Young people and the labour market: interrogating the idea of a precariat

Youth Research Centre Seminar Series 2016

Professor Andy Furlong, Dean, Research in the College of Social Science and Professor of Social Inclusion and Education, University of Glasgow & Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne

Facilitated by Dr Dan Woodman, School of Social and Political Sciences, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne

This paper will draw on evidence from a recently completed project (’The making of the Precariat: Unemployment, Insecurity and Work Poor Young Adults in Harsh Economic Conditions’) that investigated the relevance of the idea of a precariat for understanding young people's experiences in the labour market. Contrasting contemporary experiences with those experienced by young people in the 1980s recession, I argue that changes in patterns of security have deep roots and that the Global recession of 2008/09 largely accelerated existing trends. While there are certain merits in the precariat thesis for understanding modern conditions, I argue that there has been a tendency to over-simplify the process which is far more nuanced than presented by key commentators such as Guy Standing. A new model of the labour market is presented in order to avoid presenting disadvantage as a democratised process.