or attendants –
students or young adults, from different social classes, who consider these places
as culturally appealing and as trendy sources of entertainment.
Squatting becomes a political and cultural practice, also in response to housing
needs and creative tendencies in the middle-sized or big cities. The approval and
public recognition of some energised Social Centres in Italy (Membretti and Mudu,
2013) – for instance, Leoncavallo in Milan (Ibba, 1995) – have sometimes led to the
legitimisation of these experiences, even on a local institutional level (Membretti,
2007). With the chance to become legalised, these occupied spaces have recently,
in some cases, been won over by the idea, as observed in the Netherlands (Owens,
2009; Pruijt, 2017), and Germany (Mayer, 1993; Holm Kuhn, 2010; Vesudevan,
2015). The city, the local political institutions and the citizens acknowledge, in a
sense, the role of some artistic squats that have ‘earned’ their spots as cultural and
artistic attractions for a progressive/liberal audience in the city.
A Social Centre, an artistic squat – or just ‘occupied space’ – becomes part of
the city, a landmark, in some cases a reference point for some precarious social
categories: since 2014, some occupied spaces have hosted families or individu-
als from other countries, asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, and Roman
people.
Different forms of occupation, claiming diverse rights, social justice or protest-
ing for democracy, have risen from East to West, getting inspired by each other
and echoing similar symbols in the public space. In the last decade, occupying the
public space in the city has become a globalised and networked collective action.
They nurture their hope for change and freedom by displaying their opposition
to dictatorships, authoritarianism and regimes. From Tunisia and Egypt or other
Arab countries – the so-called Arab Spring – to Turkey, and again more recently
in Hong Kong (2014), millions of young and young adult people have occupied
symbolic squares for weeks. In some cases, these collective actions have been con-
sidered for their uniqueness (Farro and Demirhisar, 2014), in terms of subjective
as well as collective appropriation of highly controlled public spaces, exercising
a role as citizens in a new civil sphere (Alexander, 2006), in order to claim per-
sonal rights and dignity, not just to defend the community (Khosrokhavar, 2012).
Then, Western movements, from Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Montreal to
M16 and the Indignados Movement in Spain, have criticised and protested against
the financial capitalism, austerity measures, social injustice and lack of welfare
policies within the current neoliberal system. All these experiences demonstrate
that the city and the occupying practices still remain at the core of contemporary
social movements. As an inseparable part of the production of space, globalised
networks, such as new media and technology, contribute to redesign the geogra-
phy of collective actions.
As observed (Reed, 2005; Raunig, 2007), activists and artists create new forms
of sociability and social, cultural and political projects by sharing occupied public
spaces. Even during temporary occupations, activists engage with diverse catego-
ries of protesters in the attempt to produce alternative views and reclaim a right to
public space (Mayer, 2009; Novy and Colomb, 2013) and social autonomy (Mar-
tinez, 2013). Updating Lefebvre’s analysis, David Harvey’s notion of the right
to the city (2012) presents the idea of remaking citizens’ social life by claiming
common rights instead of individual ones, or rather, the private property. In this
sense, the conceptualisation of the struggle for the common goods (Mattei, 2011;
Negri, 2012; Weston and Bollier, 2013 Dardot and Laval, 2014), including the
urban common goods (Garnett, 2012), addresses new narratives and goals against
neoliberalism and the private property.
In the light of these new networked collective actions, from a square to the
world, the diverse experiences of occupation that we consider in this chapter take
on a different meaning. The role of the city as the fulcrum of the social movements
and as a new global actor has been repeatedly highlighted (Sassen, 1991; Chris-
topherson, 1994), especially within a European context (Bagnasco and Le Galès,
2000; King and Le Galès, 2017). The constantly growing urbanisation process in
a global scale, while reshaping the cities into megalopolis and megacities, defines
the urban context as the absolute producer of the social life. Nevertheless, we
can observe a fragmentation of the social fabric that has led to new social experi-
mentations in occupied spaces or reclaimed places, such as the public schools,
gardens, squares, movie or Shakespeare theatres.
Metropoliz: contemporary arts and global citizens

In 2009 a group of activists occupied a former salami factory in the peripheral area
of Rome, Prenestina 913. Until 2015, this facility hosted 60 families, including
individuals from 10 different countries (South America, Asia, Africa and Eastern
Europe), and Italians. The political group – Blocchi proletari metropolitani – that
leads the occupation, emphasises the presence of Roma people, underlining the
newest of this cohabitation with different, fragile, and precarious life paths.
Metropoliz hosts the Museum of the Other and the Elsewhere (MAAM), an
alternative gallery for artistic exhibitions and contemporary arts. By contributing
their pieces of art, artists keep the MAAM project alive and convey Metropoliz
political messages. Particularly, they back social housing claims, the living
together experience, and the multicultural and multi-ethnic community project.
Moreover, artists’ participation intertwines an artistic inspiration with the social
and cultural meanings emerging from this cohabitation space. Paintings and
sculptures decorate walls and other physical spaces of the facility, at the entrance
as well as in the common living spaces.
The radical anti-institutional permanent mobilisation of young adult activists
of Blocchi proletari metropolitani carries out, on the one hand, an anti-system
management of an abandoned former factory in a peripheral area of Rome. This
anti-capitalistic urban action claims for a ‘right to the city’ by conveying Marxist
theories from social sciences, urban planning, architecture or sociological stud-
ies. In this way, Metropoliz finds a collaborative partner in the public univer-
sity located nearby, elaborating critics against gentrification issues and real estate
speculations. On the other hand, it stands for an alternative form of urban integra-
tion through a self-organised group of activists, artists and different communities
of migrants. Within such a political agenda, families and individuals occupying
Metropoliz are considered a resource against a possible coercive clearing up by
law enforcement – MAAM is not open all the time, and a gate stays closed when
no events are planned. At the same time, by becoming popular in the artistic land-
scape of Rome, Metropoliz enjoys a positive coverage that hypothetically pre-
vents local and national authorities from attempting to evacuate the facilities.
Inside, Metropoliz organises meetings with the residents, in which the political
collective conveys practical messages and strategies. Different needs, habits and
perspectives come to light during these assemblies, in which conflicts and strate-
gies of each ethnic group reappear (Broccia, 2012). The combination of the artis-
tic production and installation with a community-based cohabitation is possible,
thanks to the political collective. The success of MAAM guaranties the survival
of the entire housing movement project.
Spin Time: from the right to housing to a new left

A seven-story building in Rome’s historic downtown, formerly the headquar-
ters of INPDAP (National Institution for Welfare of the Public Administration
Employees), houses more than 150 families, the majority from foreign countries.
Rooms on the ground floor and a basement with a huge amphitheatre are used to
stage concerts, recreational events (theme nights with an entrance fee) and polit-
ical events. Occupied in 2012, Spin Time gathers different political collective
groups and left-wing activists in Rome.
Migrants are at the core of this occupation, not only in terms of numeric pres-
ence but also as a political radical message: in a context of conflicts and contro-
versies around the recent waves of migration since 2011, Spin Time displays a
strong support for the right to migrate and the hospitality duty. Plays, concerts
and other events aim to stage – with and for them – migrants’ condition, pre-
cariousness, sufferance and injustice. By unambiguously supporting migrants,
Action (a movement that stands for the right to the house in the capital) and Spin
Time unequivocally affirm a political position statement that follows a traditional
struggle in support of the classes most at risk as potentially revolutionary actors
(Frank, 1981).
This squatting space shows both a radical opposition to the political institu-
tions and an attempt to create new bonds with different left-wing movements, as
well as political parties and local institutions. Activists engaged in Action create
a platform that strengthen a radical left-wing network in the city able to con-
nect representatives and institutional actors. Spin Time offers a dynamic space
for updated political debates and organised collective actions around a wide range
of contemporary urban issues. Counting on an organised internal structure that
relies on the important number of people hosted in the occupied facilities, Spin
Time prevents any attempt to clear out the premises by law enforcement. Having
become a solid, organised, ‘deprivation based’ (Pruijt, 2013) political squatting
group, Spin Time represents a reference and a hosting space for other political col-
lectives, Social Centre and occupied spaces militants in Rome. Furthermore, by
opening to institutionalised political actors, Spin Time enhances grassroots urban
movements and revitalises the left-wing.
Teatro Valle: cultural and urban common goods

In June 2011, a heterogeneous group of young and young adult artists and political
activists occupied the oldest theatre in Rome, Teatro Valle – situated in the his-
toric downtown, nearby the Senate of the Republic. The occupation occurred dur-
ing the interruption of the theatre activities, officially due to a not-yet-scheduled
upcoming restauration work of this historical site.
At first, the occupiers complained about the job insecurity of artists (Corsani,
2012; Giorgi, 2013; Langeard, 2013), the lack of cultural policies in the city and,
last but not least, the possible acquisition of the national theatre by a private buyer.
Contextualising this action, the occupiers displayed a more general criticism of
local and national political and cultural institutions. Furthermore, in the light of
the successful referendum repealing laws that would have, in fact, privatised the
water in Italy,2 the appropriation of this 18th-century theatre is then theorised as
a common good. During the occupation period (from June 2011 to August 2014),
artists, activists and citizens experimented with artistic and political practices, in
opposition to neoliberalism and the market of the artistic production.
Other well-known experimentations challenged the notion of art and politics
(Smith, 2005; Raunig, 2007; Raunig and Ray, 2009), including the specific field
of theatre (Case and Reinelt, 1991; Cima, 1991; Castañeda, 2006), by transform-
ing, in some cases, the idea and role of actors and spectators (Boal, 1979, 1998;
Babbage, 2004). In the Occupied Valle Theatre, the members supported creative
and artistic production while hosting separated political debates and open meet-
ings. In a first phase, characterised by a ‘cooperative artistic practice’, occupiers
and sympathisers experiment with a form of shared theatre among other citizens
and spectators. Although politics remains the fulcrum of the occupation, artists
use this occupied space as a platform to perform new or old plays and invent new
labour relations alternative to the liberal market. However, rather than contribut-
ing to a mere political theatre, artists engage in the occupation of elaborate col-
lective dramaturgical projects3 and recitation programmes.4 Labour issues, social
security and economic treatment for the artist are also discussed inside the occu-
pied theatre and have led to the elaboration of alternative mutual aid for the art-
ists, including different pay rates based on redistribution principles. In addition,
by paying directly the 10% to the authors and registering them in the PATAMU5
platform, they skip the monopoly of the SIAE – Italian Society of Authors and
Publishers, the Italian copyright collecting agency. Nevertheless, as none of their
economic measures can solve the precariousness of artists, the problems related to
the so-called intermittent art workers remain (Giorgi, 2013, pp. 110–135).
Managing the theatre seasonal schedule, the occupiers prove that self-
management of the public theatre is possible and must be encouraged. As soon
as their artistic project receives international and national approval,6 the politi-
cal project of the Occupied Valle Theatre can move forward.7 They promote a
successful image of the occupied theatre as an open space that experiments an
innovative sharing practice. Valle Theatre pursues a new political path by the-
orising their experience as a form of commons practice. By doing so, activists
engage with a new political urban experiment that differentiates itself from other
subsidiary practices (Arena and Cotturri, 2010), like the state school (Farro and
Maddanu, 2015), by creating a radical collective action that aims to challenge and
nurture the utopia of refunding the political institutions (Hardt and Negri, 2009;
Mattei, 2011). This agency does not aim to be integrated into the system. Instead,
it wants to create an alternative institution that could get rid of the existing – and
perceived as ineffective – political institution in charge of the national theatre.
Based on concrete practices, the movement of artists and activists, renamed artiv-
ists (Valli, 2015; Andò et al., 2017; Maddanu, 2018), after leaving the physical
space of the theatre, are no longer able to continue the exceptional combination
of artistic and political practice. As we observed during the plenary assemblies
between 2014 and 2015, without a physical space to reproduce the management
practices of a commons, the collective of ex-occupiers imagines an itinerant polit-
ical and artistic project (Smith, 2005), but finally get stuck on an internal political
impasse (Maddanu, 2018).
Conclusions
The three different occupation experiences we observed were carried out by
young and young adult social actors that stand for a renewed right to the city. In
the light of a constant urbanisation process, fragmentation of social life and its
social fabric, different actors in the city try to connect traditional agencies with
artistic practices. In order to cope the new challenges that emerge from the lack of
social housing, and from the marginalisation of some social categories, especially
migrants, political activists and artists are engaged in a radical collective action
that defies public and private properties. Summarising the essentials of each occu-
pation experience (see Table 10.1), these groups aim to operate in different parts
of the city by asserting a sense of justice, social rights, creativity and ethics in
opposition to the neoliberal system.
First, they put into practice the possibility of claiming the city and the housing
right by occupying abandoned or empty facilities, mostly public places. In this
way, they experiment new forms of socialisation and alternative cohabitations,
which include ethnic minorities and migrants with different status. At the same
Table 10.1 Essentials of occupations
Metropoliz Spin Time Valle Theatre
Social programme Social housing, Social housing, Intermittent

