“This Is Not a Life They Understand, They Think My Life Is Very Unstable”: Young Adults About Their Own and Their Parents’ Work Stability

Abstract

In 1989, Poland found itself on the way toward systematic changes involving the implementation of post-Fordist, neoliberal capitalism, which acted mainly upon the world of work, making “flexibility” the key concept which describes changes in working practices, especially so for the younger generation of Poles. This article aims to draw attention to the opposite end of the spectrum – the oft-ignored, yet equally important category of “stability” through answering the question: “In what way (and why) do young adults perceive stability in the labour market today?” and “What similarities and what differences do young people perceive in how the notion of work stability is understood by themselves and their parents?”. Analysis of individual in-depth interviews shows that, depending on the experiences that the interviewees had with work, young adults are seeking to attain stability – defining or redefining its meaning, or else they reject stability through questioning or negating its existence. The dichotomous approach to work stability and the various ways in which it was presented is where young adults differ from their parents, whose perceptions of stability seem, based on conversations with their grown-up children, to be decidedly more one-dimensional and homogeneous than those of their offspring.