Although lifetime employment was once commonplace, the situation has changed dramatically over the last century. The group of precarious workers has increased, and with it, the size of the precariat. Although there is a body of research on how precarious workers perceive the effect of their precarity on their social, psychological, and economic well-being, there is no research on the needs of precarious workers. In this article, we report the findings of an exploratory study about precarious worker’s needs. The findings show that the precariat has a diversity of needs, ranging from the need for a higher income to the need for a change in the discourse on self-reliance. Most of the needs are targeted toward the government and are not only related to labor. This is, however, contradictory to the ideology of downsizing the welfare state, in which governments focus on creating more temporary or steppingstone jobs. The needs show that the measures orientated toward the labor market are insufficient because they meet only a marginal part of the needs of the precariat.
This article provides a narrative response to a precariousness labour situation. The question it attempts to answer is: how does one cope with the precariousness and injustices of contemporary employment without becoming pessimistic or hopeless? The piece, based on the author’s personal experience, argues that we can tell and write our career narrative and with that influence our response. "This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Reinekke Lengelle, Narrative Self-rescue: A Poetic Response to a Precarious Labour Crisis, New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 28 (1), 46-49, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/nha3.20130. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reinekke-lengelle-phd-767a4322/
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Due to the challenges produced by the individualisation of society and the flexibilisation of employment relationships, universities are increasingly investing in career guidance. Managers, however, have little or no vision regarding guidance and counselling. In this article we make a plea for an approach in which students are enabled to develop a career identity (i.e. a story about the meaning of their lives) as a basis for self-directedness. Such stories emerge during a dialogue about felt experiences. Evidence is given that such dialogues are to a large degree absent in educational contexts. Universities are to a large extent ‘disembodied’ places where almost no room exists for emotions and felt experiences. Therefore, a work/learning environment is needed within universities that enables ‘passionate self-directedness’. A short outline for creating such an environment is given. https://doi.org/10.20853/30-3-636
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