(keywords) multi-ethnic multi-ethnic art workers’
cohabitation cohabitation welfare; common
good-based
participation
Artistic activities Painting, Music (concerts) Shakespeare theatre
installations and plays (theatrical
and plastic arts (theatre) schedule, plays
and dramaturgical
writing)
Political goals Autonomy and Autogestion and Self-management,
(keywords) autogestion in networked foundation
a peripheral of left-wing of institution,
area movement cultural common
goods
time, they propose alternative economic and social relations, and mutual help.
Second, they assert a political everyday practice that, in some cases, applies new
political theories cognizant of the common good.
Notes
1 In this chapter we present part of the survey ‘Sustainable practices of everyday life
in the context of the crisis: Toward the integration of work, consumption and partici-
pation’, funded by MIUR-PRIN 2010–2011 and coordinated by Laura Bovone (Uni-
versità Cattolica di Milano), in collaboration with the Universities of Milano (coord.
Luisa Leonini), Bologna (coord. Roberta Paltrinieri), Trieste (coord. Giorgio Osti),
Molise (coord. Guido Gili), Roma, Sapienza (coord. Antimo L. Farro), Napoli Federico
II (coord. Antonella Spanò).
2 National Referendum, 11–12 June 2011, abrogation of art. 154, DL, 3 April 2006, n. 152,
clause 1.
3 Like Crisi (tr. = crises) or Rabbia (tr. = rage). The latter promotes a so-called ‘ecological
circuit’ based on an open participation in which attendants learn how to handle all the
steps of a play (training, production, planning, distribution).
4 Nave Scuola (tr. = training ship) or Questo non è un Corso (tr. = this is not a course)
5 PATAMU is a copyright protect platform that offers free basic services and is based on
donations.
6 In March 2014 the Valle Theater was awarded by the Princess Margriet Award of the
European Cultural Foundation (ECF) in Brussels.
7 The collective group of occupiers, in collaboration with other participants, elaborate
a common project that aimed to institutionalise the Valle Theater as a common good,
directly managed by artists and engaged citizens. These discussions led to the Fondazi-
one Teatro Valle Bene Commune (Foundation Valle Theater Common good), FTVBC,
that counted approximately 5600 members: see a specific charter that explains the goals
and meanings of this movement www.teatrovalleoccupato.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/

10/STATUTO-FONDAZIONE-TEATRO-VALLE-BENE-COMUNE.pdf. [Accessed: 5
February 2015].
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Chapter 11
‘I would rather choose

a mixed school’
Young people’s secondary school
choice in a low-income, multi-ethnic
neighbourhood
Kirsten Visser
Introduction
The assumption that the neighbourhood of residence has effects on the social
outcomes of children and young people has influenced much social research as
well as many urban policies. Growing up in a deprived neighbourhood has been
shown to have a negative influence on several social outcomes, including educa-
tional attainment (Andersson and Subramanian, 2006; Kauppinen, 2007; Kintrea,
St Clair and Houston, 2011; Nieuwenhuis and Hooimeijer, 2016). In this context
the school can be an important pathway through which the neighbourhood context
influences young people (Rumberger and Palardy, 2005; Sellström and Bremberg,
2006; Sykes and Musterd, 2011). Access to, and quality of, schools often differs
between deprived and less deprived neighbourhoods. Moreover, the school is also
a place where friendship ties and social networks are formed and maintained, and
where norms and values are transmitted.
To understand how schools function as a pathway for the transmission of neigh-
bourhood effects, it is crucial to understand how young people are selected into
schools. The decisions that are taken after the end of primary school form an
important transition in young people’s lives which can potentially affect their
future development and life chances. As noted by Hatcher (1998, pp. 6–7), the
school choices that young people make ‘are one element in the process of class
differentiation in education. . . . These transition points are sites of social selectiv-
ity in terms of class, and often in terms of gender and ethnicity too’. Research into
how young people select schools, however, has focused mainly on the perspec-
tives of parents and has mostly focused on primary school choice (for exceptions,
see Reay and Lucey, 2000, 2003; Yoon, 2016). This is an important shortcom-
ing, as the children, not their parents, are the ones directly affected by the school
choices that are made.
Moreover, traditional school choice literature is informed by rational choice
theory, which suggests that school decision-making takes place based on calcula-
tions of the costs, benefits and probabilities of success of various options. More
recent research, however, indicates that the context of school decision-making
is far more complex than the result of weighting of rational costs and benefits of
154 Kirsten Visser
several educational options. School choice is part of a social process influenced by

factors such as social class, ethnic background and norms, values and stories pre-
sent in social networks (Ball and Vincent, 1998; Reay and Lucey, 2000; Bosetti,
2004). Bosetti (2004), for example, shows that when making decisions regarding
their children’s education, parents will rely on their personal values and subjective
desired goals of education, as well as others within their social and professional
networks to collect information. Similarly, Ball and Vincent (1998) illustrate how
parents’ school choice is often informed by subjective and incomplete ‘grapevine’
knowledge rather than the official information provided by schools.
In this chapter I will address these two issues by discussing the processes of
secondary school decision-making of young people growing up in a low-income,
multi-ethnic neighbourhood in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Specific attention
will be paid to the more subjective factors that influenced the choice for a neigh-
bourhood school. The Netherlands presents an interesting setting to study school
choice. It is a densely populated country: within a 10-kilometre radius a child can
reach on average 10 relevant secondary schools (Koning and Van der Wiel, 2010).
Moreover, the Netherlands has unrestricted free school choice, schools have neg-
ligible school fees and are easily accessible because of good public transport and
bike infrastructure. Despite these factors, we see that in Feijenoord, the majority
of the young people choose to attend a school in their neighbourhood – or at least
in the relatively low-income, and multi-ethnic Rotterdam-South area. This can
partly be explained by practical factors, such as the physical proximity of the
school, but as I will explain in the remainder of this chapter, more subjective fac-
tors also play a role in this school choice.
Neighbourhood deprivation and school quality

Academic literature from particularly the United States and United Kingdom
points to a relationship between neighbourhood deprivation and school quality:
schools in deprived neighbourhoods are often of lower quality than schools in
less deprived neighbourhoods (Jencks and Mayer, 1990; Putnam, 2016). Lupton
(2004) shows that schools in deprived neighbourhoods in the United Kingdom
have problems attracting good and experienced teachers, which can explain the
differences in educational outcomes between these schools. Other studies show
that teachers in deprived neighbourhoods expect less from their students and
therefore stimulate them less to get good grades (Atkinson and Kintrea, 2004).
Oberti (2007) found in the Paris metropolitan area that in low SES areas, there
were less diversified and attractive school options, such as course and study-
programme options, compared to high SES areas. Moreover, schools in deprived
neighbourhoods are more likely to attract low SES children, often with minor-
ity backgrounds, whereas middle-class, often white, children select into better
schools in less deprived neighbourhoods. This is problematic as it exemplifies
the already existing inequalities in opportunities, and it limits children from dif-
ferent ethnic and SES backgrounds to come into contact with each other. In the
‘I would rather choose a mixed school’ 155
Netherlands, the differences between schools in deprived and less deprived neigh-
bourhoods are smaller than in the United States or United Kingdom. Nevertheless,
the schools in deprived neighbourhoods often have a relatively large population
of students from deprived and minority backgrounds. In the Dutch context, Sykes
and Musterd (2011) find that children in deprived neighbourhoods often tend to go
to lower-quality schools, which results in poorer educational outcomes.
Young people’s school choice

The literature on neighbourhood and school segregation, however, pays limited
attention to the agency young people have in choosing their schools. Studies on
choice making in education focus on two lines of research. The first body of studies
deals with parental decision-making, thereby placing parents at the centre of the
choice debate. In these studies the reasons for school choice are generally reduced
to three general domains: the quality of the education, the geographical distance
of the school from home and the non-educational characteristics of the school,
such as the (ethnic) characteristics of the school population. The second stream of
studies focuses on the role that young people play as choice-makers. Increasingly,
studies show that young people are involved in the choice process who are influ-
enced by both the family context and the peer context. Reay and Lucey’s (2000)
research on the secondary school choice perspectives of 10- to 11-year-olds shows
that the children played a central role in the school decision-making process and
were often seen by their parents as the ‘expert’ on the local schools. The children
also generated peer group discourses about secondary schools, in which certain
schools were described as ‘popular’ and ‘good’ whereas others where described
as less desirable. Similarly, Sykes (2011) shows that young people in her study in
Amsterdam all recalled being central actors in their secondary school decision-
making process, and many felt that they had had the final say in the decision.
In addition, some studies specifically focus on the school choice among young
people with migrant backgrounds. A Swedish study of immigrant students that
attended a local ‘low-performing’, ‘high poverty’ school, showed that they liked
the school because it allowed them to maintain their local social network and
because they felt a sense of cultural belonging and acceptance being among other
immigrants. Moreover, they did not want to run the risk of being seen as differ-
ent in a Swedish-majority school (Bunar, 2010). Studying young people from
immigrant neighbourhoods who attended inner-city ‘white’ schools, Johansson
and Hammarén (2011) found that the choice of attending these schools made both
economic and social mobility possible but that the students also had to deal with
being ‘the other’.
The Dutch school system

