Time projections: Youth and precarious employment

Abstract

The European and Portuguese labour markets have undergone significant changes in recent years. The high rates of unemployment have been accompanied by precarious employment – a phenomenon that is affecting younger people most. This article analyses how the future employment prospects of young people with few qualifications and/or on low pay are both represented and projected. By means of a content analysis of 80 interviews with young working people in Portugal, two forms of projecting their professional future were defined: the cumulative and the noncumulative projections. Within the latter category, three subtypes were identified: those of contingency, immobility and rupture. These categories are systematically explained, taking into account the notion of time as a sociological variable.

Keywords

Future labour youth precariousness time

Introduction

This article analyses how young people in precarious employment, with unskilled and low-paid jobs, project their futures in terms of their aspirations and professional expectations. In a broader conception defined by Vosko (2010: 3), precarious labour refers to ‘work for remuneration characterized by uncertainty, low income and limited social benefits and statutory entitlements’. The goal of the article is to understand the relationship between these young people’s careers and the time variable. While time has an objective chronological existence, it is also – as several sociologists have demonstrated – a subjective social category, which is reflectively appropriated and understood by individuals (Adam, 1990; Bourdieu, 1997; Giddens, 1991; Luhmann, 1982; Mead, 1932). For this reason, as a temporal dimension, the future is analysed as a social construct based on representations, attitudes and strategies associated with the projection of temporally differentiated outlooks.

Thus, we wish to know to what extent precarious employment hampers the self-perceived control these young people have over their future, what strategies they use or intend to use in order to improve their position on the labour market and what factors contribute to the definition or obscuring of their job prospects. As we shall see in the course of the analysis, on the one hand, the present insecurity represents an immediate factor of relative constraint in the individual’s ability to conceive and delineate a particular future horizon; on the other, according to our observations, distinct forms of projecting future job prospects are evident among the young people interviewed.

The content analysis of 80 detailed interviews that took place during 2010 identified two temporal categories revealing fundamentally different attitudes towards the future. The first, termed ‘cumulative projections’, has a strategically oriented posture in relation to the construction of future horizons, defined from the appropriation and continued mobilisation of acquired resources (particularly educational capital). The second, termed ‘noncumulative projections’, which is subdivided into three subcategories, is defined from the perspective of the discontinuity between the past, present and future.

The article will first carry out a theoretical reflection on the concept of social time, taking as its starting point the contributions of different authors. It will then frame the principal dynamics and recent changes that exist or have taken place in the capitalist economy and the world of work before addressing the methodological issues that will guide this study. The final part of the article is dedicated to the interpretation of the results obtained through the content analysis.

Time as a social construct

Mead (1932) was one of the first sociologists to produce an in-depth theoretical reflection on the question of social time. In The Present as the Locus of Reality, he established his criteria for determining time as a social phenomenon. For Mead, time can only be analysed from the distinction between the past, present and future. However, these three modes do not have the same quality: the present has its own reality that distinguishes it from both the past and the future – ‘when the present has passed it no longer is’ (Mead, 1932: 28). In this sense, the past and the future can only be constructed from the present.

Time is therefore, above all, a social construct based on the subject’s ability to interpret the past or the future from his or her present. Mead believed time had a hypothetical nature and it is in this sense that he proposed the notion of the ‘specious present’, which is made up of past and future horizons, though they are determined from a basis in a present in which the individual is living ‘now’; that is, the notion of the specious present signifies this capacity of individuals to establish hypotheses about the past and the future.

Luhmann expanded on this approach to time, raising it to a more macro-social level. He defined time as ‘the social interpretation of the reality with respect to the difference between past and future’ (Luhmann, 1982: 274). In his opinion, this idea of time is exclusive to modern and contemporary societies. In traditional societies, there is little substance to distinguish the past from the future. The construction of this distinction is related to the ability to make choices, as understood by Mead. The possibility of constructing a temporal horizon over the past or the future gives time an opening dimension to the extent that this represents one possibility (one chance) among many. Thus, temporal horizons are created reflectively: for example, in situations requiring individuals to describe a given future, they may have recourse to a similar situation from their past, then attempt to interpret the way in which they then anticipated the future.

In the context of late modernity, according to Giddens (1991: 125), time is also a subjective category in the sense that individuals reflectively ‘colonise’ their future. Individuals construct their future after considering the potential costs and benefits resulting from their choices and decisions. Individual biographic time is defined as a succession of choices and decisions defined reflectively by the potential opportunities they bring. Late modernity, in Giddens’ opinion, is open, fluid, malleable and capable of being constantly redesigned in hindsight by the individual. These biographical rhythms and guides are continually recreated and selected from the present. Time is not defined in relation to a predetermined script: it is constructed reflectively.

