Without a Safety Net: Precarization Among Young Danish Employees

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18291/njwls.v7i3.97094

Keywords:

Health, Working Environment and Wellbeing, Learning & compentencies, Gender, ethnicity, age & diversity, Employment, wages, unemployment & rehabilitation, Identity, meaning & culture

Abstract

Precarisation’ is one of the concepts that has become important in efforts to explain how neoliberal politics and changed economic conditions produce new forms of marginalization and increased insecurity. The aim of this article is to examine how subjectivity is produced among young Danish employees through socio-material processes of precarization at workplaces and employment projects. Drawing on ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews with 35 young employees and young people ‘Neither in Education, Employment or Training’ (NEET), the three case examples show how processes of precarization, rooted in global economic and political conditions, can be understood as situated contextual practices. It is demonstrated how being positioned as an easily replaceable source of labor is shaping young people’s processes of subjectification.

Author Biographies

Mette Lykke Nielsen, Aalborg University

 Associate Professor, The Danish Centre for Youth Research, Department of Learning and Philosophy, mail:mln@learning.aau.dk

Anne Görlich, Aalborg University

 Assistant Professor, The Danish Centre for Youth Research, Department of Learning and Philosophy

Regine Grytnes, Regional Hospital West Jutland-University Research Clinic

 Researcher, Danish Ramazzini Centre, Department of Occupational Medicine

Johnny Dyreborg, National Research Centre for the Working Environment, Copenhagen

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Published

2017-09-23

How to Cite

Nielsen, M. L., Görlich, A., Grytnes, R., & Dyreborg, J. (2017). Without a Safety Net: Precarization Among Young Danish Employees. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 7(3). https://doi.org/10.18291/njwls.v7i3.97094

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 3 (2017)

Section

Articles

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