In the Netherlands there is freedom of school choice, no catchment areas and a
wide diversity of secondary schools. Moreover, almost all funding for schools
156 Kirsten Visser
comes from the Ministry of Education, which means that school fees are negli-
gible and schools are independent of local taxes (van Welie, 2013). Around the
age of 12, students are divided into three main tracks based on their abilities. The
academic VWO prepares for university in six years, HAVO provides higher gen-
eral education for five years giving access to higher professional education and
VMBO is a vocational school, divided into different pathways lasting four years
and giving access to apprenticeship. Students’ suitability for the different tracks is
assessed by a primary school leavers attainment test (CITO); parents may express
preferences, but the secondary school board has the final decision. Schooling is
compulsory until age 16.
Context and methods

The research was carried out in Feijenoord, a district of Rotterdam. Feijenoord
is located south of the river Meuse, an area that has traditionally been the poorer
part of the city. Compared to the city average, the population of Feijenoord is
characterised by relatively low-income and education levels and high unemploy-
ment levels. It is also one of the most diverse areas in the Netherlands. The largest
non-Dutch groups are Turkish, Surinamese, Moroccan and Dutch Antillean. The
area has to deal with social problems such as low levels of perceived safety, crime
and drug use.
The focus of the research was on young people aged 13–19 years, who attended
schools within the Feijenoord area. Respondents were recruited through com-
munity organisations and secondary and MBO (secondary vocational education
and training) schools, by means of a non-random, convenience sampling strategy.
In total, 47 interviews were conducted. The group of respondents consisted of
boys and girls from diverse ethnic backgrounds (Dutch, Turkish, Moroccan, Suri-
namese, Eastern European, Dutch Antillean, Afghan and Pakistani). At the time
of the interviews, the young people were attending or had attended six different
secondary schools in the area. The schools include three public schools (91%,
92% and 94% non-Dutch students), two schools with a Christian denomination
(one with 71% non-Dutch students, for the other data were not available), and
one school with a Muslim denomination (no data on non-Dutch students were
available). The schools range from vocational learning paths to pre-university
learning paths.
The young people were asked retrospectively about which factors had influ-
enced their secondary school choice. The interviews were transcribed in their
entirety and coded and analysed using a standardised QDA program (NVivo).
General patterns in the data that were identified in the first round of coding were
further refined during the subsequent rounds. Text query and negative case analy-
sis were used to determine the relative strength of the themes that emerged from
the data. Each participant was assigned a pseudonym, and these pseudonyms are
used throughout this chapter.
Results
The narratives of the young people show that their school choices are the result of
the complex interaction between perceptions, preferences, constraints and oppor-
tunities. As pointed out by Gewirtz, Ball and Bowe (1995, p. 76), the process of
choice-making happens within a landscape of choice that is ‘amorphous, proces-
sual, tentative and intuitive’. In this chapter I will discuss how young people learn
about and navigate this ‘landscape of school choice’.
Learning about the landscape of choice: social

networks, rumours and reputation
The school choices young people make are largely influenced by their subjective
perceptions of the schools that are available to them. Simon’s (1990) work on
bounded rationality is particularly relevant here. Individuals do not necessarily
choose the best option; instead, they use ‘experience to construct an expectation
of how good a solution we might reasonably achieve and halting search as soon as
a solution is reached that meets the expectation’ (Simon, 1990, p. 9). In line with
the idea of bounded rationality, we see that a young person selects schools based
on their expectations of what is reasonable, rather than considering all schools in
the city and necessarily choosing the best one. In other words, the young people
have constructed a choice set of schools that are available to them and on which
they have information. The narratives of the young people show that the percep-
tions of these different schools are formed based on information they achieve
through both formal and informal sources.
The young people indicated that friends and family played an important role in
influencing their school choices. These groups form sources of instrumental and
social support, of values and expectations and of stories of success and failure. Fam-
ily members and friends, for example, formed an important source of information
about several issues, such as which schools were considered good and which ones to
avoid, the type of children and culture at the school, the quality of teachers, the level
of strictness and the amount of homework (see also Reay and Lucey, 2000). For the
majority of respondents, as well as for their parents, the ideal school was one that
family and/or friends already attended. As explained by Nick (19 years old, Dutch)
about choosing school A: ‘I just seemed like a good school to me, my oldest brother
went there, and he got his diploma. So I thought it would be ok’.
Also the decision about which schools not to attend was made based on infor-
mation from informal social networks. Young people learned about schools in the
vicinity through story-telling, rumour and gossip. Jenna (17 years old, Moroccan),
for example, explains:
First my sister wanted to send me and my cousin to school F, that’s an Islamic

school. I said: absolutely not! It’s an Islamic school but they don’t stick to
158 Kirsten Visser
the rules of the Islam there. I also heard – I am not sure if I am allowed to say
this – that they have oral sex on the toilets. So I said: absolutely not!
Similarly, Soraya (14 years old, Moroccan) tells about how she learns about
how something bad, like a fight, happens at a school in the neighbourhood through
her informal network in the neighbourhood: ‘For example, when there is a fight
at school, the entire neighbourhood knows immediately about it. Within the hour
everybody knows, whole Rotterdam knows’.
The information obtained through friends and family members was often seen
as more reliable than ‘official’ sources of information, especially those provided
by the schools themselves in brochures, on websites and through ‘open days’.
Quite some of the young people expressed scepticism about the information that
schools gave during these ‘open days’, indicating that the school tries to make the
school look nicer than it actually is. As noted by Soraya (14 years old, Moroccan):
I always feel that at an ‘open day’ they are telling lies, because they will never
tell you: ‘at this school you have to show your homework every day [. . .], be
at school at 8 and if you are not there then this and that will happen’. They’ll
only say: ‘this school is really fun, you will get help with your homework
here and we will help you with getting you diploma, things like that’. They
just want to advertise themselves.
Informal networks were thus considered more reliable than the official infor-
mation provided by the schools. It has to be noted, however, that the young people
were not influenced by one social network, but that their school choices were
influenced by information from several networks at the same time. Different net-
works existed within the neighbourhood, and each provided access to different
sources of knowledge. As the result of the different informal social networks,
young people often produced contradictory accounts of the same schools. Younes
(18 years old, Moroccan) and Aamina (18 years old, Dutch-Surinamese), for
example, talk about the same school [E].
YOUNES: A lot has happened some years ago, stabbings and things like that.
I thought: that’s not the school for me.
AAMINA: For my secondary school I chose [school E] because all schools were
already full. I didn’t want to go to [school E] because I heard on the media
that it was a bad school. . . . And then I went to my neighbours, because they
attended this school and they convinced me. Until today I have never regret-
ted my choice.
The citation of Aamina, furthermore, shows that the media played an impor-
tant role in providing information about schools. While Koning and Van der Wiel
(2013) already pointed to the role official newspapers play in disseminating school
rankings, the young people’s narratives add that official and unofficial (social)
media can play an important role in informing the young people and parents about
things that happen at a school. In this context, however, many of the young people
also pointed out that the media only tend to cover the bad things that happen in
the neighbourhood and at neighbourhood schools, realising that they also have to
be critical about this information.
Navigating the landscape of choice: physical

and social proximity
Young people thus constructed complex images of schools available to them based
on a combination of official and unofficial information from different groups, such
as family members and friends, as well as from individual experiences. After the
young people learned about the characteristics of the schools available to them,
they had to make the actual choice for a school.
Not surprisingly, the physical proximity of a school played an important role in
choosing that school. A school in the neighbourhood was considered convenient
in terms of less time spend on transportation. As noted by Zaynab (14 years old,
Moroccan):
I rather go nearby than far away. Travelling takes a lot of time. I don’t feel
like doing that. If it’s like 45 minutes from here [home] to my school, I have
to wake up early. I rather go to a school in the neighbourhood, than I don’t
have to wake up early or have a long travel time.
More importantly, the local school was also seen as a source of physical safety
that some of the young people and their parents valued more than getting access
to – perhaps better – schools in other parts of the city. Even though the respond-
ents acknowledged that the Feijenoord area had pockets of crime and a lack of
safety, the area at the same time was linked to feelings of security, belonging and
connection. Places that were far away were considered more dangerous because
of unfamiliarity. Even if the young people were convinced schools outside the
Feijenoord area would be more beneficial for future careers, some of them chose
to stay because the costs in terms of lack of safety were deemed to be too high.
As noted by Soraya (14 years old, Moroccan) about visiting school D’s open day:
My mother though it was a bit scary over there. After exiting the train you had
to walk for a while and that day we were followed by a man. So, she became
scared: like ‘You want to go to school here?’ And she knew, close to my
grandma’s house there was also a school, so that’s why I went there.
Being with likeminded people

For many of the young people, social proximity of the people at the school was
even more important than physical proximity. The young people expressed a
160 Kirsten Visser
sense of satisfaction with, and belonging to, the local community, and for many
of the young people, the neighbourhood formed an important part of their identity
(Visser, Bolt and van Kempen, 2015). The majority of the young people had many
friends in the neighbourhood; they indicated that they ‘knew everybody’ and felt
accepted. These familiar and social networks could be continued in the school
context. The feeling of being ‘at home’ at school and having friends, relatives and
acquaintances there which could be a source of social support was considered
an important factor for choosing a neighbourhood school. Xandra (17 years old,
Surinamese) explains it as follows when asked why she chose school C:
My mother said: ‘go to the same school as your sister’. It was also more con-
venient, because I knew a lot of my sister’s friends. And she helped me a lot,
and her class mates as well. And one boy who lives in this neighbourhood, a
really kind guy, he helps with school things as well.
Particularly for young people with a migrant background, the choice for a
neighbourhood school was based on the fact that they considered it a place where
they could maintain a sense of acceptance and belonging, as the student body
was ethnically diverse which resulted in cultural recognition. As explained by
Driss (15 years old, Moroccan): ‘I would rather choose a mixed school, because
I learn more from children with diverse ethnic backgrounds and I also get along
better with them’. The diversity of the neighbourhood school was thus seen as
something positive, or at least something socially comfortable. This is line with
the findings of Bottero (2004, p. 995), who states that ‘our choices are governed
both by contiguity and by the social comfort that comes from associating with
“people like us” ’. Interesting here is that the term ‘mixed’ was used by many of
the respondents to indicate a mix of peers from different non-Dutch backgrounds.
This is in contrast with how the term mixing is used in most literature and policy
documents, where it usually entails a mix of ‘black’ and ‘white’ students.
‘Not my sort of place’

