Abstract
David Farrugia's new book, Youth, Work and the Post-Fordist Self, presents an ambitious and tightly theorized study of how contemporary youth become part of the labor force. Farrugia suggests that previous theories of youth and work have fitted into two frameworks. Either young people have been seen to transition into work by bringing skills to the labor market that can be exchanged for wages or, they have been presented as a separate group who become exploitable by ‘adult capitalists’. The first framework entails what Lisa Adkins calls ‘the social contract’ perspective that attributes problems like youth unemployment to distortions of the labor market exchange, whether resulting from structural inequalities or the deficiencies (for example, educational) of individuals. The second framework assumes that youth accept exploitative employment situations because they are ‘duped’ by contemporary cultural forces, for instance, by being persuaded to accept internships and lower wages.
Farrugia challenges both frameworks. He proposes, following Kathi Weeks, that contemporary youth are governed by a ‘post-Fordist work ethic’ through which ‘subjectivity itself is made contingent on the realization of the value of the self at work, and is therefore aligned with the value of the self to the labor force’ (p.12). Work has become fundamental to the formation of young people so that they aspire to self-realization through work and employment, understanding themselves through their (potential) value as workers.
Many academics will note the parallels with long-standing claims about workers in the global cultural and creative sector. Gill and Pratt (2008), McRobbie (2016) and Scharff (2016), among others, have argued that the promise of self-realization through creative work (or ‘self-actualization’, in Maslow’s 1962 account of creativity) has persuaded young people, in particular, to accept exploitative employment and to discipline and shape themselves to become the tireless, responsible, uncomplaining, individualized subjects who are the ideal workers of neoliberalism. Farrugia's arguments can extend on these claims (he cites McRobbie, 2016), albeit mainly framed within a somewhat different tradition of theorizing. He is concerned with how the post-Fordist work ethic produces classed subjectivities, and his arguments rest on his empirical work, an interview study with 74 young people from two Australian cities.
Farrugia proposes, based on his analysis of his data, that the post-Fordist work ethic functions to perpetuate class inequalities. He identifies three different subjectivities in his participant sample. The first is a middle-class subject of passion for whom no separation between the working self and the self outside work exists. For this subject, value as a worker derives from their authenticity and the human capacities that theorists have linked to immaterial labor (‘relationality, empathy, embodiment and performativity’, p.28). Second, among those of working-class backgrounds, Farrugia identifies an achieving subject whose more conventional aspiration and effort aims to acquire the work value attached to qualifications and experience. The third kind of subject is exemplified by unemployed young people. Giving up the aspiration to self-realization, they instead aspire to some imitation of a good worker. They lack the experience of authenticity available to the subjects of passion or the experience of achievement available to the second group, even though they may seek qualifications. For this third group, the failure to achieve value as a worker is a failure of the self.
My account is necessarily simplified. Farrugia's arguments are complex and closely theorized and, in addition to the key sources of Adkins and Weeks, he variously draws on Beck, Bourdieu, Skeggs, Foucault and Hardt and Negri, among many others. Most readers will find the discussions of the research study more accessible. The methodological approach utilizes Weber's concept of an ‘ideal type’, and it is not always clear how and why the three types are distinct. Additionally, qualitative researchers may have some concerns about over-generalization and circularity. Farrugia apparently bases his initial categorizations of middle class and working class on the two cities in which the participants were recruited, as if each site provided an entirely discrete and distinctively classed sample, whereas the third group, inconsistently, are defined by the experience of unemployment or bad employment rather than class. Workers in a discursive tradition, like myself, would expect and look for a less tidy correlation of category and ethic. However, a methodological appendix shows, more plausibly, how an interview with one participant exhibits some movement between the ethics of the passionate and achieving subject, so the ‘types’ are not entirely separate after all, although this is not always clear in the discussion.
Youth, Work and the Post-Fordist Self will be of interest to academics with a range of interests. Farrugia's project takes forward the work of Adkins and also Weeks. Weeks has written about the different work ethics operating in specific sociohistoric contexts. Farrugia's particular contribution draws attention to the perspectives of young workers themselves. Despite his initial dismissal of the two earlier frameworks, he can be seen to advance their respective foci on the experience of young people as workers, and how they are impacted by complex contemporary cultures and discourses around work.
