Youth temporalities and uncertainty: Understanding variations in young Argentinians’ professional careers

Abstract

Social class and the labor market, traditional emphases of sociological analysis, are insufficient to explain variations in modes of professional insertion among young people. Arguing against the dominant understanding of young adults as project-less prisoners of presentism and an uncertain labor market in Argentina, this article reveals the existence of multiple forms of youth temporalities underlying the ways in which young adults are able (or not) to project themselves into the future and enter the working world. Drawing from longitudinal qualitative data, I have identified four types of youth temporalities: planners, executers, dormants and opportunists. This typology brings variation to the way subjects experience time and how this experience helps to examine career choices, thereby opening a new analytical path that connects with broader analyses of dominant temporal frames of professional insertion.

Moratorium or waithood? Forms of time-taking and the changing shape of youth

“…It also leads us to discuss what forms of resistance are enacted by youth today and, specifically, whether waithood (i.e. decelerating) can be an act of resistance, or if ‘waiters’ are like ‘dormants,’ who ‘consider themselves incapable of making decisions in a world that is overwhelming and are paralysed by the possibilities and limits beyond their control’ (Longo, 2015: 16). If accelerated paces of life can be considered lifestyles, how do forms of deceleration qualify?…”

“…‘liv[ing] in a dormant time where temporalities are ‘suspended’ in the present in the sense that they do not know how to navigate or prolong their situation beyond it.' (Longo, 2015:17)…”

“…The first develops within the dimension of everyday life, while the second unfolds on a biographical level. The nexus between the two levels has been regarded as problematic (Woodman and Leccardi, 2015) but, largely, not on the basis of empirical investigations (see Longo, 2015 for an exception); the exploration of this nexus forms the core of this article, where I will treat the term moratorium analytically rather than for what it evokes, as in Cristofori (1990), within the intention of reflecting on the nuances of segregation, resistance and inequality implied in forms of time taking.…”

The pace of “the good life”: Connecting past, present, and future in the context of a housing affordability crisis

“…Many authors (Anderson et al, 2005; Carmo et al, 2014; Longo, 2015; Brannen and Nilsen, 2002) show that the current situation is more nuanced and colorful. Among young adults, there are still a considerable amount of people who are very well able to orient themselves in the de-standardized context of uncertainty and who consequently perceive their lives as a continuity, as a stable, and structured life course with a firm vision of the future that can be planned and controlled.…”

“…For the most part, the previous research on the young adults and time followed two lines of investigation: (1) a description of abstract relations toward time (Cook 2015; Longo 2015) and (2) a temporal analysis of particular areas of modern life, predominantly labor in the context of precarity (Carmo et al, 2014). We aim to contribute to this line of investigation by also focusing on one particular area of modern life—housing (and its interconnectedness to other spheres of life—work, family, and leisure).…”