This pathbreaking book provides a way out of the conceptual and policy cul-de-sac on precarious work for young people, that has dominated research and policy formation. Driven by the question 'how did precarious work come to be the "new normal" for young people?', the authors trace changing working conditions in the UK, Denmark and Germany from the mid-1970s. This long view exposes the suffering inflicted on young people by successive government policies and sets a new research and policy framework within which young peoples lives can be built.
Johanna Wyn, Director of the Youth Research Centre, Australia
Some of these authors have been holding the flame for youth studies for the last thirty years. Here, in a new must-read book analysing changes over that time, they show how vulnerable youth should no longer be regarded as a generation lost to the labour market. Instead, they are now a liminal generation in the labour market, caught betwixt and between by precarious employment.
Chris Warhurst, Professor and Director of the Warwick Institute for Employment Research, Warwick University, UK
An ambitious contribution that will shape how we understand the worlds of work of young people. From YOPs and YTSs in the 1980s to zero-hours contracts in the contemporary post-great recession UK marked by youth unemployment, underemployment and economic instability, Furlong et al. unpack the alternatives to long-term full-time employment that have been available to young people. Their empirically-grounded analysis of change, and continuities, in the labour market offers a critical engagement with the influential notion of precariat. They develop instead a new model, with three zones of (in)security, to provide a more nuanced theoretical approach to the diverse working lives of young people.
Tracey Warren, Professor of Sociology, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, UK