Bourdieu (1997) understood the future as a social and symbolic category projected by the individual according to a logic of appropriateness between subjective expectations and the objective possibility of their being realised – the ‘causality of the probable’. Unlike Giddens, the French author argues that individual trajectories are largely conditioned by the person’s social past, that is, by the position occupied in the space of the resources at the beginning and throughout the social trajectory. There is an adaptation of projects and individual expectations of the objective opportunities, which can consist of either the subjective limitation of future possibilities or simply the creation of an illusion of them. These mental operations are the outcome of a more or less conscious practical disposition formed throughout the social trajectory, which allows someone to anticipate the future and manage individual aspirations in respect of the subjective field of possibilities (Atkinson, 2010). Time is, therefore, a socially determined and important universe in the sense that the cognitive and representational relationship that individuals maintain with it intersects with a larger set of social possibilities and impossibilities of an economic, symbolic or cultural nature.

In Bourdieu’s view, the revealed social possibilities and impossibilities that are temporally reproduced are the result of the past’s influence on the conformation and prospect of present action. As Schütz (1987) also argues, the ‘stock of knowledge’ in the past determines future action and supports its pragmatic orientation. The chronologies of individual biographies are shaped in accordance with the successive overlapping of the past, the present and the future of individual actions and thoughts. According to this view, the past represents a legacy of experiences, dispositions and resources that are continuously invoked in the present. This legacy is active in the delimitation of future possibilities. According to Bourdieu (1997), the future is a field of possibilities that, from the symbolic point of view, cannot otherwise exist. From this perspective, not having a future signifies the impossibility of the present mobilising the resources necessary to construct the future.

Transformations in the world of work: Young people and precarious employment

The changes that have taken place within the organisational structure of capitalism as a consequence of globalisation and the rise of the information society have had a number of repercussions on the way time is experienced (Carmo, 2006). One of the main consequences has been the social acceleration and the compression of space and time, which have affected many aspects of daily life (Harvey, 1990; Rosa, 2003). According to Harvey, the world has become much smaller, largely due to the reduction in the time it takes to move goods, money, images and people.

For Castells (2000), these phenomena are at the root of the emergence of the network society, which is organised around a complex space he has called the ‘space of flows’. The temporal volatility that is in part determined by informational flows has had a considerable impact on the various domains of social life, in particular on the rise of flexible work and the intensification of spatial mobility.

Another supposed destructuring factor concerns job insecurity and contractual instability. Contracts have been shortened considerably to such an extent that the notion of a lifetime career in a certain company or organisation has been almost completely lost (Beck, 2000). Changes to employment practice, which often mean that employees have to move to another part of the country, increasingly affect workers on both a professional and personal level (Bauman, 2000; Sennett, 1998). These points were empirically discussed by Doogan (2005) with regard to the development of long-term employment in Europe (EU12) between 1992 and 2002. Through this work, the author not only successfully demonstrates that long-term employment in Europe was not reduced during this decade but it even marginally increased (Doogan, 2005: 69). The same analysis was made, and the same conclusions were reached in the United States by Stevens (2005) and in Japan by Shimizutani and Yokoyama (2009). The increase in job insecurity in the United Kingdom and United States was also successfully contested by Fevre (2007), in contrast, however, to several European countries such as Spain, Portugal and Poland.

However, there are reasons to believe that this increase in the proportion of long-term employment does not benefit all workers in the same way: older, more experienced workers are the ones who represent a major share of long-term employment during the period analysed by Doogan (2005: 83). This is counterbalanced among the younger workers (15–34), especially those from working-class backgrounds (MacDonald, 2009), by the rise in different types of atypical and flexible work throughout Europe, though it is especially striking in particular countries (Fevre, 2007: 529). One of these types is temporary work, usually in the form of a fixed-term employment contract that ends with the completion of an assignment or the return of an employee who has been replaced. This specific type of employment has been gaining a wider share of the European labour markets in recent decades, with young people filling the larger part of its ranks (Eurostat, Labour Force Survey, 1992–2013).

Accordingly, temporary work, along with other atypical contractual forms such as unwanted part-time work, independent work or integration into a flexitime/temporary agency working scheme, represents the new flexible labour relations. These are adapted to globalized markets and, on a mass scale, offered to young people entering the labour market, to compensate for the rigidity of the long-term employment secured by older cohorts in preglobalized times. This employment supply easily turns into a long-term prospect of precarious work (Standing, 2011) with the influence of other characteristics shared by these jobs. Precarious work does not refer exclusively to the status of employment (employed/self-employed, permanent/temporary, part time/full time, tenured/nontenured) or to the sometimes irregular forms of work contracts. In this way, precarious work easily escapes the false ‘permanent/temporary’ and ‘tenured/nontenured’ dualism, covering all sorts of labour relations, as long as one or more conditions for precariousness is covered, namely low wages or limited social benefits or statutory entitlements (Vosko, 2010: 3). However, precarious conditions also transcend the borderlines of work for a significant part of this segment of workers. The impermanent nature of these jobs, frequently complemented with periods of unemployment, low wages and the absence of social benefits, often contaminates other dimensions of the lives of the young people involved, raising insuperable obstacles to their transition to adulthood, e.g., to leaving home or starting a family (Alves et al., 2011). Precarious work is commonly conceived of as no more than an intermediate stage, a ‘stepping stone’ from education to long-term employment (Quintini et al., 2007), though for a significant part of the younger cohorts of working-class and lower middle-class origins it constitutes a trap from which they will probably not escape (Auer and Cazes, 2003; MacDonald, 2009).

