The subjective experience of employment insecurity may be more contradictory than discourses of 'fragmentation' and 'flexploitation' suggest. For young people seeking careers in creative occupations, the expectation of insecure employment conditions has become normalised. This may be the combined effect of intergenerational changes in the youth labour market generally, and the nature of employment in creative industries at all career stages. The article draws from 80 life history interviews conducted in Western Sydney, Australia, a region with high concentrations of unemployment and low socio-economic status. Their perspectives problematise the common assumption that young creative workers seek to resist insecure patterns of work or long for the stable jobs of the past. Partly, they have accepted the injunction for 'vocational restlessness' in their industries. Both in their 'day jobs' and in their attempts to get into their chosen part of the creative industry, they feel that not staying in one position too long can be both liberating and adaptive. Union campaigns highlighting the perils of insecurity are unlikely to resonate with them. JEL Code: J63
The growth of the new economy and creative work has posed a range of challenges for young workers in the West. Creativity has come to signify something more than simply performing symbolic and knowledge work. To be creative is now also to exhibit an entrepreneurial savviness and a readiness to endure the vagaries of precarious work and the scrutiny of creative gatekeepers. In this paper, based on research in Australia amongst creative aspirants, we suggest that young men from working‐class backgrounds, who are steeped in the traditions of communities of practice, are less able than young women to endure the rigours of the creative career. They are disinclined to ‘sell themselves’ and their skills, in churning creative labour markets, preferring the stable and cooperative forms of the work group to the individualistic and competitive structures of the new economy.
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