While the local schools provided the young people in Feijenoord with a sense
of belonging, the other side of the coin is that some young people felt that other
schools – with a predominantly white student body or with a higher educational
level – were ‘not for them’. For them, choice-making seemed to be, in part, a
process of self-exclusion. Some young people excluded themselves from higher
levels of education, even though they had good scores on their primary school
leavers attainment test (CITO), because they felt that they are not the type of
person that ‘likes long days at school’ (Ali, 17 years old, Turkish) or ‘likes read-
ing the entire day’ (Mitchell, 18 years old, Dutch/Surinamese). Moreover, some
young people also believed that choosing another (white) school and doing it
without any support from their neighbourhood social network would put a them
in a situation in which they would feel ‘out of place’. As noted by Farida (16 years
old, Moroccan) about her preference for a mixed school: ‘I like it better. I could
also go to a school with only [white] Dutch people [. . .], but I think they would
look differently at me’.
Furthermore, previous experiences of exclusion at a specific (type of) school,
for example during open days or during primary education, influenced the choice
for a different school. These experiences of exclusion, however, where not exclu-
sive for white schools. The two examples that follow actually occurred at more
diverse neighbourhood schools. Not surprisingly, these incidents were reason for
the young people to choose a different school. As explained by Rafik (14 years
old, Moroccan):
I was planning to go to [school C], but when I went to sign up, there was a
janitor and he said ‘you little Moroccan, you have to leave’. I think it was a
janitor, he looked like a janitor, he was carrying cleaning equipment.
Another example was given by Irmak (18 years old, Turkish): ‘I attended a

Christian primary school, and I wasn’t allowed to wear a headscarf there, and
people would look at you in strange ways. So that’s why [she chose Islamic
school F]’.
In short, the interviews thus show that the young people in Feijenoord develop a
sense of ‘their sort of place’. This means choosing for a diverse secondary school
in, or near, the neighbourhood of residence. One could argue that these sorting
mechanisms are not very different from how white, middle-class children sort into
schools, they also choose schools where they feel that they belong and where their
friends are going. However, it is important to note here that the sense of a young
person’s place is formed in relation to the places that other individuals possess,
in a web of unequal social positions (Katartzi, 2011). The diverse schools – often
named ‘black’ schools in the Dutch media – where most of the young people
ended up often had a worse reputation than the ‘white’ schools in other parts of the
city. This might influence people’s perceptions about the young people attending
these schools as well as the chances the young people have later in life, such as
getting access to higher education, internships or jobs.
Conclusion
The young people’s narratives illustrated how school choices are influenced by
a complex interaction of different forms of information, identifications and emo-
tions. Young people based their school choices on incomplete knowledge from
different informal social networks, and information from these social networks
was often more influential than the information communicated through official
channels, such as brochures, websites and ‘open days’.
Moreover, both physical and social proximity played a role in young people’s
school choice. Choosing a neighbourhood school was convenient as there was
limited travel time and because the familiar environment provided a sense of
162 Kirsten Visser
safety. Even though young people were aware of the risks of the Feijenoord
area, attending a local school often felt safer than travelling to schools in other
parts of the city. Even more importantly, young people in the Feijenoord area
chose local schools because it provided them with a feeling of belonging and
cultural recognition. The possibility of maintaining close relationships with
their friends, and the concern of being reduced to outsiders in a ‘white’ school,
played a role here. Moreover, young people distinguished between ‘their kind
of school’ and ‘not their kind of school’ based on the ethnic diversity and edu-
cational level of the school. Based on the findings of this study, it can be con-
cluded that we should not consider school choice as an individual matter. For the
young people in this study, collective identifications mattered and shaped their
school choices. Moreover, it is important to pay attention to the ways in which
the young people perceive and understand their neighbourhood and school, and
their position within this.
One could argue that issues like belonging are also important for the school
choices of young people from white, middle-class backgrounds. However, the
fact that ‘black’ schools and ‘white’ schools are unequal in terms of access to
resources and reputation makes it problematic. Black schools are often stigma-
tised (Ispa-Landa and Conwell, 2015), and as such, young people might have
unequal opportunities based on the school they attend. Moreover, a Swedish study
(Johansson and Olofsson, 2011), has already shown that the conception of being
‘the other’ could have a strong influence on the life plans and the educational and
occupation careers of young people.
In relation to policies aimed at mixing schools, this study shows that it is impor-
tant to take the experiences and sense of belonging of young people into account.
This research supports the recommendations of Agirdag (2011), who suggests that
a policy that aims at forcibly moving non-Dutch students to white schools is likely
not to be successful, as young people might not feel at home at these schools and
this might result in lower self-esteem. Programmes that stimulate collective, vol-
untary enrolment of middle-class children in schools in low-income neighbour-
hoods are likely to be more effective. As noted by Agirdag and Van Houtte (2011),
there are many open-minded, middle-class parents who would like to enrol their
children in such schools but are afraid to do so because they believe that their
children will be isolated. The collective nature of such programmes would make
that the children would feel less isolated or ‘out of place’. Moreover, high-SES
students are likely to be less negatively affected by the composition of schools
(Coleman et al., 1966).
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Chapter 12
Our Nation’s Future

Youth visions of a post-Brexit
Britain
Marco Antonsich, Panagiota Sotiropoulou, Leila
Wilmers, Cuomu Zhaxi and Sophie-Louise Hyde
Introduction
On 23 June 2016, the British electorate voted in favour of leaving the European
Union in what has come to be known as the Brexit referendum. The counting
returned 51.89% of the votes in favour of ‘Leave’ and 48.11% in favour of ‘Remain’.
Scholars and commentators have scrutinised this referendum through a variety
of geographical and socio-demographic lenses. Geographically, the vote pointed
to a clear fragmentation of the United Kingdom: England (53.38%) and Wales
(52.53%) displayed higher support for ‘Leave’, whereas Scotland (62.00%) and
Northern Ireland (55.78%) backed ‘Remain’. While densely populated urban cen-
tres were more likely to support ‘Remain’, suburban communities, post-industrial
towns, and coastal areas were more likely to vote ‘Leave’ (Jennings and Stoker,
2017). In terms of socio-demographics, a higher percentage (64%) of working-
class voters supported ‘Leave’ than did upper- and middle-class voters (46%)
(Khalili, 2016) and, across these classes, people with conservative values and
a desire for order were most likely to vote ‘Leave’, irrespective of education,
income and political affiliation (Kaufmann, 2016). Immigration, measured in
terms of its rate at the local level and demands for its control, has also been high-
lighted as a key predictor of the ‘Leave’ vote (Goodwin and Milazzo, 2017). This
point brings forward the ethno-racial connotation of the Brexit vote. While 53%
of people describing themselves as white voted ‘Leave’, 67% of those describ-
ing themselves as Asian and 73% of those identifying as black voted ‘Remain’
(Lord Ashcroft, 2016). This explains why Brexit can also be read as a nostalgic
call for a white, colonial Britain (Bhambra, 2017), imbued with feelings of dis-
content and anxiety over a present populated by racialized others perceived as
undermining traditional understandings of Englishness/Britishness (Virdee and
McGeever, 2017).
These studies help understand who voted for Brexit and why, but in this chap-
ter, we are interested in a different question: what next? What are the perceptions,
concerns and aspirations of the British people in relation to a post-Brexit Britain?
We shall answer this question by focusing on young people, most of whom, due
to their age, did not have the right to vote in 2016. In particular, we are interested
166 Marco Antonsich et al.
in how young people close to adulthood perceive the future of the nation at this
juncture. To this end, we will analyse visual and textual materials produced by
various groups of young people living in Loughborough – an English market
town located in the East Midlands. Their works formed the basis of Our Nation’s
Future: Loughborough Youth Creative Visions, a week-long exhibition held at
Loughborough University as part of the 2017 ESRC Festival of Social Sciences.
Before delving into the analysis of these materials, we shall first offer some back-
ground information about the relationship between youth, politics and nation and
then explain how data were collected and analysed. The discussion section will
highlight the major themes that we thought emerged from the artworks produced
by the young people and, to conclude, we shall reflect on the ways in which these
young people call the nation into existence when facing an uncertain future.
Brexit, politics and youth

Young people are often characterised as being disconnected from formal poli-
tics (Bastedo, 2015). They are said to be less likely to vote (Henn, Oldfield and
Hart, 2017) or engage in party politics (O’Toole, 2015). These attitudes have been
explained in relation to the so-called post-materialist turn which, since the 1970s,
has characterised affluent Western societies (Inglehart, 1977). In these societies,
younger cohorts and the better-off social strata tend to be driven by values of
self-expression which are not always in tune with traditional forms of political
representation. Political apathy towards formal politics was also found among
British young people (Fox, 2015). This is seemingly motivated by the feeling that
they have little say in governmental affairs (Sloam, 2011).
However, the Brexit referendum stands as an exception to this trend. Though
still below the national turnout (72%), a good percentage (64%) of those aged
18–24 took part (Ipsos-Mori, 2016). Among them, 75% voted ‘Remain’, signal-
ling a generational divide which may be attributed to differences in values and
cultural attitudes. Young British people are less hostile to the EU than older age
groups (Fox, 2016) and have grown up ‘in the slipstream of the anti-racist strug-
gles of the 1970s and 1980s’ (Virdee and McGeever, 2017). Consequently, multi-
cultural education in schools, equality provisions at work and an anti-racist civic
culture are an ordinary backdrop to their daily lives.
Young people also feel less strongly about national identity than the older gen-
erations. In his study on youth feelings towards being English or British, Fenton
(2007) found a generalised sense of indifference (for a similar argument among
Australian youth, see also Howard and Gill, 2001; Langer and Farrar, 2003).
Instead of national identity, it is local communities, friends and families which
emerge as more significant in defining the attachment, belonging and identifica-
tion of young people (Scourfield et al., 2006, pp. 78–79; Fenton, 2007, p. 336).
Yet, one should be cautious about fully dismissing the relevance of the nation to
young people. Indifference towards one’s sense of national identity might actually
confirm its ‘banality’ (Billig, 1995), i.e. its unreflexive working in the background
Our Nation’s Future 167
of people’s everyday lives. This is particularly true for ethnic majorities, whose
national belonging goes uncontested. In their study on Irish Roman Catholic
adolescents, Stevenson and Muldoon (2010) showed that, while those living in
Northern Ireland proactively claimed their Irishness, those living in the Republic
of Ireland were much less active in flagging their national identity, as this was, for
them, a secure and uncontested ‘banal’ identity (see also Scourfield et al., 2006,
p. 79, for the case of Wales). Similarly, children of migrants are more likely to
show a reflexive attachment to the nation, as their national belonging does not
carry the same certainty (Antonsich, 2016). In this sense, whether the nation mat-
ters or not has to be judged taking into consideration the national context and the
ethno-racial background of those involved.
Many studies dismissing the nation’s relevance for young people focus on
inner-city areas where conviviality among a super-diverse population is the norm
(Back, 1996). However, beyond these areas, racialized manifestations of the
nation are still widely felt. For example, Nayak (2017) shows how racialized nar-
ratives of the nation remain central to white young people’s assertions of identity
in the deprived suburbs of the North East of England.
In addition, it is problematic to juxtapose the national to the local. As Cohen
(1982) has rightly pointed out, the nation has an abstract quality that can only be
apprehended locally and personally (Scourfield et al., 2006, p. 11). Local experi-
ence mediates national identity and, simultaneously, may also inform it (Jones and
Desforges, 2003; Antonsich, 2018). For young people, the nation may be more
often lived and practiced, forming part of the familiar background of their daily
lives, than narrated or mobilised as an identity (Hopkins, 2013).
In this chapter, we aim to map the ways in which the nation is constructed in
young people’s visions for a post-Brexit Britain. When producing artworks which
explicitly portrayed the future of Britain, many young people appeared to con-
sider the nation closely. Yet, the question is, how? Here, we analyse which reper-
toires they used to give substance to their national visions. Before delving into the
data, though, we describe the event (Our Nation’s Future) which constituted the
occasion for which the artworks were produced.
Our Nation’s Future – a visual participatory project