As a result of these changes, individuals are faced with the constant need to make life decisions based on an outlook of change and instability. Reflection, as Giddens (1991) and Beck, Giddens and Lash (1994) note, becomes an essential element in the organisation of daily life. It is through this that individuals are able to create horizons that allow them to anticipate the direction of this inevitable change. The reflective ability to anticipate change thus becomes a prerequisite for maintaining a balance in their professional and personal lives. It is a tenuous balance preserved through the anticipation of possible scenarios that often contradict each other and involve different strategies. The unpredictability of change becomes an element that shapes daily life and must always be taken into account (Ylijoki, 2010). ‘Biographical risk’ (Bradley and Devadason, 2008; Furlong and Cartmel, 1997) appears as a constituent dimension of life’s trajectories and individual choices.

In the context of these profound changes, the problem of youth job insecurity has become particularly important. It is a situation that affects a considerable part of Europe, with the position in Portugal, where more than half of the young people are employed on fixed-term contracts, being no exception. Furthermore, in advanced economies, the number of unemployed young people increased between 2008 and 2012 by more than 2 million (ILO, 2013). The unemployment rate in Europe is becoming markedly asymmetrical between southern and northern countries. This is particularly evident in the youth unemployment rates, which go beyond 50% in countries such as Spain and Greece (in Portugal, it is around 40%); on the opposite side, in countries like Austria, Germany, the Netherlands or Norway, the rates are below 12% (Eurostat).

The intertwining of these factors, the increase in the availability of jobs in the service sector and market deregulation have led to the overwhelming majority of a generation of young workers being channelled into insecure jobs and to a reduction in their salaries. In Spain, they have already been called the mileuristas (those who are paid up to €1,000 a month; Freire, 2006), while in Portugal, they have been labelled the €500 generation (geração dos €500; Pinto, 2011).

The growing insecurity of this generation has obvious consequences on their life course. The unpredictability to which they are daily subjected as a result of the type of insecure employment they are able to find and the relatively low wages they are paid does not in many cases allow them to enjoy the various rituals of the transition to adulthood: financial independence, leaving their parents’ home, the creation of new family units and procreation. When this is possible, it is often to a schedule or through resorting to intermediate formulae (such as, where appropriate, temporarily returning to their parents’ home) or by remaining dependent on their parents, who supplement their incomes or pay part of their expenses (housing, transport or food; Baizán, Michielin and Billari, 2002; Bynner, 2005; Chambaz, 2001; Leccardi, 2005).

Data and methodology

This article is part of a research project that intends to describe in detail, through semi-directed interviews, the way in which a section of young Portuguese workers (aged 18–34) have been integrated into precarious, low-skilled (ISCO-08 Major Groups 4–9) and low-paid work (below €700 per month, 1.5 times the minimum wage in Portugal) and the implications for significant dimensions of their personal lives: their standard of living, their independence from their parents and ability to form their own family group and their ability to reflect on the conditions that have led them to their present situation and the future and the potential for change (Alves et al., 2011).

To achieve this objective, an interview script was designed covering all these analytical dimensions. A total of 80 people meeting the conditions set out by the study were interviewed, with the fieldwork (recruitment, interviews and transcriptions) taking place between May and August 2010. The transcribed interviews were later thematically scaled and analysed with MaxQDA content analysis software (Table 1).

Table 1.

Composition of the sample by level of education and age group.

Education	Age group			Total
Education	18–24	25–29	30–34	Total
Primary	14	13	16	43
Secondary	7	11	8	26
Further/higher	1	4	5	10

The recruitment of the participants was based on a stratification process that sought to distribute the 80 interviews according to three basic criteria: geographical diversity, age group and gender.¹ Given the very specific characteristics of the sample population (young workers in precarious, low-skilled and low-paid jobs), it proved necessary to introduce two more selection criteria. In respect of the first condition (low skills), the study had to take into account the double value of this term. The first and more generic refers to the level of educational qualifications at which it is possible to exercise an occupational activity, while the second and more precise refers to the actual content of the activities undertaken and the need to obtain a vocational qualification (specific education, experience and job-related training) essential to the role. The second criterion related to low pay, which excludes those who receive more than €700 per month, or around one-and-a-half times the 2010 national minimum wage (€485).

