Abstract
Reviewed by: Samuel Shaw, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN DOI: 10.1177/0730888415572582
Meet Josh, a typical American college kid, who, on a bitter winter day, skips classes and instead drives hours through the snow to work at the Coffee Bean (think Starbucks) location where he feels he is “needed.” No one notices when he skips class, and the university will get along without him anyway. Josh is a lot like the majority of other youth workers in the United States: from an affluent background; White; will likely graduate from college. Josh does not have to pick up a shift that conflicts with classes because Josh does not exactly need to work. The job puts cash in his pockets, but more importantly, the job affords Josh an identity, a brand, and social opportunities that school does not, opportunities that scholars of youth labor in the United States have tended to overlook.
Consuming is a verb in the title of Yasemin Besen-Cassino’s new book, Consuming Work: Youth Labor in America, not an adjective. Work can consume a person, as the subtitle Youth Labor might “evoke images of unventilated sweatshops in the developing world … ” (p. 2). But this book takes place in the suburbs of the contemporary United States, reflecting its many social and spatial advantages, as well as the many chain stores and restaurants that characterize Average America and provide youth with employment chances. In this context, the workplace functions in ways that other social institutions such as schools fail. Writes Besen-Cassino, “This book studies the consumption of work and branded work experiences as markers of identity among youth … and a social space to see friends” (pp. 16–17).
Among the many strengths of the book is its challenge to existing conceptions of low-skill service employment, recasting what Ritzer called “McJobs,” and what Kalleberg simply called “bad jobs,” as meaningful and useful for many of those who take them. Besen-Cassino does so using a mix of ethnographic observation and statistical overviews.
By taking us to the site itself—fieldwork at two chain coffee shops in suburban New Jersey—she describes firsthand what these jobs mean to kids like Josh. Using data from the World Values Survey, she compares youth work in the United States with other countries, and using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, she explores the origins of the gender gap in youth earnings too. The real fruit of this study, however, is its intervention into the way sociologists have depicted youth labor and bad jobs.
Unlike marginal youth’s struggles to land and make positive sense of minimum wage jobs, affluent American kids are observed being offered applications with their coffee, perhaps even from a friend who works there. And unlike their poorer counterparts, affluent youth know how to “look good and sound right” for the job, consciously or not. When Josh was hired, for example, the manager could tell he was a “cool” person because of his piercings, tattoos, and Radiohead T-shirt. Corporate retailers advertise their jobs accordingly as places of social opportunities and brand identities, where aesthetic and social skills matter more than experience. Youth applying out of economic necessity may have a harder time meeting these qualifications.
The work experience in turn reflects affluent youth’s social advantages. At Coffee Bean, youth workers experience not standardized routines but creative control over their environment, not rules and restrictions but a lack of authority, not a draining workday but fun with friends. Importantly, in this sense, the pay is a secondary concern to the youth in Bessen-Cassino’s study. Rather, the job is itself something consumed.
While the book succeeds in reframing conventional wisdom about who works in low-wage service jobs in the United States and why, the book comes across redundant and less-than-rigorous in many places. The ethnographic detail reads repetitive and thin, for example, as the vignette with Josh is told three times (nearly verbatim) in three different chapters—twice with Josh, and a third time with Monica, who also skips class to drive to work through the snow because she is needed there. Some descriptive statistics are misinterpreted (or there are typos in the tables; c.f., pp. 27–29). Further, a critical reader might get the sense that existing literature is only selectively referenced to support the authors’ contribution. Much more could be made of Katherine Newman’s No Shame in My Game as a comparative case, for example. One might imagine that disadvantaged youth don’t willy-nilly accept “bad jobs,” without also making sense of them.
Despite these shortcomings, Consuming Work should inform future research about youth labor in America and in comparative perspective. More interesting to me is the book’s relevance to bigger ideas in sociology. It is equal parts a Durkheimian coming-of-age tale about finding a space to be and belong in the world, and a Bourdieuian story about leveraging sociospatial advantages to do so.