As part of the annual ESRC Festival of Social Science in November 2017, the
authors organised a week-long event titled Our Nation’s Future: Loughborough
Youth Creative Visions. Delivering on the festival’s aim to bridge the gap between
social scientists and the public, the authors sought to bring together academics
from the Loughborough University Nationalism Network (LUNN), local policy
makers, young people from youth groups and schools in and around Loughbor-
ough, and community members to engage with the topic of post-Brexit Britain.
The project’s main objective was to give young people in Loughborough – a
small university town located in the East Midlands of England, where around
54% of the eligible residents voted ‘Leave’ – the chance to creatively express
their visions for the future of Britain. The resulting artworks formed the basis for
a public exhibition and panel discussion with LUNN academics and the local MP.
We focused on a heterogeneous cohort of young people with mixed social sta-
tus and ethnicity, aged between 14 and 19 and living in or around Loughborough.
As most of this group was not eligible to vote during the referendum, our initia-
tive worked as a platform which enabled them to voice their opinions, while also
allowing us to map the ways they were managing the prospects of change and
imagining the future of their nation as a direct result of the referendum.
Potential participants were approached through their instructors at secondary
schools and youth groups during the summer of 2017. Participants were encour-
aged to use visual or performative art to express their views on post-Brexit
Britain. This decision was made on the basis that, in the case of young people,
visual and performative methods of participatory research offer more inclusive
and richer registers of feelings compared to more traditional research methods
(Kraftl, 2013).
Overall, 17 artworks were produced by groups and individuals: a theatrical
performance, two short essays, 12 drawings, a photographic collage made on a
wooden door and an animated video clip.1 For some artworks, we received a title
and a short description.
We analysed data using a thematic approach adapted for multimedia data
(Gleeson, 2011). Artworks and accompanying texts were coded in relation to the
research aim. This process was initially conducted by the authors individually
before the themes were discussed and rearticulated collectively.
Portraying a post-Brexit Britain

As a result of the open format of participants’ contributions, the data collected
revealed diverse forms and levels of reflection on the subject of post-Brexit
Britain. Our initial categorisation distinguished between artworks which clearly
revealed the personal feelings of the participants and those which offered a more
dispassionate appraisal of Brexit. In the first case, feelings of distrust, despair,
fear and abandonment dominated the artworks. In the second case, participants
appeared to take the exercise in more didactic terms and prioritise factual infor-
mation. Cutting across these broad categories were two themes: the personalisa-
tion and the localisation of Brexit. To make it meaningful and to be able to relate
to it, young people rewrote this national event by mobilising aspects of their local-
ised everyday life. This is an important point which challenges the scholarship on
nation and young people discussed earlier in the chapter. Given their more limited
mobility and social networks, young people’s lives are more localised than those
of adults. Their local environments are centred around home, school and neigh-
bourhoods (Scourfield et al., 2006, p. 15; Harris, 2009, p. 192). However, we
argue that these registers should not be read in opposition to the nation (Fenton,
2007), as evidence in this study reveals that local and personal repertoires medi-
ate the ways young people make the nation present. In this section, we explore
the participants’ visions of the nation by grouping their artworks under different
themes. We acknowledge that this is not the only possible categorisation, but our
aim is to highlight the diversity of responses we received.
A traumatic present
Despite being asked to visualise the future of a post-Brexit Britain, the great major-
ity of participants returned artworks which focused on the ‘here and now’: Brexit
as a momentous present rather than an event which elicits visions for the future.
This response resonates with what Leccardi (2006) calls the ‘extended present’.
The socio-economic transformation associated with contemporary risk societies
(Beck, 1992) generates uncertainty and indeterminacy which, in turn, produces the
loss of the idea of future among young generations. As control over their life plans
is untenable, the new time of action becomes the ‘extended present’, ‘that time
span short enough not to escape the social and human domain but long enough
to allow for some sort of projection further in time’ (Leccardi, 2006, p. 41). With
Brexit bringing additional uncertainty, it is not surprising that participants were
more focused on the event itself rather than the future associated with it.
Among the most commonly recurring feelings was a sense of traumatic shock
(Seidler, 2018). Figure 12.1 depicts Brexit as a painted European Union flag with a
bleeding hole punched through the canvas, replacing one of the stars symbolising
the Union. Interestingly, it is not a British flag that is bleeding. This suggests that
Figure 12.1 Bloodshot
the participant wished to convey the impact of the traumatic event for the ‘other
side’, too. The same distressing emotion emerges from another artwork – a collage
depicting the European flag being licked by flames from a raging fire – which por-
trays the negative impact of Brexit on both sides. In the middle of the flag stands a
broken United Kingdom; one cleavage separates England from both Scotland and
part of Wales, while another separates Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ire-
land. Here, Brexit marks the departure of the United Kingdom from the EU and,
simultaneously, marks the end of the United Kingdom itself: a drama unfolding
in the present and anticipating a gloomy future. Brexit as a far-reaching, traumatic
event is also apparent in the drawing of a globe with a missing piece. A chunk of
Earth representing the United Kingdom lies on the floor, leaving behind a deep, dark
hole. The violent extraction depicted in the image conveys a sense of Brexit as an
event of epic traumatic proportions, which also returns in another drawing centred
on a pair of scissors cutting the threads connecting the United Kingdom and Europe.
In a seemingly ironic artwork titled ‘Hang on in There’, which portrays a bear-like
figure hanging on barbed wire, the importance of a dramatic present is also palpable.
Crafted in a graffiti style resonating with youth urban culture, this painting focuses
on the difficulty of the ‘here and now’. Endurance appears as a skill essential to
survival in a condition of dangerous precariousness and, as the participant explains,
is a sentiment that informs the British character: ‘Britain has had one problem after
another from the World Wars, the Great Depression and the recent economic down-
turn. But somehow we’re still hanging on cause that’s what we will carry on doing
through thick and thin’. In this sense, Brexit exalts the enduring and resilient char-
acter of the nation, but it is not a nation cast against something (e.g. globalisation)
or someone (e.g. immigrant) as voiced during the Brexit campaign.
An uncertain future
In artworks where the future emerges more clearly, a pervasive sense of uncer-
tainty seems to dominate. Figure 12.2 portrays the same traumatic division as
observed earlier, but it also tentatively depicts a new future. The painting shows
a broken road that separates London from Paris. Feelings of desperation seem to
characterise two men in suits – possibly businessmen – as they observe banknotes
floating over the Channel amid sinking boats and sharks. Ripped national flags of
European countries lie disorderly on the road as a way of symbolising the impact
Brexit may have across the Channel. Yet, a sun surrounded by the European stars
hangs over Europe and appears to signal a new future for nations proceeding in
partnership. This ambivalence over the future of Europe surrounds the depiction
of the United Kingdom, which is left in disarray.
Uncertainty also seems to dominate the artwork shown in Figure 12.3. Entitled
‘Bus Stop’, the drawing presents a faceless person dressed in the British flag get-
ting off the ‘Europe Express’ bus. The present journey is over and the next one is
unknown. The future destination is somewhere on the globe depicted on the bus
shelter. However, a blurred timetable signifies that the destination and timescale
of the next journey remain uncertain. The future is open as there is no answer to
Figure 12.2 As we leave the EU
Figure 12.3 Bus stop

the question: ‘How do you feel about Brexit?’ True, it is a less gloomy future than
those portrayed in other artworks, as the author also confirms:
My thoughts on Brexit aren’t major and I don’t have an opinion on whether

we are doing the right or wrong thing. I feel like even though the UK is
leaving the EU, it doesn’t mean we are going to ignore them or desert them.
They’re still as close to us as before.
Besides uncertainty, a sense of disorientation characterises another artwork which

represents the future with a question mark that splits the EU and UK flags. There is
no sense of direction and no anticipation of a positive or negative future. Disorienta-
tion and confusion are foregrounded, and these are symbolised by the serial repeti-
tion of ballot papers endlessly asking the question: ‘Leave’ or ‘Stay’? The same
confusion and concerns for the unknown are depicted in the theatrical play written
and performed by 12 young children and adolescents from Frenzy Youth Theatre.
Amid a cacophony of voices, the characters struggle to grasp what Brexit really
means. After presenting a series of contrasting positions which, at times, escalate in
tense exchanges, the play ends with an unanswered question: ‘What happens now?’
‘Lots of hot air’

Two other artworks convey, more clearly, the idea of Brexit as something which
young people not only struggle to comprehend, but also perceive as happening
above and beyond them. In a drawing titled ‘Lots of Hot Air’, empty talks heard
during the referendum campaign are represented in the form of a hot air bal-
loon suggesting feelings of distance towards a highly polarised political debate
represented by a fracture across the balloon. Feelings of disenfranchisement and
distrust are also apparent in another drawing which depicts Theresa May, the Brit-
ish Prime Minister, as a meek figure standing atop a large globe as she announces
that she will throw the European flag into ‘the bin’. Her promise ‘to make Britain
great again’ is undermined by the postscript ‘sike!!’, a colloquial expression indi-
cating irony which signals, once again, the distance young people put between
themselves and formal politics (Mejias and Banaj, 2017).
Clear visions
Two artworks only conveyed a clear position about Brexit. Figure 12.4 represents
a full-sized door split into two panels. The open panel showcases in bright colours
the stories of non-British Europeans contributing to the Loughborough commu-
nity, while the closed panel features a black-and-white collage of anti-immigration
news headlines, images and slogans from the ‘Leave’ campaign. This open/closed,
colour-coded visualisation highlights two contrasting ideas of nation: one centred
on a lived and localised cosmopolitan conviviality, the other illustrated as a dis-
tant reality constructed by political and media discourse. ‘Please Hold the Door’
denotes a small act which could be interpreted as symbolic of the convivial weak
Figure 12.4 Please hold the door
ties between strangers in public spaces (Laurier and Philo, 2006). In their accom-
panying text, the participants recall how they were left ‘in despair . . . hang[ing]
our heads in shame’ while watching the anti-immigration slogans from the Leave
campaign on TV. Furthermore, inspired by Martin Niemöller’s poem, ‘First they
came . . .’, the participants wanted ‘to speak out’ in favour of ‘a post-Brexit Britain
that has a place for everyone irrespective of [their] background . . . Britain should
hold the door open and welcome people into our country for their benefit as well
as ours’.
A similarly unambiguous position emerges from Figure 12.5. The drawing
symbolises the same traumatic experience and ‘here and now’ approach to Brexit
Figure 12.5 May’s force is against you

as already seen in other artworks. Inspired by the movie Star Wars and humor-
ously entitled ‘May’s Force Is Against You’, the drawing depicts an apocalyptic
scenario. A huge grey caricature of Theresa May looms over a solitary outline of
a Britain spewing poisonous fumes. Scotland is already consumed and separated
from England by a grey shadow, and neither Europe nor the world is represented.
The focus is solely on the United Kingdom and its gloomy present with a small,
hopeful caveat: ‘Based hopefully not on a true story (please)’. In the accompany-
ing words, May appears as a supreme leader who steers the country at her will in
the absence of any voice from the people:
She wants to control the whole of the UK in the way she sees it in her image
and no one else’s and that means that the poor people, the people with differ-
ent races and ethnic background, they will get left out and the rich get more,
as always . . . we’ll never going to have our own voices about where Brexit
is going.
In contrast to the previous artwork, no hope is expressed for a cosmopolitan, post-

