Between Planning and Improvisation: Precarioused Educational and Labor Paths of Youth in Cantabria, Spain

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze some of the processes through which people acquire labor dispositions working for the neoliberal project promotion in a natural and legitimate way. The authors consider that school-to-work transitions are a preferred framework in order to study such processes. The research takes place in a village of Cantabria (Spain) from 2013 to 2015. We develop the investigation through an anthropological methodology. The authors conclude by discussing how the young people impose upon themselves precarious and flexible labor mechanics. We have found that family and close community establish a framework in which young people learn how to face up to their precarious labor experiences without conflict both in a planned way and in an improvised way. Finally, the labor marketplace obtains what it needs: an adult who makes his own free decisions as a precarioused worker and a low-level consumer.