Reclaiming Work and Education

If the theoretical standpoint that encapsulates these two theories can be supported by evidence of a generally pessimistic viewpoint amongst young people regarding the benefits of formalised work then any actions to resolve this must seek to in some way reclaim the autonomous space of work and education, even if it is only partial, a viewpoint supported by Hall (2018). It is however particularly difficult to do this when the prevailing economic trend is towards fiscal austerity and even more precarious work patterns, a trend characterised by permanent jobs becoming difficult to acquire but it also manifests as a sense of forever being in transition. ‘We are now faced with a situation throughout the world in which there is, on the one hand, a privileged stratum of permanent workers attached to the enterprises in which they work, and on the other, a growing mass of casual labourers, temporary workers, the unemployed, and ‘odd jobbers’ (Gorz, 1989:65). Sennett (1999) navigates this particular problem of work by relating its current form to the absence of something lost, a cultural deficit. The isolation that stems from that loss

subsequently leads to detachment which we see amongst those who do not work, and those who work in supposedly menial or unfulfilling jobs. This deficit is often characterised by isolation in the public sphere

79 also (Sennett, 1976) which has grown out of the post war economic paradigm and constructed upon ‘a universal trend towards bureaucratisation and intricate dependence on productive machinery’ (Caplow, 1954:19). All of the young people in Stage 1 of this research who had experienced employment fell under this latter definition, which could be described as casualised labour, a form of work that has been

characterised by Watson (2019:2) as the key process leading to a ‘decline in full-time job openings for teenagers and young adults which has eliminated career opportunities for a considerable minority.’

The condition of the poor and underemployed in contemporary society is well known and regularly depicted in fictional media (Blackman & Rogers, 2017), yet it remains the case that the non-fictional articulations by which the most disadvantaged of our number are understood is the product of a select group of articulate outsiders (Wakeling, 2016). The voices of the actual working class are relatively absent. The relative literatures which cover the question of what work is in the contemporary age generally fall on two definitions. Work as an organisational structure and work as an adopted identity. Many such accounts relate to both of these but it is in the positive and negative social aspects of each that the true picture of work is revealed. If work can incorporate both of these definitions then first we must understand how those for whom work is fundamental as both identity and subsistence (the working class) view this, and whether it can possess any new character we are ignoring.

Engels depiction of the industrial working class of 19th _{century Manchester was taken up by Marx and} spread across the world as a materialist analysis of the situation as it was at that time, and to some extent ever shall be (Engels, 2009). Yet even within a decade of their primary publications these depictions were altogether archaic and rapidly transforming, and by the 1960s had been edited and revised by Thompson (2013). The contemporary age has had many other subsequent revisions (Lukács, 1975; Poulantzas, 1978, 2014; Frey, 2019) yet all rest on the common assumption that there is a distinct power imbalance in the way the working class relate to work, and those who benefit from their work. Yet there is a problem with these interpretations, one in which the technological age has moved on, creating a new form of inequality that is not easily measured by the same rigid class analyses (Bonoli, 2006). It is the case that in as much as the champions of neoliberalism have imagined the life giving properties of wealth creation they attribute to capitalism to be true, so too have its detractors comfortably imagined the truth of poverty to have

remained culturally if not materially constant (Barley et al, 2017).

In many ways the situation has got worse for this group of people, particularly in regards to how much time they must spend looking for work, interviewing for work, and ultimately finding out they have failed in that endeavour. Activities of this sort are part of a process of unbuilding and reduction down to a singular activity in pursuit of prosperity or abbau, as Lewis Mumford (1938) referred to it, is a characteristic of the contemporary labour market that those who are comfortably placed within it ignore. The unbuilding

80 process was astutely characterised in Ken Loach’s (2016) film I, Daniel Blake which followed the travails of a working class man who has been denied employment and support allowance and must go out to find work despite his doctor finding him unfit for work. The experiences he encounters are representative of the knock on effects of the Big Society that prevails in what should be a flourishing economy that works for all (Levitas, 2012). The concept of an economy that works for all implicitly accepts a failure of past systems and governance to provide and care for a seemingly unnamed group. It is convenient for such narratives to assume those out of work, regardless of the period for which they have been workless, are in some way feckless rather than subjects of forces beyond their control (Garthwaite, 2011). This phenomena is best expressed on a global scale by the failure of numerous global governments to prosecute anyone who was partially responsible for the 2007/8 financial crisis, preferring instead to individualise the responsibility onto the shoulders or working people (Mirowski, 2013). Notions of this kind align with the belief that the failure of capital is a natural event one must simply suffer, not the product of incompetence or wickedness.

Young workers in general will not only be subject to the pressures of the economic downturn themselves directly, they may also experience the weight of a close loved one or guardian suffering a debilitating illness or disease being forced to work or have difficulty getting care due to the harsh austerity regime. Higher rates of caring by young people can be found in areas of heightened deprivation and amongst groups on lower incomes in Scotland (Scottish Government, 2017b). The most recent Census data also shows that 4% of young people in the most deprived areas of Scotland provide unpaid care and this gradually drops to just 2% in the least deprived (ONS, 2011). It is clear to see that in this context what is defined as work and that which is seen as leisure or voluntary work are entirely dependent on cultural, spatial and temporal

conditions (Grint, 2005:7).