Diverse contractual situations were found: the modal group was temporarily employed (N = 39), though permanent contract holders were also numerous (N = 24). The other contractual situations were false self-employment (engagement by a single organisation in a relationship of self-employment) and employment with no verbal or written contract. Of these ‘precarious workers’, 29 earned below the minimum legal wage (<€485), 33 between €485 and €625 and finally 18 above €625. Their occupations (ISCO-08 major groups) were extremely diverse: services and sales workers (N = 32), assemblers and plant and machine operators (N = 19), clerical support workers (N = 10), workers in crafts and related trades (N = 9), elementary occupations (N = 8) and even two technicians and associate professionals involved in semipermanent internships. The sociodemographic characteristics of the sample illustrate the broad concept of precarious work used, comparable to that defined by Vosko (2010).

Cumulative and noncumulative employment projections

As Tabboni (2001) notes, the construction of temporal horizons projecting from experiences of change can be based on two distinct formative perspectives: continuity/discontinuity and recurrence. Here, the duality of the former is used to distinguish the two types of future projection identified in the study. The analysis of the interviewees’ statements concerning their employment future allows us to define ‘cumulative’ and ‘noncumulative’ projections. The former are essentially based on the acquisition of resources for the definition of the employment trajectory and for the mobilisation of the resources acquired. In both cases, the projected employment trajectory depends on the mobilisation of a set of educational and employment (professional experience) resources. Future employment is, therefore, a horizon that is analysed in a mediated manner, defined in terms of the resources that make it viable. Cumulative projections tend to be strategic, viewed from the basis of a structuring condition that permits their achievement. From the present situation, a temporal continuity is established, in this case, between a horizon linking several past experiences with the projection of a particular future: one presented as being relatively open.

Noncumulative projections are defined on the basis of perspective of discontinuity between the past, present and future. The characteristic common to all of them is the fact that they are produced independently of any resource mobilisation. Within this category, the ways of understanding future employment are more heterogeneous than those that form cumulative projections. This heterogeneity results from the fact that this analytical category includes, simultaneously, the noncumulative perspective of future employment projections that deny the admissibility of this type of prospective exercise (‘contingency’); noncumulative perspectives of future employment projections that tend towards employment ‘immobility’ and noncumulative perspectives of future employment projections that tend towards a ‘rupture’ in the previous professional trajectory or in educational resources.

Of the 79 interviewees who commented on their employment futures,² 36 (46%) formulated cumulative-type projections, while 43 (54%) included noncumulative projections. Of these, 18 were contingent projections, representing 42% of the cases in the ‘noncumulative’ category and 23% of the total; there were also 18 projections tending towards immobility, while 7 were rupture projections (16% and 9%, respectively; Table 2).

Table 2.

Typology of future employment projections (N).

Cumulative projections	Noncumulative projections			Total
Cumulative projections	Contingency	Immobility	Rupture	Total
36	18	18	7	79

Having discussed and analysed the interviewees’ employment projections on the basis of the abstract categories defined, we now present the discussions upon which this categorisation exercise was based.

Cumulative projections

The mobilisation or acquisition of formative and educational resources is the fundamental component of cumulative employment projections. The representations and attitudes accompanying this prospective exercise, the employment objectives sought, the educational level required and the amplitude of the formative path vary significantly for each respondent. Common to all of them, however, is the idea that the construction of a more favourable employment future depends on access to or the activation of knowledge and/or training – or, more formally, on the acquisition of educational qualifications that will be decisive in gaining access to employment (Baker, 2011).

Access to education and training are regarded by some respondents as investments that will enable them to improve their relative positions within the labour market, strategies that improve the chances of appearance of employment opportunities and the individual’s ability to take advantage of them. Expressions such as ‘enrichment’, ‘improvement’ and ‘preparation’ often appeared during the interviews in association with reasons for investing in education. One of the main goals for acquiring or mobilising educational and training resources was to improve working conditions and, in particular, to improve pay:

Q: It is my understanding that your plans are now more centred on your studies …

A: It is more to develop myself as much as possible in order to prepare myself; to increase my value as much as possible so that I can then have other employment prospects and can adjust this to other plans for the future, such as buying a house, among other things. (Interview 18)

A: I hope this decision to study will open other doors and perhaps, in this case, with a salary above or at least around €1,000 per month, I will be able to think about a house and other things. Where I am just now I can’t even think about such things. (Interview 27)

Education as a means of improving one’s abilities and the level of formal qualifications is a strategy used to reshape the ‘possibilities’ that open up in the labour market and to improve existing living conditions. This is a general response that takes different forms. Changing jobs or the sector of activity is one form. In this situation, respondents had very different levels of education that they wished to conclude.

