Tag Archives: Youth-Employment

Local work futures in Southampton and Hampshire

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Presentation Pauline Leonard

Presentation Pauline Leonard

by Rebekah Luff, Suzanne Reimer, Silke Roth and Charlie Walker

A key dimension of projects and events organised by the Work Futures Research Centre at the University of Southampton has been an ongoing engagement with different user groups in relation to employment change, seeking to shape policy and research agendas and to disseminate research findings. 2015, for example, saw the organisation of a policy dialogue event, Gender equality at work, held in June at Portcullis House, Westminster. The symposium was a follow up to a March 2013 panel discussion (also held at the House of Commons) interrogating the ways in which policy interventions might operate to make a difference to gender inequalities in waged labour.

Another major event hosted by the Work Futures Research Group in 2015 sought to turn a more locally-focused lens onto patterns of employment change. A key aim was to bring together academics and practitioners at an explicitly interdisciplinary workshop entitled Work, gender and generation. Held at the University of Southampton on 8th May 2015, four panels explored the local context of transformations in work and employment. An opening session investigated employment and training opportunities for young men and women across the local labour market, whilst a second panel reflected upon the specific employment contexts of the creative industries.  A third panel considered the experiences and labour market status of social care staff, with a particular focus on youth training in and for the sector. The final session of the day examined aspects of a specific labour market transition from military to civilian work.

Participants included academics working on youth training and skills development; local college educators who run apprenticeship programmes; creative industry academics and researchers based in both universities and local authorities; academic analysts of the social care sector; and career advisors working for military charities.

Cross-cutting themes included ways in which divisions of labour at times may appear to shift whilst at other times they remain robust. For example, although certain factors have led to the increased involvement of strongly qualified male migrant workers in social care, the current workforce as a whole is most likely to be young and female, with relatively lower qualification and education levels. A further point of connection across the panels was an interest in the decision-making processes of individuals as they move into and through different parts of the labour market.

From a policy perspective, panellists and audience participants underscored the importance of understanding job transitions in a holistic fashion. That is, if interventions to support education and training do not connect with labour market policies, young people will be left with ‘training’ or ‘education’ but without jobs; or alternatively they may achieve entry into low paid work but will be left without the possibility of career development. Examples of mentoring and support programmes, both formal and informal, were cited as important within the creative industries and also were emphasised by those working for military charities.

As a result of the workshop, Rebekah Luff and Charlie Walker are pursuing their cognate interests in employment in the social care sector and the development of apprenticeships with a research bid to the charity Abbeyfield, which, if successful, will allow them to examine the impact of apprenticeships on social care provision and the prospects of social care employees within the Southampton area.

The event was organized by Rebekah Luff, Suzanne Reimer, Silke Roth and Charlie Walker.

Femininity, interactive service work and social mobility: reflections from Russia

Dr Charlie Walker

Dr Charlie Walker

In their recent book Shopgirls, Cox and Hobley illustrate that the connection between retail and qualities traditionally associated with femininity developed in conjunction with women’s gradual entrance into the service sector labour market from the late 19th Century. Alongside their association with femininity, customer-facing forms of service sector employment have also had a historical association with glamour, and in turn, with possibilities of social mobility. This is despite the fact that, as Cox and Hobley document, workers in the retail sector experienced dire working and living conditions well into the 20th Century.

In the early 21st Century, while conditions have improved, this contradiction continues. As Valery Walkerdine has argued, in a context in which working-class people are increasingly denigrated as flawed workers and flawed consumers, service sector employment, alongside the expansion of previously inaccessible educational opportunities, ‘appear to offer possibilities and lifestyles which are tied up with what is traditionally regarded as middle-class status’ (2003: 240). However, in reality, low pay and non-standard contracts continue to be the norm for many in service sector employment. Thus, what has been seen as the cultural feminisation of the economy, with a growing number of jobs that require workers to be customer-focused, communicative, caring, and flexible – qualities traditionally associated, rightly or wrongly, with femininity – should not be assumed to have brought greater gender equality. Indeed, as Lisa Adkins has argued, since women appear to ‘embody’ rather than ‘perform’ femininity, they are less likely to be rewarded for it, and instead, may more easily be positioned as ‘gendered workers’.