Brexit Britain. Instead, the focus is on a grievance cast in populist tones which
opposes the people to the governing elite.
Localising the national

While the artworks analysed thus far exhibit the emotions of their participants,
other young people adopted a more detached approach to a post-Brexit Britain;
presenting the results of their research as strict negatives and positives of Brexit.
Among them were two long essays, one drawing and one video. The factual infor-
mation collected varies in terms of quality and accuracy, but in all cases the inter-
ventions show no or little emotional investment. Here, Brexit is something to be
researched. Interestingly, two of these interventions adopt a local lens to read
the future of a post-Brexit Britain. One essay focuses on the impact of Brexit on
universities and on Loughborough University specifically. It anticipates a loss of
students, higher fees and fewer student exchanges. The video is a stop-motion ani-
mation featuring two participants drawing on a white board and illustrating what
they believe the consequences of Brexit will be for Loughborough. The national
is reduced to the local to make it meaningful, understandable and tangible in its
impact. Two worried faces appear on the board at the beginning of the video, but
this is the only instance when emotions are displayed. The remainder of the video
comprises a list of negative consequences – loss of foreign population, rise of
taxes, pressure on the NHS, and rise in house prices and university fees. Again,
this presents a gloomy future framed in local terms.
The localisation of Brexit returns in one of the artworks previously discussed.
‘Holding the Door’ is centred on Loughborough as a site of cosmopolitan convivi-
ality. This image is used to show the possibility of a different Britain; conflating
the local and the national in a way that challenges the argument that young people
move away from the nation and confine themselves in the local spaces of their
everyday life. The local is certainly an important register for young people, but it
is also used to make a statement about the kind of nation they want (Antonsich,
2018).
Personalising the nation

If the localisation of the nation is one modality through which young people
depict the nation, then personalisation is another. In Figure 12.6, a human figure
in a British flag stands alone and looks dejectedly to the ground. The figure is
separated from a group of former friends, each one bearing the flag of a different
European nation. A lonely chair is placed in a corner and the participant notes in
the accompanying text that his intention was to convey a personal, relatable story:
‘I was inspired to do this because I know that kids being left out of the conversa-
tion is a reality. I wanted to show something real, a picture that can be understood
by myself and others who see it’. In the accompanying text of another artwork,
another participant writes:
I am going to make a painting showing people wearing flags of their nation . . .

and we will have a sad face . . . I feel that this will show how we will be left
out of the group of friends, and I am concerned how that will feel. I am wor-
ried we may become isolated. It is like being left out of a group of friends you
have had for a while.
Figure 12.6 Conversation expectation

In both cases, the nation is rewritten in personal terms so that Brexit can be under-
stood in terms of lived experiences of social relationships. The reference to friend-
ship serves to emotionally apprehend something which would otherwise remain
distant. In other words, the register ‘friends’ is not alternative to the register
‘nation’ (Fenton, 2007), but it is mobilised to project a different image of nation
from the one supported by the ‘Leave’ campaign. Here, as in other artworks, the
nation is not narrated as a cocoon from which to protect ‘us’ against external
‘threats’ (immigration, Europe, global capital). The nation is portrayed as exist-
ing in relation to other nations like a person within a group of friends. This image
calls for a ‘relational nation’ which clashes with the kind of Britain heralded in
the ‘Leave’ campaign. It also provides an alternative meaning to being ‘left out’
in the context of Brexit. This term has been used to characterise those who voted
‘Leave’, feeling that globalisation does not work for them (Delanty, 2017). Yet, as
much as Brexit has been the product of these ‘left out’ people, this artwork shows
how the Brexit referendum has, in turn, produced a new kind of ‘left out’ – young
people who cherish an interconnected world.
Conclusion
When the visions of a post-Brexit Britain offered by the young people in this study
are analysed, four points of interest emerge. First, as also observed by Leccardi
(2006), young people appear to be more focused on the ‘here and now’ than on
projecting themselves in the future. Brexit is portrayed and experienced as a trau-
matic event absorbed in the present rather than projected into the future. In this
sense, the participants in this study do not show clear evidence of how young peo-
ple might act in ‘a pioneering way’ by anticipating the future for the wider society
(Colombo and Rebughini, Introduction). They appear to be too overwhelmed by
the present to anticipate ‘our’ future.
The participants did not rally around the nation in the same way as older strata
of the population did. A great deal of this population voted for Brexit in nationalist
terms; by heralding the nation as the supreme value to be defended and protected
(Fenton, 2007, p. 322). The young people in this study instead presented an alter-
native image of nation – one which only exists in relation to other nations, like
a friend within a group of friends. This idea of a ‘relational nation’ clearly goes
against the present surge of nationalism, imbued with ideas of protectionism, sov-
ereignty and xenophobia. Not surprisingly, immigration was barely present in the
artworks and always treated either as a positive presence or as mere fact.
The reference to friendship used to construct the image of a ‘relational nation’
anticipates the third point. Contrary to some literature which suggests that young
people are indifferent to the nation and their affective registers are oriented
towards their local communities, friends and family (Fenton, 2007), our study
highlights the intersections among these dimensions. In order to make sense of
Brexit, participants mobilised their personal and local references, vesting the
nation with human-like traits and narrating stories of broken relationships. The
local place was the setting some participants used to materialise their idea of a
post-Brexit Britain. In these instances, the nation coexists with alternative reg-
isters, and there are no clear signs to suggest that it does not matter for young
people. There is no active flagging as in more nationalist visions aired during the
Brexit campaign, but this seems to point more to the banality of the nation as a
silent backdrop in participants’ daily lives (Billig, 1995) than to their indifference
to the national idea.
Finally, some of the artworks appear to confirm the distance some young peo-
ple feel towards the formal political debate. Whether political apathy or indif-
ference, this seems to prevent the emergence of clear political positions as most
participants did not clearly express where they stood in relation to Brexit. They
end up somewhere in the middle of the two distinct orientations to the nation
that Fenton (2012) has identified for the ethnic majority in England: ‘the resent-
ful nationalist’ and ‘the liberal cosmopolitan’. Participants neither shared the
resentment and anxiety towards change that translate into the mobilisation of
the nation as a protective and exclusive shield (against someone or something)
nor embraced, except in one case, the idea of a liberal, cosmopolitan nation.
Context here matters: Loughborough is neither a metropolitan inner-city centre,
where forms of multicultural conviviality are present, nor a suburb where an
enraged white nationalism may thrive (Nayak, 2017). However, what many of
the artworks convey is that participants felt a distinct lack of agency in relation
to Brexit – an event imposed upon them by the older, voting population and
political leaders.
If one is looking for new generational skills which can navigate the present
world of uncertainties, this study does not seem to offer a clear answer. However,
if one is to evaluate the role the nation plays in this present uncertain condition,
it seems legitimate to anticipate a less nationalistic future. This does not imply
the coming of age of a ‘non-national generation’ as Fenton (2007) maintains, but
rather that of a generation which believes in what we might call a ‘relational
nation’. One that coexists peacefully with other nations and does not need to be
actively flagged against someone or something, be this Europe, immigration or
globalisation.
Note
1 Due to author’s limited budget, only some selected artworks are published here. All
artworks are available, in colour, at www.lboro.ac.uk/research/lunn/news-events/
youth-brexit-futures/gallery/.
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Index
Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and page numbers in bold indicate tables.
Action movement 145 177 – 178; geographical voting results

activists: middle-class youth as 22, 28 – 29; 165; localisation of 168, 175 – 177;
occupied spaces and 141, 143 – 147, 148; personalisation of 168, 177;
social autonomy and 144 socio-demographics of 165;
agency 10 – 12, 20, 46; see also youth uncertainty and 169 – 170; youth
agency opinions on 166, 172 – 178
Agirdag, O. 162 Britain: Islam in 131, 133 – 135; Muslim
Altman, D. G. 103 women in 129, 131 – 132, 134, 137 – 138;
ambivalence 26 – 28 national identity and 166 – 167; political
Anthias, F. 59 participation in 137 – 138; post-Brexit
anti-austerity mobilisation 89 portrayals 165, 167 – 170; as relational
Archer, M. 129 nation 177; see also Loughborough
artists: collective mobilisations and 141; (England); United Kingdom
occupied spaces and 141 – 147, 148; British youth: national identity and
post-Brexit visions of 168 – 178; Social 166 – 167, 177; opinions on Brexit 166,
Centres (Italy) 142 – 143 172 – 178; political attitudes of 166, 172,
Athens (Greece) 32, 40 178; post-Brexit visions 168 – 170, 171,
172 – 173, 173, 174, 174, 175 – 176, 176,
Baas, M. 50 177 – 178; relational nation views and
Bäcklund, P. 5 177
Ball, S. J. 154, 157 Butler, J. 12
Bauman, Z. 121
Baym, N. K. 34 Cairns, D. 49
Beck, U. 4, 20, 32, 46, 59, 90, 93 Campbell, C. 33
Belgium 61, 63, 67 – 68 Cartmel, F. 46
Bellah, N. 45 choice biography 35, 46, 51
Bey, H. 142 choice consumption 35
Blocchi proletari metropolitani 144 Coffey, J. 44
Bosetti, L. 154 cohabitation 80
bounded rationality 157 Cohen, A. P. 167
Bourdieu, P. 8, 10, 20, 21, 90 collective mobilisations 89, 141, 143,
Bowe, R. 157 145 – 147
boyd, d. 34, 37 common goods 144
Brexit referendum: artistic portrayals commons 147
of 165, 167 – 169, 169, 170, 171, complex connectivity 5
172 – 173, 173, 174, 174, 175 – 176, 176, complexity 4 – 5, 10
182 Index
complex precariousness 91 Esping-Andersen, G. 60

conspicuous consumption 35, 39 Estonia: cohabitation and 80; family
consumption: conspicuous 35, 39; support in 79, 81; home ownership in
construction of the self and 33, 41; 82; housing autonomy in 80 – 82, 84 – 85;
economic crisis and 32, 35; flawed 37, parental homes and 80 – 81; social
41; identity formation and 32 – 33, 36; protection in 79; unemployment risks in
mobile phones and 37; social media and 78 – 79; youth strategies in 79
33 – 41; structure of 35; unreality/semi- European Union: digital technology
reality in 40; young people and 33 – 35 use in 117; junk contracts in 115;
contradictory structures 29 labour markets in 60; school-to-
counter school culture 22, 28 work transitions (STW) in 59, 68;
creativity 77, 85 unemployment risks in 67 – 68, 114;
Cresswell, T. 50 workforce in 114; see also Brexit
crisis 117 referendum
Croatia 115 EU-SILC 62 – 63
cultural capital 20, 22 EXCEPT project 76
Cuzzocrea, V. 44 extended present 169
Deal, J. J. 103 Facebook 34