Q: What is the purpose of completing your 9th year of schooling?

A: I want to complete the security guard course and for this I need to have completed the 9th year.

Q: So, you are going to finish the 9th year so that you can have access to more training in order to get a better job?

A: A new life. (Interview 23)

Q: How do you find your job prospects in the more distant future?

A: I want to grow.

Q: How?

A: By applying for jobs for which in the future I’ll be qualified. Because the position of cook cannot develop much … because I am in the kitchen, I am the cook and everything goes through my hands. There I can go no further because a second cook means new dishes … At the very least I want to take a degree in education. There is a woman there who will retire in five or six years and I would like to try to take her place. (Interview 12)

In the first example, school education emerges as a way of creating a ‘new life’. The respondent wants to complete his compulsory education in order to have access to a security guard course that will allow him to undertake an occupational activity very different from that which he currently exercises. In the second example, the respondent stated that there is no chance of career progression as a cook. She discusses the situation of immobility in the job market. A degree in education would enable her to change her career path, providing the formal and substantive qualifications necessary to gain employment as a qualified professional.

Investment in education and training is a strategy adopted by whoever pursues advancement within their occupational or professional area.

A: I am thinking of doing a second degree in Education Sciences so that I don’t end up feeling out of place where I am working and so that I can be recognised a little more. There’s always that thing where people say ‘They’re not in education, so perhaps they have not been prepared themselves sufficiently’. Sometimes I feel this, so next year I hope to take a second undergraduate degree instead of finishing my master’s. I can perhaps leave that for later. There are always complementary areas: I have already done projects for kids. It is all cultural management, but in the area of education. However, perhaps I will first need to have a firm grounding in education before I can then do a postgraduate degree in cultural management. (Interview 3)

The respondent had a degree in communication sciences and was completing a master’s degree in cultural management. In the meantime, the respondent had begun working with children as a monitor for educational activities. As he was aware that his peers did not believe he was qualified for this work, and was seeking to improve his qualifications, the respondent decided to take a second undergraduate degree, which would give him the academic grounding and the formal qualifications necessary to obtain professional recognition in the area in which he presently works.

Access to training and education is also a factor in cumulative employment projections aimed at improving mobility within a company.

Q: So, you are going to try to go to university in order to succeed in life or is there some other goal behind it?

A: It’s to earn more, to exert less physical effort, etc …

Q: Are you doing it because you want to start earning more with the company you already work for or will you look for another job?

A: In the company I work for.

Q: And they offer these opportunities?

A: Yes, they have senior positions. There is also a company manager and there are senior positions for those with a secondary education diploma. (Interview 5)

This respondent works at a supermarket. He has completed high school while working and sees in university (in the area of business management) a way to secure access to senior positions within the company he currently works for. This opportunity exists and even some of his colleagues with no upper-secondary schooling (i.e. below the level the respondent seeks to acquire) have already been promoted.

Qualifications and skills are perceived as the main opportunity to overcome precarious work and low-pay jobs in the labour market: 36% of the interviewees who have permanent contracts project their future in the labour market with this resource as a means to boost their labour trajectory. This percentage gets higher (between 47% and 60%) when we look at those who have temporary or informal contracts. These results seem to show that the more informal and precarious the labour contract is, the more the youth tend to invest in or mobilize qualifications in order to improve their position in the labour market. On the other hand, most of the interviewees who have permanent contracts are manual workers and about 71% of them have noncumulative labour projections. For this reason, the interviewees who have more secure jobs tend to have fewer cumulative labour projections, not because of their contractual situation but because they are mainly manual workers. In fact, only eight of them have cumulative projections for their working future.

Noncumulative projections

As mentioned previously, noncumulative projections refer to a set of representations, expectations and strategies about future employment. This is, however, an abstract category consisting of methods of addressing the most heterogeneous employment futures compared to those found in the case of cumulative projections. These noncumulative projections are based on three different processes of envisaging the future: contingency, immobility and rupture.

Contingent employment projections consist of a powerlessness and refusal to conceive future job prospects. The labour market seems excessively dependent on factors that these subjects cannot anticipate or control. We must question, therefore, the pertinence or admissibility of projecting future employment.

A: In the other job I had there were more prospects of getting a contract and having a good career. However, when I reached the end of my contract they did not keep me on.

Q: Now you’ll only believe it when you see it.

A: Exactly. Everything will depend on what is going to happen.

Q: So you don’t have any great plans, then?