The demand for and utilisation of the feminine in service sector employment are central not only to western economies, but also, to emerging economies such as those of Eastern Europe and the BRIC countries. In China, for example, Eileen Otis’s work explores the ways in which women and their bodies have been used as a vehicle for the mobilisation of global corporate capital as the public face of high-class hotels for international businessmen. My own research has explored a similar context in Russia, where images of women also indicate a shift towards a more ‘emphasized’ version of femininity in line with the building of post-Soviet capitalism. My interest, however, has predominantly been in questions of social inequality and social mobility – what sorts of prospects do new forms of interactive service work hold out for working-class young women in contemporary Russia?

I recently published the results of a study conducted in the rapidly developing metropolis of St. Petersburg, which involved interviews with thirty-four young women who were either training for or already working in various forms of interactive service work such as hospitality, tourism and the beauty industry. It was immediately apparent that the young women in the study were very attracted to the work roles they had chosen, and that they distinguished these roles strongly from older forms of employment in, for example, manufacturing. The attraction of service sector roles was rooted in part in their substantive content, including the possibilities it offered the young women to engage in communication-based work, and in what they regarded as creative tasks, as opposed to the ‘monotony’ of employment in the industrial sector, where many of their parents had worked. In addition, employment in hospitality and tourism, and the newer parts of the beauty industry, often held out forms of symbolic capital through their connection with the West, either in the form of western-standard hotels or possibilities for future travel, or simply western-sounding job titles such as menedzher and vizazhist. Finally, the attraction of service work stemmed from its aesthetic dimension, namely, the requirement to perform an idealised version of middle-class femininity, which held out significant appeal for working-class young women.

Newspaper advertisements for a sales manager and various forms of manual labour draw on different (albeit tongue-in-cheek in the latter case) constructions of femininity

Newspaper advertisements for a sales manager and various forms of manual labour draw on different (albeit tongue-in-cheek in the latter case) constructions of femininity

However, taken together, these factors only made up a symbolic form of social mobility. In material terms, none of the young women in the study expected to earn more than they would have done had they chosen to work in industry, and all expected to earn significantly less than their boyfriends and future husbands. This was a realistic reflection of a gender pay gap that, according to Rosstat, stood at 37% in 2008.

Thus, the contradiction between notions of social mobility and the reality of poor prospects in feminised forms of service work appears especially stark in some of the newer contexts of global capitalism. In all of its contexts, though, it is important to unpack the significance of employment shifts that appear to favour a particular gendered worker.

The expansion of service sector employment has been at the heart of the apparent cultural feminisation of the economy, which has often underpinned discourses proclaiming that ‘the future is female’, and that men, or at least working-class men, are becoming increasingly ‘redundant’, as deindustrialising economies offer fewer jobs requiring skills associated with masculinity.
However, as the experience of the young women in the St. Petersburg study indicates, it is crucial not to mistake shifts in the gendered performances demanded by employers with shifts in gender equality.

Charlie Walker’s article ‘“I Don’t Really Like Tedious, Monotonous Work”: Working-class Young Women, Service Sector Employment and Social Mobility in Contemporary Russia’ appears in the journal Sociology

Sex Work Futures?

Sex work futures?

It’s the start of the new term for Universities and Colleges throughout the world. Choices and compromises have led new students to embark on courses that are likely to profoundly influence their future careers – because of the knowledge and skills they acquire, because of the networks of contacts they build and because of the previously unthought-of of possibilities that they are awakened to.  Of course, universities can also influence future career choices in other ways and student clubs and societies can also play a role in developing people’s future career choices and opportunities.

So far this sounds like a dull homage to the benefits of a university education and the role of extracurricular activities in preparing for the future. Not really the stuff of a blog on work futures and, let’s be frank, potentially disappointing given the title of the blog. Not so.

Here is the thing. Last week, the annual University of Southampton Fresher’s week ‘RAG’ showcased the work of many student societies, including the University Pole Dancing Club. Now I must confess that encountering a pole dancing demonstration outside a University Students Union was, for me, rather unexpected. I was equally surprised that the display was not the subject of any protest by members of the student body, but perhaps my view on these things has been skewed by being a the University of Sussex in the 1980’s where (I am fairly certain) such things would not have been  tolerated.

