Pursuing Quality of Life by Leonard Nevarez

Author:Leonard Nevarez [Nevarez, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138380912
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

[. . .] Freedom and security are not necessarily trade-offs. Not only is it more interesting to maintain a portfolio of clients and projects than it is to answer to a single boss, it may be safer. The more clients you can assemble, the more projects you can land, the more nodes you can add to your personal network, the more secure you will be. Freedom, once a detour from security, is now a path toward security.

(p. 94; emphasis in original)

As with other ‘freedoms’ in the new world of work, the question to be asked is, whose QOL? Pink presumes a knowledge-based, innovative economy where symbolic analysts’ skills and social contacts are dulled and diminished by serial, routine exercise under a single employer; in this world, multiple, episodic employment along a career trajectory of “horizontal hypermobility” enhances not just workers’ own QOL but the bottom lines of firms and sectors as well (Florida 2002:104; Bahrami and Evans 2000). However, holding more than one job promises a far less innovative, far more exhausting work experience for those tied to physical workplaces outside the home. Academia is a well-studied case in point. Representing the largest growth sector of college personnel, adjunct faculty with PhDs in hand or almost completed must often eke out a full-time living by teaching a class or two here and there at more than one institution (Jacobs 2003). Because their workload imposes considerable travel and preparation time, such faculty are more likely to seek new employment and hold more jobs over the course, all of which detracts from time needed for research and family (Conley 2005:37). Further, these risks are disproportionately concentrated among particular groups. Because they constitute the majority of part-time faculty, women especially face the risk of falling behind men in the academic advancement track (summarized in Perna 2005; see also Aronowitz 2001).

Needless to say, the focus on knowledge workers understates the economic risks faced by low-wage, low-skill workers in personal service sectors, the group most likely to hold two jobs (see Castells 1996:208; Reich 1992:176). Among other things, parents in this category are often rendered effectively absent and leave their children at risk from unsupervised activities (Presser 2004; Edin and Lein 1997:133). Yet perhaps remarkably, some neoliberal advocates argue that holding the two or more jobs needed to put together a livable family income promotes low-skilled workers’ personal and family QOL goals, at least relative to the dysfunctional effects of chronic underemployment. In this argument, parents and siblings who are employed and bring home earnings from any form of legitimate work help low-income households get ahead while role-modeling ‘middle-class’ values to young people who are vulnerable to temptations of welfare support or the underground street economy (see also Wilson 1997).

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