Annalisa Murgia

The precariousnesses of young knowledge workers: a subject-oriented approach

Over the past decades, a number of EU member states have recorded large rises in the use of temporary employment. Young people are far more likely than other groups to be employed in precarious jobs, independently of their education and skills. In the midst of the global economic-financial crisis, in fact, the assault on the conditions of knowledge workers goes on, according to the different lines of the neoliberalistic logics, which juxtapose with the current precarisation processes like underpayment and misalignment between subjects’ educations and their working activities. How do young precarious knowledge workers recount their experiences? What relation holds between a high education level and the possibility of effectively deploying the competences and skills acquired? How do knowledge workers represent and deal with their precarious conditions? To answer these questions, this article proposes a definition of the concepts of ‘precarity’, ‘precariousness’ and ‘precariat’ and then focuses specifically ...

What makes a “good manager”? Positioning gender and management in students’ narratives

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the relationships between gender and management in the narratives of students. More specifically, the authors discuss how the discourse on management is mobilized as a discursive practice able to make some form of that activity thinkable and practicable: who can be a CEO? What kind of managerial competencies are attributed to men/women CEOs? What kind of moral order is expressed in the stories told? Design/methodology/approach – Stimulus texts have been used to elicit narratives. Students were asked to complete a short story regarding a fictive managerial character, either female or male, whose performance and attitude they were asked to evaluate. Findings – The paper discusses how the collected stories as a whole expressed a conception of what counts as a “good manager” and how management is gendered. In the analysis, the authors discuss whether and how the relationships between gender and management are changing, or the basic assumptions about “think man...

By Hook or By Crook: Flexible Workers between Exploration and Exploitation

The article conceptualizes the dilemma between exploration and exploitation for flexible knowledge workers. At a time when work is fragmented and society is individualized, we consider, besides the strategies of organizations, also those of workers and the ways in which they move among organizations in an attempt to ‘get by’ between increased margins of autonomy and a lack of the resources necessary to pursue their passions and to fulfil their projects. Through analysis of the life stories of flexible knowledge workers and their relationships with the organizations for which they work, the article illustrates how flexible knowledge workers handle the tension between exploration and exploitation and how organizations resist their attempts. The purpose is to interpret the pervasiveness of individualization processes that prompt individuals to think of themselves as organizations, while human resource management claim that people are their most valuable resource but treat them as disposable workers.

Atipici o flessibili? San Precario salvaci tu!

The changes occurred in the fordist model of production have involved a progressive transformation of workers’ professional and personal conditions, making working forms not classifiable within the traditional dichotomy between dependent and autonomous work. In the Italian academic debate, the idea of atypical work is object of different criticisms because of the crisis of a typical job that does not represent anymore a univocal model of reference. Thus, the limited explanatory extension of dualistic categories related to work (typical/atypical, standard/non-standard, flexibility/precarity) has emerged and the debate has put forward the need to elaborate analytical perspectives able to describe the complexity of social dynamics related to contemporary occupational forms. From a sociological point of view, in fact, the more interesting aspects of different occupational forms do not concern workers’ fiscal or juridical positions, but the social dynamics that allow them to stabilize and to make sustainable the discontinuity and fragmentariness of job trajectories. In this article, we propose a further dimension for the analysis of contemporary occupational forms and conditions, focusing attention on the symbolic imaginary enacted around this phenomenon and on the practices of auto-representation of the subjects involved. In order to understand the social dimension of contemporary occupational forms, and referring explicitly to the social and political phenomenon of San Precario, the article shows the importance of expanding the boundaries and the meanings of work categories and working practices to the sphere of social dynamics.

At Risk of Deskilling and Trapped by Passion: A Picture of Precarious Highly Educated Young Workers in Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom

Recent decades have seen growing academic debate on the relationship between tertiary education and secure career pathways. In Europe in the 1990s, globalisation, the tertiarisation of the economy, the deregulation of labour markets, the onset of structural unemployment and the ‘democratisation’ of university (Blasutig, 2011) broke down the existing relationship between higher education and secure career pathways. The assumption that expanding higher education will automatically increase economic growth and reduce social inequalities has been challenged (Ballarino, 2007; Schomburg and Teichler, 2006), forcing researchers to revise their theoretical tools and interpretative models.

