Minna Nikunen

Young generation: work, family and future in the risk society

My study inspects young people, their experiences and expectations on work and family and how these experiences and expectations are gendered.  What discourses are influential when young people think about their present situation and future possibilities? What are the rights and responsibilities they attach to themselves and their (future) employers, co-workers and intimate relations? I am especially interested in how and to what extent neoliberal discourses have influenced young people. How they have internalized or resisted the ideology implemented for example through education politics and media. Are there differences between them, for instance gender, class, ethnicity and locality (especially division between rural and urban areas), that divide them? The focus is on the generation which has gone to school after the depression in the 90’s. I will gather the material to my research by interviewing young people and using their writings on the topic.

It has been stated that in the ‘risk society’ - which is the context of the neoliberal ideology and politics - the responsibilities and rights of people, especially in connection to work, are different than they used to be.  While individuals have become freer from traditional social constrains, they have acquired more responsibilities relating their future prospects. Individualization has affected social relations and ways to make the sense of them (but not to the same extent in every context).  Competition, commercialism, consumerism is culturally encouraged. Although at the same time the counter discourses of individualism and neoliberalism are (still) strong in Finland: equality in education and gender equality in work life are considered important. However, there are ways to shift the meaning of equality: the same freedom to everybody to choose what they want: go to good or bad schools, be on a mommy (or home husband) track or a career track. Also, local values can direct young people to choose differently, for instance, not according to what is economically best for them.  If the conscious policy has been to create innovative and competitive workers, there may also be consequences that are not indented.