«Long-term youth»: labour biographies of young Spaniards in the era of informational flexibility

Abstract

The present article studies labor conditions of young Spanish people at the beginning of a new century which presents itself to them charged with the unknown.Young Spanish people share several common attributes with other contemporaries in current informational cultures: labor flexibility, discontinuous trajectories and accumulation of irregular situations. All these circumstances acquire specific nuances in Spanish every day life where emancipation from the family is very drawn out, the prolongation of studies reaches reaches high levels and unemployment occupies an outstanding position. The consolidation of these tendencies over the past twenty years is giving birth to new problems. On one hand over-qualification or overeducation of undergraduates with respect to the employment that they are offered and the labor precariousness of graduates who have to bear serious incertitude in the consolidation of their careers. On the other hand the accumulation of inferior professions on the least qualified juvenile fringes and the profound transformations among them of labor socialisation. These questions are dealt with providing the results of the most recent investigations and research on the subjects mentioned.