de Certeau, M. 11 Farrugia, D. 44
De Graaf, P. M. 62 Farthing, R. 47
de-institutionalised life spaces 90 Feijenoord (Rotterdam) 156 – 162
Denmark 61, 63, 67, 71 Fenton, S. 166, 178
deprived neighbourhoods 154 – 155 Ferrarotti, F. 142
digital economy 101 – 103 Finland 115
digital exclusion 117 flawed consumers 37
digital nomads 103 flexibility 102
digital technology 32 – 33, 116 – 117 flexi-lives: concept of 44 – 45; as coping
disembeddedness 46 strategies 45; dynamism and 49; in Italy
diversity 6 – 7 47 – 52; mobility and 48 – 52
Du Bois-Reymond, M. 35 Font, J. 89
Dwyer, P. 46 Foucault, M. 11, 12
France: immigrant youth employment
economic autonomy 78, 82 – 84 in 68, 70, 72; Islam in 131, 134 – 135;
economic crisis (2008–2009) see global junk contracts in 115; Muslim women
financial crisis (2008–2009) in 129, 132, 134 – 135, 138; political
economic vulnerability 60 participation in 138; school-to-work
education 20, 27 – 29; see also school transitions (STW) in 61, 63, 67; youth
choice; school-to-work transitions unemployment in 114
(STW) France, A. 47
educational attainment 63, 64, 65, 66, 67 Furlong, A. 46
educational paradigm 23, 28
Elliott, A. 46 Gallie, D. 60
employment: educational attainment and Ganzeboom, H.B. 62
63, 64, 65, 66, 67; flexi-lives and 44; gender: ambivalence and 27 – 28; cultural
junk contracts and 115; mobility and capital and 20; labour market and 27,
49; part-time 66, 67; post-industrial era 60, 63; migrant status and 59 – 60, 63;
and 116; precariousness and 88; social occupation status and 68; situational
exclusion and 88; see also labour market management of 28; violence and 133,
employment-centered regimes 61, 63, 72 138; vulnerability and 60, 72; wage
England 165, 167; see also Britain differences 71; young Italians and 22;
epistemological fallacy 46 see also Muslim women; women
Index 183
generalised precariousness 91 family and 88; middle-class youth and

generational constellations 4 28; Muslim youth and 135; national
generational location: intersectionality 166 – 167; nature of image in 37;
and 21; resistance and 22; situational neighbourhoods and 160; precariousness
management of 28; social change and and 32, 88, 90, 92; social 28 – 29; social
19; stratification and 20; uncertainty and media and 32 – 34, 36; social reality and
25 – 27 117 – 118; uncertainty and 122
Generation Y 22 inactivity 65, 67 – 68
Germany 143 individualisation: agency and 52; choice
Gewirtz, S. 157 biography and 46; coping strategies and
Giddens, A. 90 44; defining 45 – 46; disembeddedness
global financial crisis (2008–2009): and 46; mobility and 50; spatial
impact on young people 19, 32, 35 – 37, reflexivity and 51; young people and
59, 62; Italian discourse on 104, 111; 46 – 47
junk contracts and 115; nature of individualism 44 – 47, 52
consumption and 32, 35 innovative practices 75
globalisation 5 – 6, 8, 143, 177 – 178 insecurity 89
Greece: consumption in 32, 35 – 36; gender Instagram 34, 40
vulnerability in 72; junk contracts in InstaStories 35
115; labour market in 67; migrant wage institutional contexts: employment-
differences 71; sub-protective transition centered regimes 61, 63, 72; liberal
regime in 62 – 63, 72; unemployment regimes 61, 63, 72; post-socialist
risks in 67; vocational training in 62 regimes 62 – 63; school-to-work
Greek youth: consumption and 33 – 39; transitions (STW) and 60 – 63; sub-
digital technology and 32 – 33; economic protective transition regimes 61 – 63,
crisis and 36 – 37; as flawed consumers 72; unemployment and 78 – 79;
37, 41; identity formation and 32, universalistic regimes 60 – 61, 63, 71;
36 – 37; labour market and 35; mobile vulnerability and 60 – 62
phones and 37 – 38; performance of interconnectedness 5 – 7
self 33 – 34; as prosumers 35; self- International Socio-Economic Index
representation 33 – 41; social media and (ISEI) 62
37 – 41 Internet 32, 103, 116 – 117
intersectionality 20 – 22, 29, 59
habitus 21, 29 Ireland 115
Haddon, E. 47 Islam: in Britain 131, 133 – 134; cultural
Häkli, J. 5 135; in France 131, 134; individualised
Hammarén, N. 155 136; prejudice and 133 – 135;
Harvey, D. 144 radicalisation and 135; reclaiming of
Hatcher, R. 153 134 – 135; see also Muslim women
heuristics 77 ISTAT 22
hijab 134 – 135, 138 Italian youth: ambivalence and 26 – 27;
Horizon 2020 programme 76 career aspirations of 106 – 107, 107,
housing autonomy: cohabitation 80; home 108; cohabitation and 80; collective
ownership 82; parental homes and mobilisations and 141 – 147; cultural
80 – 81, 84; transition to 78, 80 – 81; capital and 22; flexi-lives and 47 – 49;
youth strategies for 80 – 82, 84 – 85 future expectations 24 – 26; gender and
22; generational location and 19, 21,
Iceland 115 25 – 27; individualism/individualisation
identity: construction of 117; consumption in 47 – 48, 51 – 52; middle-class 22 – 23;
and 32 – 33, 36; employment and 88; mobility and 49 – 52; parental homes and
entrepreneurship of the self and 96; 22, 80 – 81, 84; politics of the present
individualisation and 46; Mediterranean 52; self-employment and 106; social
184 Index
locations of 23; spatial dilemmas 49; Madsen, R. 45

work attitudes of 101 – 102, 105 – 109, Mannheim, K. 3
109, 110 Martuccelli, D. 45
Italy: economic crisis in 104, 111; family Marwick, A.E. 37
support in 78, 81, 83; flexi-lives in Massey, D. 50
47 – 52; housing autonomy in 80 – 84; May, Theresa 172, 175
housing in 142; junk contracts in 115; Mediterranean family 88
labour market in 104; occupied spaces Melucci, A. 7
in 143; self-employment in 104, 106; Mendelson, A. 34
Social Centres 141 – 143; unemployment Metropoliz 144 – 145
risks in 75, 78, 101; youth strategies in middle-class youth: educational paradigm
79; see also Milan (Italy); Rome (Italy) and 23, 28; identity formation in 28;
social locations of 23; sur-reflexivity
Janta, B. 60, 71 and 29; young Italians 22 – 23
Järvinen, K. M. 103 migrants: demographics of 63; de-skilling
job insecurity 76 – 77, 84, 93 of 60; employment and 68; gender and
Johansson, T. 155 59 – 60; labour market and 61; national
junk contracts 115 identity and 167; occupation status
and 70; occupied spaces and 144 – 146;
Kallio, K.P. 5 school-to-work transitions (STW) and
Koning, P. 158 68; secondary school choice 155, 160;
Korpi, W. 60 second-generation 63; third-country
Koselleck, R. 117 60, 63; vulnerability and 60 – 62; wage
differences 70, 71
labour market: education and 20, 27, 29; migrant women: educational attainment
in the European Union 60; gap between and 67; inactivity and 67; labour market
school and 20, 27, 29; gender and 27, and 60, 63, 67 – 68, 71; occupation status
60, 63; in Greece 35, 67; in Italy 104; and 70; unemployment risks of 67;
migrants and 61; migrant women in vulnerability and 63; wage differences
60, 63, 67 – 68, 71; Polish youth and 70, 71
113 – 114; precariousness in 20, 23, 25, Milan (Italy) 101, 104
29, 89; social identity and 28; social millennials: assumptions about 101, 103;
protection and 78; uncertainty in 75 – 77; digital economy and 103; flexibility
women and 71; young people and 44; and 103; social imbalances and 22 – 23;
see also employment uncertainty and 25 – 26, 28; work
Learning to Labour (Willis) 22 attitudes of 103 – 104, 110; young
Le Blanc, G. 89 middle-class 20, 22 – 23; see also young
Leccardi, C. 45, 169, 177 people
Lefebvre, Henri 142, 144 misfortune 93 – 94
Lemert, C. 46 mobile phones 37 – 38, 144
liberal regimes 61, 63, 72 mobility: digital economy and 103;
Lincoln, S. 34 employment and 49; flexi-lives and
Lizardo, O. 3 48 – 52; individualisation and 50; modes
Lorey, I. 93 of 50; reflexivity and 50; youth studies
Loughborough (England): post-Brexit and 49
visual art in 167 – 170, 171, 172 – 173, mobility capital 50
173, 174, 174, 175 – 176, 176, 177; Montero, R. 89
young people in 166 – 170, 178 Muldoon, O. T. 167
Loughborough University Nationalism Museum of the Other and the Elsewhere
Network (LUNN) 167 – 168 (MAAM) 144 – 145
Lucey, H. 155 Muslim women: discrimination and
Lupton, R. 154 133 – 134; ethnic groups of 130 – 133;
Index 185
gender violence and 133, 138; hijab part-time employment 66, 67

and 134 – 135, 138; Islam and 135 – 136; Paugam, S. 60
majority society and 130 – 131, personal capacities 9 – 11, 13
133 – 134; patriarchal family models photo tagging 34
and 130 – 133; political participation place 49
of 129, 136 – 139; pursuit of goals by Poland 80, 113 – 115, 117
132 – 133; rejection of cultural Islam Polish youth: digital technology and 117;
135; self-reflexivity of 130 – 131, labour migration of 113 – 114; migration
139; socialisation of 129 – 130; for employment 113; self-confidence
subjectivation 130 and 119 – 120; self-identification and
Musterd, S. 155 119 – 122; uncertainty and 118 – 122
political action 89
national identity 166 – 167 politics of the present 4, 11 – 14, 52
Nayak, A. 167 Portugal 115
neighbourhoods: belonging and 160 – 162; post-Brexit visual art 168 – 170, 171,
deprived 153 – 155; identity and 160; 172 – 173, 173, 174, 174, 175 – 176, 176,
impact on young people 153; informal 177 – 178
networks in 158 – 159; school choice in post-socialist regimes 62 – 63
153 – 155, 159 – 162; school quality and practical sense 77
154 – 155 precariousness: alleviating 94; defining
neoliberalism: marketing of artistic 89 – 91, 93 – 94; de-institutionalised life
production and 146; opposition to 142, spaces and 90; discourse on 89 – 90;
146 – 147; private property and 144; generalised/complex 91; identity
social inequalities and 12, 143 formation and 32, 88; insecurity and
Netherlands: migrant female inactivity 89; labour market and 20, 23, 25, 29,
in 67; occupied spaces in 143; school 89; metaphors of 94 – 95; misfortune
choice in 154 – 155; school funding in and 93 – 94; physical implications of 95;
155 – 156; school quality in 155; school political dimension of 89; simple 91;
tracks in 156; unemployment rates 114; social capital and 89; social life and 91;
universalistic regimes in 61, 63; see also weak employment and 88; young people
Rotterdam (Netherlands) and 44, 91 – 97
networked publics 34 presentification 8 – 9, 14
new skills 9 – 10 Prince, D. 51
Niemöller, Martin 173 proximity 5 – 6
Northern Ireland 165, 167 Pyöriä, P. 103
occupation status 68, 69, 70 Rabinovich, L. 60, 71

occupied spaces: activists/artists in 141, radical uncertainty 92
143 – 147, 148; as alternative spaces rationality 76 – 77, 157
142 – 143; collective mobilisations and Reay, D. 155
141, 143, 145 – 147; as landmarks 143; reflexivity 50 – 51
migrant housing and 144 – 146; political Rendall, M. S. 60, 71
goals and 148, 148; as political practice risk society 32 – 33
142 Robards, B. 34
Ojala, S. 103 Rogelberg, S. G. 103
Oranje-Nassau, C. 60, 71 Rome (Italy) 141, 144 – 147
Ostrom, E. 141 Rotterdam (Netherlands) 154, 156; see
Our Nation’s Future: Loughborough Youth also Feijenoord (Rotterdam)
Creative Visions 166 – 167 Rubin, J. 60, 71
Papacharissi, Z. 34 Saari, T. 103