A: It depends. It depends on the work, it depends on the job market, it depends on the economic prospects of the country. I think that just now anyone who manages to make long-term plans is to be congratulated because nobody knows what’s around the corner. (Interview 1)

A: I believe that things will get better … they can’t stay bad forever. But you never know. We know less and less about what’s happening. (Interview 22)

In the first example, the uncertainty characterising the professional future is explained by the precariousness and insecurity of past labour relation experiences and the understanding that future employment depends on the internal dynamics of systems that are beyond an individual’s will or action. The inability to decipher these same dynamics is at the root of the second example. The path of future employment is clouded by the shaping power of complex and autonomous systems that are difficult to understand. The future is not predictable because the present is constantly changing. It is not worth thinking beyond the day-to-day situation or making any employment plans, since the future is unforeseeable, unpredictable and elusive. In these cases, the acts and thoughts of the individual tend to obey the logic of ‘presentification’ (Leccardi, 2005: 141).

Although we would say that contingent projections are associated with precarious and atypical contracts, most of the individuals who reflected those prospects do have permanent contracts. The inability shown by these interviewees to shed light on their working future is not directly related to formal job insecurity. It derives mainly from their low educational levels and a broader negative perception of their economically and politically unstable environment.

The second type of noncumulative professional projections emerges from a stance of immobility in relation to the labour market. This tendency to immobility can be analysed from different angles. From the structural point of view, noncumulative employment projections leaning towards immobility presuppose remaining in the same job. In the framework of this form of prospective thinking, there is no place for the consideration of ascending employment paths, only for the partial improvement of contractual conditions and/or remuneration. Future employment thus consists of the more or less linear extension of the present position in the labour market:

A: I expect … I really expect to sign a contract, and then … then I will have more time in employment … One day I would like to work in my area of expertise. One day I would like to work in a museum or library or some educational service like a “house-museum”, but I think this is a bit utopian, because I think no-one nowadays actually works in the area in which they studied, and in the cultural sector everything is a little more complicated. (Interview 77)

This is one of the examples of low employment aspirations and expectations, which mainly concern partial improvements in working conditions: working hours, pay or the contract. With an undergraduate degree in heritage management, the respondent was working as a secretary. Although she harboured a desire to work in the area in which she had graduated, she did not believe it would be possible and had, instead, resigned herself to seeking to improve her contractual situation – which was working as a false freelancer without a proper contract.

The move towards employment immobility results in many cases in a series of restrictions associated with family responsibilities:

Q: Where do you see yourself a year from now? Do you think you will have these two jobs, do you think you’ll only have one, do you think you’ll be able to do one job in the morning and another in the afternoon?

A: My wish, this year, is to have just one job, to leave this and to have only one, because I don’t earn anything with this one.

Q: What needs to happen for you to take that step?

A: I still need to wait and see; I need to take the initiative to look for a new job and to find it … there. I am afraid to take that step because I have bills. If I was single or if I lived with my parents, I would perhaps have done it a long time ago, because at least then I would have had some support. However, my parents can’t afford to support me and my expenses … (Interview 41)

The working future is conditioned by family responsibilities. The will to change is hampered by the risks associated with change. While it makes complete sense to conceptualise risk as a phenomenon immanent in the function of postmodern societies that are largely shaped by science (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991), risk must also be understood as a consequence of thought based on the conditions of the individual’s existence and on the limitations he or she faces. In this example, parenting limitations introduce a certain degree of risk aversion into the interviewee’s employment projects.

The immobility of employment trajectories associated with parental responsibilities is also described in other interviews as a consequence of personal and family choices:

A: I admit that I am not thinking about this at this time, even when he [son] goes to school, I’m not thinking about returning to full-time work this soon. This is because I truly believe that … we began to work it out and between … with two [children] at school, if I were to work full-time I would not be able to pick them up until 6 or 7pm, and not 3.45pm. Then I would have to pay someone to pick them up … which would cost €100-€200 for the two … I would prefer to have a little less and to have some quality time with them, and to do things with them. (Interview 59)

Here the family responsibilities are an explanation for the more or less indefinite continuation of part-time work. During the interview, the respondent explained this decision was taken together with her husband. However, from the sociological point of view, this choice, this decision, reveals the shaping power of the gender variable. Within the framework of the distribution of family responsibilities, it falls to the woman to take responsibility for looking after the children, a fact that implies a disinvestment in the professional project and trajectory on the part of the respondent.

Concerning the noncumulative immobility projections, out of 18 of the young people whose labour projections fit into this category, 15 have regular contracts (permanent or temporary). A permanent contract or the retention of one is highly valued by the interviewees who have family responsibilities and refuse to risk a move on the labour market.

Finally, we come to noncumulative projections following the perspective of rupture on the professional and educational path followed. This category includes evidence of emigration projects:

Q: How do you see your work or employment situation in the near future?

