The flailing self: A study of how young women become workers

IF 5.4 2区管理学 Q1 MANAGEMENT

Human Relations Pub Date : 2025-10-10 DOI:10.1177/00187267251377415

Sharon Kishik, Justine Grønbæk Pors

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Contemporary youth are increasingly exposed to work and career norms, and despite mounting inequality, instability and precarity, the promise of self-realisation through work has retained its allure and influence. Against this backdrop, this paper draws on a 4-year (2019–2023) longitudinal interview study ( n = 93) to explore how 16 young women ‘become workers’ by managing pressures to inhabit neoliberal and postfeminist norms of individuality, progress and aspiration that shape contemporary ideals of ‘successful’ work and career. Theoretically, the paper draws on Lauren Berlant to develop an understanding of work subjectivity as performed within attachments to the promissory object of future work and career. Through empirical analysis, we offer the notion of ‘the flailing self’ as a manifestation of youth work subjectivity amidst conditions of unclarity towards neoliberal and postfeminist norms. Flailing names an ambivalent mode of managing one’s future work and career where notions of ‘success’ are held both close and at a distance. By advancing the concept of the flailing self, the paper contributes new theoretical and empirical understandings of the complex relationship between young women, work and the self in the present historical moment.

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摇摆的自我：一项关于年轻女性如何成为工人的研究

当代青年越来越多地接触到工作和职业规范，尽管不平等、不稳定和不稳定现象日益加剧，但通过工作实现自我的承诺仍具有吸引力和影响力。在此背景下，本文利用一项为期4年（2019-2023）的纵向访谈研究（n = 93），探讨16名年轻女性如何通过管理压力，适应新自由主义和后女权主义的个性、进步和抱负规范，从而“成为工人”，这些规范塑造了当代“成功”的工作和职业理想。从理论上讲，本文借鉴了劳伦·伯兰特（Lauren Berlant）对工作主体性的理解，即在对未来工作和职业的承诺对象的依恋中进行的工作主体性。通过实证分析，我们提出了“摇摆自我”的概念，作为青年工作主体性在新自由主义和后女权主义规范不明确的条件下的表现。Flailing是一种管理未来工作和职业的矛盾模式，在这种模式下，“成功”的概念既接近又远离。通过提出“摇摆自我”的概念，本文对当前历史时刻青年女性、工作和自我之间的复杂关系做出了新的理论和实证理解。

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来源期刊

Human Relations Multiple-

CiteScore

12.60

自引率

7.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Human Relations is an international peer reviewed journal, which publishes the highest quality original research to advance our understanding of social relationships at and around work through theoretical development and empirical investigation. Scope Human Relations seeks high quality research papers that extend our knowledge of social relationships at work and organizational forms, practices and processes that affect the nature, structure and conditions of work and work organizations. Human Relations welcomes manuscripts that seek to cross disciplinary boundaries in order to develop new perspectives and insights into social relationships and relationships between people and organizations. Human Relations encourages strong empirical contributions that develop and extend theory as well as more conceptual papers that integrate, critique and expand existing theory. Human Relations welcomes critical reviews and essays: - Critical reviews advance a field through new theory, new methods, a novel synthesis of extant evidence, or a combination of two or three of these elements. Reviews that identify new research questions and that make links between management and organizations and the wider social sciences are particularly welcome. Surveys or overviews of a field are unlikely to meet these criteria. - Critical essays address contemporary scholarly issues and debates within the journal''s scope. They are more controversial than conventional papers or reviews, and can be shorter. They argue a point of view, but must meet standards of academic rigour. Anyone with an idea for a critical essay is particularly encouraged to discuss it at an early stage with the Editor-in-Chief. Human Relations encourages research that relates social theory to social practice and translates knowledge about human relations into prospects for social action and policy-making that aims to improve working lives.