Staging precariousness: The Serpica Naro catwalk during the Milan Fashion Week

The article illustrates the Italian process of work precarisation and the collective resistance of precarious workers. It interprets them in terms of the birth of a collective identity that conducts a critique against precariousness while developing learning resources. Through discursive analysis of the Serpica Naro catwalk, organised in the area of Milan by the activists of the May Day Parade and the San Precario network, the article illustrates the process of construction of this collective identity that uses irony and playfulness to resist and denounce precarious working conditions. The purpose is to interpret the anti-precariousness movement as a process of critical urban learning that creates the viability of spaces for resistance in metropolitan contexts.

Stories of work/life transitions from the Italian public sector

Purpose – The aim of this article is to overcome an endogenous view of work, as a category isolated from the other existential spheres, and to identify an alternative approach to understanding how (paid) work and other life domains interweave. Biographical transitions between work and non‐work are analysed, paying specific attention to the processes of gender positioning.Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on the analysis of 60 narrative interviews with men and women working in the Italian public sector (the civil service and the health service). The interviews were audiorecorded, transcribed, and then subjected to narrative analysis, focusing in particular on plots, biographical transitions and positioning processes.Findings – The analysis has brought out the predominant plots, as well as the alternative ones, of the work stories narrated by men and women interviewed, highlighting the specific gender positioning that subtended different attributions between men and women in the inter‐rela...

Work–life interferences in the early stages of academic careers: The case of precarious researchers in Italy

This paper addresses the topic of work–life interferences in academic contexts. More specifically, it focuses on early career researchers in the Italian university system. The total availability required from those who work in the research sector is leading to significant transformations of the temporalities of work, especially among the new generation of researchers, whose condition is characterized by a higher degree of instability and uncertainty. Which are the experiences of the early career researchers in an academic context constituted by a growing competition for permanent positions and, as a consequence, by a greatly increased pressure? Which are the main gender differences? In what elements do Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics disciplines differ from Social Sciences and Humanities? The collected narratives reveal how the ongoing process of precarization is affecting both the everyday working activities and the private and family lives of early career researchers, with important consequences also on their future prospects.

Ai confini dei libri, tra passione e lavoro. Mettersi in rete per resistere alla precarietà

Lavorare nelle industrie culturali e creative spesso significa essere coinvolti nelle contraddizioni alla base del free work, che si configura come una significativa caratteristica del lavoro contemporaneo. In questo articolo sono presentati i principali risultati di una ricerca svolta nel mondo dell’editoria. A partire da un approccio qualitativo, che ha combinato metodi tradizionali e digitali della ricerca sociale, e stata analizzata una rete auto-organizzata di lavoratori e lavoratrici della conoscenza, la Rete dei Redattori Precari. Sono state in particolare considerate tre dinamiche che sottendono l’esperienza lavorativa dei soggetto coinvolti nella Rete: l’istituzionalizzazione dello stage come punto di ingresso al lavoro, l’uso di un doppio registro formale-informale per gestire sia il lavoro che le relazioni personali, e i diversi modi in cui in questo settore le passioni sono messe a valore. Viene infine presentato un evento di protesta organizzato dalla Rete, in cui il surplus di creativita e stato trasformato in conflitto sociale. Nel caso empirico, si mostra come l’utilizzo delle tecnologie digitali e uno dei modi attraverso cui la resistenza alla precarieta puo essere collettivamente costruita.

Quando studiare non basta. Racconti di giovani highly skilled nel mercato del lavoro flessibile

In questo contributo vengono discussi alcuni dei principali risultati di una ricerca mirata ad analizzare il fenomeno dell’instabilita lavorativa tra i giovani highly skilled i n I talia. D opo aver d elineato u n q uadro g enerale d ei c ambiamenti che connotano la situazione di questo specifico segmento, vengono presentati gli esiti di una indagine qualitativa basata sulla conduzione di interviste in profondita, focalizzando in particolare l’attenzione sulla temporaneita dei contratti, sulla qualita del lavoro, sull’intreccio tra lavoro e vita privata e sulla questione dei diritti e della sicurezza sociale. Infine viene sviluppata una riflessione sui possibili interventi per contrastare le criticita evidenziate, anche sulla base degli esiti di un focus group condotto con testimoni privilegiati.