A: As they are, there are no great prospects. I will perhaps think about emigrating because some of my friends have already gone and they are doing well. I have some contacts and if nothing more secure appears in the near future then I will follow this course ( … ) I think I will have to emigrate. I don’t have much faith. In order to earn something. (Interview 9)

A: I’m thinking seriously about leaving this country … I don’t think this country has anything to offer. We give far too much for it … I’m very unhappy. ( … ) It’s a risk. It could go well; it could go badly … I am thinking about it. When you are in this phase, when you think about having a house and suchlike, to invest … I think at that time I will leave here, I will think about that from the other side ( … ) Because it is very difficult. It is extremely difficult, even if I were to continue with this salary, what good is this? (Interview 69)

In the first interview, emigration appeared as a project based on the fact that the respondent was unable to find secure employment and because his monthly pay was relatively low. With a degree, he worked as a model, and while he liked what he did, he did not believe he would obtain ‘proper work’ in his area of activity in Portugal. He wanted a contract of employment but did not believe one would be forthcoming.

In the second example, emigration is also a forced employment strategy. With incomplete compulsory schooling, the respondent had no other chance than a position as a manual worker. He felt ‘unhappy’ with his employment situation and was thinking of emigrating to Australia where he knows some people (social capital). This plan could become a reality should he decide to buy a house, a possibility he believes is not viable, given the wages in Portugal. Unlike the situation among those respondents whose noncumulative projections are guided by immobility – mainly among those who cite family responsibilities to justify their position – in this case, the construction of future employment takes place under the emblem of risk. Emigration offers no guarantee of fruitful employment, and the success he hopes to achieve is still only an open possibility that ‘could go well or could go badly’; however, faced with poor employment prospects and a lack of hope in Portugal, emigration is seen as the only way to improve his employment and living conditions.

Rupture projections consist mainly of emigration strategies. These interviewees are willing to take the risk of going to another country because they think that is the only way they can actually change their situation on the labour market. Most of them are unqualified workers with temporary contracts, who believe upward social mobility will be more easily achieved through geographical mobility than through an investment in education.

Conclusion

As Carvounas and Ireland (2008: 174) noted: ‘A minimally secured present is a precondition for a sustained capacity for a temporal extension beyond the immediate present’. This notion can be applied to the results we have presented throughout this article. In fact, situations of precarious employment in general contribute to the limitation and restriction of choices in respect of future horizons, in the sense defined by Mead and Luhmann. Thus, as Luhmann notes, modern societies are partially characterised by this capacity to construct open futures, defined through options that are more or less contained within parameters. As social representations, employment prospects are constructed from subjective orientations and dispositions; however, with the emergence of new phenomena in so-called postmodern (or late modern) societies, which are characterised by the immanence of risk and uncertainty (Beck, 1992), the way in which individuals and societies view the future tends to change in the direction of greater unpredictability and of greater difficulty in constructing temporal horizons that are the result of differentiated and unequivocal choices (Luhmann, 1993).

The projection of future employment in a time of precariousness (in low-paid and low-skilled jobs) represents a universe where the expectations, investments and strategies of the individual overlap, in the face of which it is increasingly difficult to define horizons based on choices and clear and well-defined options. Nevertheless, through this study, we have seen that even in the context of precarious employment it is possible to discern different forms of projecting the future and constructing distinct temporal horizons. Thus, through a content analysis of the many testimonies collected, the respondents were divided between those who found the most decisive element for shaping their employment future in a cumulative manner in educational and training capital and those whose projections are defined through discontinuity and a series of noncumulative ways of thinking. In the former case, their employment future is seen as a point of arrival dependent on the accumulation of resources that make it viable; in the latter, it emerges as a scenario unavailable to the prospective eye, or as a reality that can be revealed independently of any type of cumulative order or continuity.

For the former, the future is presented as an option offering relatively open access to a field that is more or less viable, in which possibilities are capable of becoming reality. Some of those who place themselves in this group are better qualified. In truth, many of them continue to value education as a means of ‘opening up the future’ and giving life to these better opportunities. Awareness of the importance of education as an irreplaceable vehicle for the accumulation of resources is one of the most important aspects to emerge from the analysis of the interviews.

For the latter case, the future is a horizon that tends to be closed, where they cannot foresee a path or any alternatives through which they can change the present. In truth, a considerable proportion of these respondents formed a set of noncumulative projections in respect of the investment in certain resources (particularly education and training), retaining a distressing difficulty in delineating a minimum projection in respect of their future. The realisation of any projection is viewed as a risk, to the extent that the future will fundamentally be the result of discontinuities that escape individual control. Another alternative that emerged with some frequency was the possibility of emigration. This was regarded as an eventual possibility for both the well-qualified young people and those with little more than the minimum schooling.

Conflict of interest

None declared.

Footnotes

Funding

This research was funded by the Portuguese Institute for Social Security under the activities of the 2010 – European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion.