Papathanassopoulos, S. 34 savings 82
186 Index
school choice 153 – 155; see also social networking sites (SNS) 32

secondary school choice social protection 78 – 79
school quality 154 – 155 social realism 6, 129
school-to-work transitions (STW): social stratification 10, 113
counselling and 61, 71; cross-national social vulnerability 60
differences in duration 62; European Spain: junk contracts in 115;
Union 59; institutional contexts and precariousness in 88; school-to-work
60 – 63; migrants and 68; part-time transitions (STW) in 72; sub-protective
employment and 67; reproduction of transition regimes in 62 – 63
inequality in 71; vulnerability and Spanish youth: family support and
60 – 62, 68, 71; women and 68 94, 97; job insecurity and 93, 96;
Scotland 165 precariousness and 91 – 97; public
secondary school choice: belonging and subsidies and 94, 97; self-realization
160 – 162; immigrant students and and 93, 96; transition to adult life
155, 160; peer group discourses on 95 – 97; uncertainty and 93 – 94, 97;
155; physical proximity in 159; self- unemployment and 96
exclusion and 160 – 161; social media spatial dilemmas 49
and 159; social networks and 157 – 159; spatial reflexivity 51
social proximity in 159 – 160; subjective Spin Time 145 – 146
factors in 157 – 162; young people and squatting 141, 143, 145; see also occupied
154 – 162; see also school choice spaces
second-generation migrants 63 Stevenson, C. 167
self 33 – 35, 39 Strand, M. 3
self-realization 93 structural reproduction 22
self-reflexivity 130 – 131, 139 subjectivation 130
self-representation 33 – 41 subjectivity 77
Sheller, M. 49 sub-protective transition regimes 61 – 63,
Simon, H. A. 157 68, 72
simple precariousness 91 Sullivan, W. H. 45
simple rules 77 super-diversity 6
situational management 28 – 29 sur-reflexivity 20, 29
Slovak Republic 62 – 63, 71 Sweden 61, 80
Slovenia 115 Swider, A. 45
smartphones 117 Sykes, B. 155
social autonomy 144
social capital 76, 89 Teatro Valle (Rome) 141 – 142, 146 – 147
Social Centres (Italy) 141 – 143 Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) 142
social change 1 – 4, 19 – 21 third country migrants 63
social exclusion 9 – 10, 13, 88, 160 – 161 Third Wave, The (Toffler) 116
social generation 2 – 3 Threadgold, S. 44
social identity 28 – 29 Tiidenberg, K. 34
social inclusion 10 Tipton, S. M. 45
social innovation 77, 108 Toffler, A. 116
social life 8, 49, 91 – 92, 144, 147 Torcal, M. 89
social locations 4, 13, 20, 22 – 23, 28, 59 Touraine, A. 90, 129 – 130
social media: consumption and 33 – 40; transition to adult life: economic autonomy
Facebook 34; identity formation and 82 – 83; housing autonomy and
and 32 – 34, 36; Instagram 34, 40; 80 – 82; job insecurity and 76 – 77, 84;
manipulation of 39 – 40; networked see also school-to-work transitions
publics and 34; performance of self (STW)
33 – 35, 39 – 41; unreality/semi-reality in Treiman, D. J. 62
39 – 40 Tsang, F. 60, 71
Index 187
uncertainty: future planning and 25 – 26; 72; migrant women and 63; part-time
job insecurity and 84; labour market and employment and 67; personal autonomy
75 – 77; new skills and 10; perception and 12; school-to-work transitions
of 8; post-industrial era and 115 – 116; (STW) and 59 – 63, 68, 71; social 60;
radical 92; self-identification and youth perceptions of 8, 10
119 – 122; strategies for 119, 121 – 122;
young people and 4 – 5, 7 – 9, 93 – 94, 97, wage differences 70, 71
118 – 122 Wales 165, 167
unemployment: educational attainment and Walther, A. 60
63, 64, 67; Estonia 78 – 79; European Willis, P. 20, 22 – 23, 28
Union 77 – 78, 114; France 72; global women: employment and 68; labour
financial crisis and 59; Greece 36; Italy market and 71; migrant 60, 63, 67;
19, 75, 78, 101, 104, 110; migrants and occupation status and 68; precariousness
67 – 68; migrant women and 67 – 68; and 115; unemployment and 67; see also
Netherlands 156; Poland 114; return to gender; Muslim women
parental home and 80 – 81; Spain 96; Woodman, D. 46
women and 67 – 68; youth 19, 36, 49, work culture 101 – 103
59, 72, 75, 101, 104, 110, 114 working-class youth 22, 28
United Kingdom: Brexit referendum Wyn, J. 46
165 – 170, 172; cohabitation in 80;
liberal regime in 61, 63, 72; migrants young people: choice biography 35;
in 63; migrant wage differences 71; complexity and 4 – 5; diversity of
school quality in 154 – 155; school- contexts and 6 – 7; innovative practices
to-work transitions (STW) and 68; and 75; interconnectedness of 5 – 7;
unemployment risks in 67, 72; see also opportunities for 75 – 76; personal
Britain capacities of 9 – 11, 13; politics of the
universalistic regimes 60 – 61, 63, 71 present and 4, 11 – 14; presentification
Urry, J. 50 and 8 – 9; proximity and 5 – 6; risk
society and 32; social change and
Van der Wiel, K. 158 1 – 3; uncertainty and 4 – 5, 7 – 9;
Van Houtte, M. 162 unemployment rates 114; see also
van Zoonen, L. 34 British youth; Greek youth; Italian
Vincent, C. 154 youth; millennials; Polish youth;
Vinge, V. 121 Spanish youth
vocational education and training (VET) youth agency: future planning and 23 – 26;
system 61 – 62, 71 – 72 gender and 27; intersectionality and
vulnerability: defining 59 – 60; economic 20 – 21; opportunities for 10 – 11; social
60; educational attainment and 67; structure and 29; structural reproduction
gender and 60, 72; institutional contexts and 22; studies of 46; see also agency
and 60 – 61; migrant status and 60, 63, youth studies 2 – 3, 44, 46, 49

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Youth and the Politics

Enzo Colombo is a Professor of Sociology and Culture at the Department of

Paola Rebughini is Professor of Sociology of Culture at the Department of Social

259 Comparative Sociology of Examinations

260 The Human Rights City

261 Horizontal Europeanisation

262 The Marginalized in Genocide Narratives

263 The Social Structures of Global Academia

264 Citizenship in the Latin American Upper

265 Youth and the Politics of the Present

For more information about this series, please visit:

Coping with Complexity and

Edited by Enzo Colombo

A complex uncertainty: young people in the riddle of the present 1

1 Learning (not) to labour: how middle-class young adults

2 Negotiating reality through the prosumption of the ‘unreal’

3 ‘Flexi-lives’: facing the mobility imperative 44

4 Fragile transitions from education to employment: youth,

5 Precarious and creative: youth facing uncertainty

6 Youth and precariousness in Spain: beyond a waiting time 88

7 The myth of flexibility: young adults’ expectations of work

8 Uncertainty management strategies in the process of identity

9 Young women of Muslim background in France and

10 Occupying the city: from social housing to the theatre 141

11 ‘I would rather choose a mixed school’: young people’s

12 Our Nation’s Future: youth visions of a post-Brexit Britain 165

4.1 Predicted relative wage differences across vulnerable groups

4.1 Estimation of employment status, relative risk rates (excludes

Kevin Albertson is Professor at The Business School at Manchester Metropolitan

of Schooling: The Case of Turkish School Leavers in Germany (University

Research Fellow in Paris (2009–2010), Cagliari University (2010–2013), and

Introducing the book

Generation as an analytical tool

are constituted and deconstructed within their historical-social framework, to

(entirely) contained by scaled spatial entities, such as the geographical concepts

we have become migrant animals in the labyrinths of the metropolis, travel-

identities, references, opportunities and constraints. Like complexity, uncertainty

New skills, new exclusions

in personal fulfilment. Personal capacity refers to ‘a formal and processual capac-

no longer exclusively related to the material interaction with the environment,

The politics of the present

Politics of the present and challenges of the future

of resource restriction or in the impossibility of acting effectively for the loosen-

Lash, S. (1999). Another modernity: A different rationality. Oxford: Blackwell.

Learning (not) to labour

Youth agency, intersectionality and

structural categories such as class, gender and race/ethnicity – instead of consid-

Learning (not) to labour: the case of young

Therefore, the research aims to examine the particular generation of millennials

Unpacking the black box of youth agency:

Marco and Filippo: on being young, male and educated

Many of my peers with which I shared schools when we were young . . .

we are 20 years old now . . . in a society in which it seems that if you’re

Chiara and Loredana: on being part of a generation

when I compare mine with other generations . . . well . . . my parents simply

While Chiara experienced such a ‘split’ as an everyday condition of ambivalence,

Through her reflexivity on her actual generational location, Loredana actively

Serena and Nadia: on being young, female and educated

It scares me a lot . . . I mean really . . . it scares me thinking that if I want to

A complex uncertainty: young people in the riddle of the present 1

3 ‘Flexi-lives’: facing the mobility imperative 44

6 Youth and precariousness in Spain: beyond a waiting time 88

10 Occupying the city: from social housing to the theatre 141

12 Our Nation’s Future: youth visions of a post-Brexit Britain 165

Young –0.075 –1.540 –3.084 –1.987 0.141 –3.752 –3.416 –4.776

Young Nave Male Young Nave Female

Figure 4.1 Predicted relative wage differences across vulnerable groups relative