I know that pole dancing is now being pushed as ‘exercise’, but let’s be very clear about this. It is a form of exercise that is based on a form of sex work. This got me thinking. Am I simply a dinosaur stuck in the past? Perhaps sex work is just one more career opportunity and if some members of the University Pole Dancing club find their way into the sex industry because their horizons are broadened while at university, so be it. Certainly evidence from recent surveys suggests that sex work does have a role, potential of actual as a means of supplementing students’ income while at University in the UK. The ‘mainstreaming’ of sex work seems widespread in other developed economies.

Is sex work just another job?

Is sex work just another job?

So can we regard sex work as ‘just another job’? Is it simply a choice that some (mostly women, although by no means exclusively) choose to make, as free and legitimate as any other? Perhaps for some it is, I really don’t know. But what I do know is that sex work operates in a context that is associated with human trafficking and forms of slavery. Sex work operates in a context that relies on the objectification of other human beings in a way that is often predicated on treating them as less than fully human.

You might protest not in this country (are you sure?), not our University Club (of course not!), not pole dancing (…maybe?). Perhaps, but in my view, until the sex industry operates in a world where women are universally given equal opportunities the association between sex work and exploitation is too close for me to ever feel comfortable with pole dancing being treated as just another recreational activity or a fully informed career choice. Of course, exploitation is not confined to the sex industry and when we  consider the future of work we should consider the many forms of exploitation that remain hidden to a greater or lesser extent – cheap labour in sweat shops comes to mind. Perhaps next year the Fresher’s fair could include a sponsored sweatshop in which students have to produce garments at high speed in order to get enough money for tomorrow’s food? Or would that be seen as distasteful? It certainly would not be seen as opening up a career opportunity

Some might find it reassuring, others depressing (perhaps it is both) that the club raised a grand total of £2.10 for charity at the Fresher’s fair – the lowest of any of the clubs or societies listed on the University web site.

 

‘The Internship’ : Precarious Work Futures #2

 

Copyright Elite Daily- The Internship 2013 Movie PosterThe smiling faces of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson currently decorating the sides of many local buses are advertising a new film called ‘The Internship’. Their cheerful demeanor informs us that the film is a comedy-but the rising number of internships appearing in the UK and European youth labour markets is far from a laughing matter.

The fact is that internships – short periods of often unpaid work- are rapidly becoming a structural feature of the transition into work for young people. How much this development has been driven by the recessionary economic climate is unclear, but internships are now being offered by an ever increasing number and range of employers. And as the number of paid opportunities for young people shrinks, these forms of employment are highly sought after, being seen as an important route onto the career ladder. An auction held recently at Westminster School of elite internships revealed how anxious parents are even prepared to pay high sums of money in order to secure this sort of occupational advantage for their children.

Copyright Ross Perlin Intern Nation PBYet the evidence also suggests that internships are highly diverse in terms of the experiences and benefits they offer to young people. Recruitment practices vary, as do employment conditions, benefits and rewards, occupational progressions and payment expectations. As such, Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation, describes internship as ‘a many-headed monster’.  Whilst some organisations have been documented as providing highly-desirable and structured schemes with clear training  and career benefits for young people, at least a fifth of internships are unpaid, with smaller organisations the least likely to provide wages.

 

In addition, it appears that access to internships is unequal, strongly affected by education, social class, ethnicity, personal/family wealth. The most sought-after internships are often accessed through privileged contacts and a recent Cabinet Office (2009) report likened internship recruitment to an ‘informal economy’, where privileged access routes and non/low payment, render take-up unsustainable for young people without the necessary social networks and/or financial support.  In a development of Paul Willis’s findings on how working class kids end up with working class jobs, internships may have become a key mechanism for middle class kids to get middle class jobs, potentially also reproducing divisions of ethnicity, gender and place.

 

Copytight: Guardian.co.uk- intern serves coffeeIt would thus appear that there is somewhat of a paradox here: on the one hand internships can make a valuable contribution to (some) young men and women, the organisations they spend time in as well as the national economy which is of course benefiting hugely from all their hard work. On the other hand, internships can be highly discriminating, offering much needed work experience to the privileged few, or may be exploitative for the young people within them, with an absence of support and protection.

 

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that our knowledge of internships is scanty and unsystematic. With youth employment high on the policy agenda, now is the time for the issue to be investigated and questioned thoroughly.

 

See also: Precarious work futures? #1

 
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