Notes

References

Adam

(1990) Time and Social Theory, London: Polity Press.

Alves

Cantante

Baptista

(2011) Jovens em Transições Precárias: Trabalho, Quotidiano e Futuro, Lisbon: Editora Mundos Sociais.

Atkinson

(2010) Class, Individualization and Late Modernity: In Search of the Reflexive Worker, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Auer

Cazes

(2003) Employment Stability in an Age of Flexibility, Geneva: ILO.

Baizán

Michielin

Billari

(2002) Political economy and life course patterns: The heterogeneity of occupational, family and households trajectories of young Spaniards. Demographic Research 6(8): 191–240.

Baker

(2011) Forward and backward, horizontal and vertical: Transformation of occupational credentialing in the schooled society. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 29(1): 5–29.

Bauman

(2000) Liquid Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Beck

(1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage.

Beck

(2000) The Brave New World of Work, Cambridge: Polity Press.

10.

Beck

Giddens

Lash

(1994) Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, Cambridge: Polity Press.

11.

Bourdieu

(1997) Méditations Pascaliennes, Paris: Seuil.

12.

Bradley

Devadason

(2008) Fractured transitions: Young adults’ pathways into contemporary labour markets. Sociology 42(1): 119–136.

13.

Bynner

(2005) Rethinking the youth phase of the life-course: The case of emerging adulthood. Journal of Youth Studies 8(4): 367–384.

14.

Carmo

(2006) Contributos para uma Sociologia do Espaço-Tempo, Oeiras: Celta Editora.

15.

Carvounas

Ireland

(2008) Precariousness, the secured present and the sustainability of the future: Learning from Koselleck and extrapolating from Elias. Time & Society 17(2–3): 155–178.

16.

Castells

(2000) The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford: Blackwell.

17.

Chambaz

(2001) Les jeunes adultes en Europe: Indépendance résidentielle, activité, ressources. Recherches et Prévisions 65: 53–71.

18.

Doogan

(2005) Long-term employment and the restructuring of the labour market in Europe. Time & Society 14(1): 65–87.

19.

Fevre

(2007) Employment insecurity and social theory: The power of nightmares. Work, Employment and Society 21(3): 517–535.

20.

Furlong

Cartmel

(1997) Risk and uncertainty in the youth transition. Young, Nordic Journal of Youth Research 5(1): 3–20.

21.

Freire

(2006) Mileuristas. Retrato de la Generación de los mil Euros, Barcelona: Ariel.

22.

Giddens

(1991) Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Oxford: Polity.

23.

Harvey

(1990) The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

24.

ILO (2013) Global Employment Trends for Youth 2013: A Generation at Risk, Geneva: International Labour Office.

25.

Leccardi

(2005) Facing uncertainty: Temporality and biographies in the new century. Young, Nordic Journal of Youth Research 13(2): 123–146.

26.

Luhmann

(1982) The Differentiation of Society, New York: Columbia University Press.

27.

Luhmann

(1993) Risk: A Sociological Theory, Berlin, NY: Walter de Gruyter.

28.

MacDonald

(2009) Precarious work. Risk, choice and poverty traps. In: Andy

(ed.) Handbook of Youth and Young Adulthood. New Perspectives and Agendas, London: Routledge, pp. 167–175.

29.

Mead

(1932) The Philosophy of the Present, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

30.

Pinto

(2011) À Rasca: Retrato de uma Geração, Lisboa: Editorial Planeta.

31.

Quintini

Martin

(2007) The changing nature of the school to work transition process in OECD countries. IZA Discussion Paper No. 2582, Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labour.

32.

Rosa

(2003) Social acceleration: Ethical and political consequences of a desynchronized high-speed society. Constellations 10(1): 3–33.

33.

Sennett

(1998) The Corrosion of Character, New York: W. W. Norton.

34.

Schütz

(1987) Le Chercheur et le Quotidien. Phénoménologie des Sciences Sociales, Paris: Méridiens Klincksieck.

35.

Shimizutani

Yokoyama

(2009) Has Japan’s long-term employment practice survived? Developments since the 1990s. Industrial and Labor Relation Review 62(3): 313–326.

36.

Standing

(2011) The Precariat. The new dangerous class, London: Bloomsbury Academic.

37.

Stevens AH (2005) The more things change the more they stay the same: Trends in long-term employment in the United States, 1969–2002. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 11878. DOI: 10.3386/w11878.

38.

Tabboni

(2001) The idea of social time in Norbert Elias. Time & Society 10(1): 5–27.

39.

Vosko

(2010) Managing the Margins. Gender, Citizenship and the International Regulation of Precarious Employment, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

40.

Ylijoki

(2010) Future orientations in episodic labour: Short-term academics as a case in point. Time & Society 19(3): 365–386.