Sharing the Understanding of the Future : Generational Perspectives on Work in the City of Milan

The aim of this paper is to present the opportunities and constraints in implementing forms of sharing experiences, knowledge and reflexivity among young people in a context of work precariousness. The data presented come from a qualitative research, realized from 2015 to 2018, consisting in 85 in-depth interviews with young people (aged 18-31) living in Milan. In this paper, we will focus only on 50 of the in-depth interviews with young people with high cultural capital (with a degree or attending a university course). The analysis focuses on the way in which young people face the neoliberal injunction of self-realization through work and how sharing practices enter or not within the horizon of the possibility of building an autonomous self. We analyse the generational specificities of these sharing experiences, and we suggest that representations and experiences of the job market may be a good basis for understanding the discontinuities that characterize the current young generation, especially concerning the possibility to construct sharing practices. More specifically, we focus: a) on the consequences of economic crisis among young people in Milan, in terms of work expectations and experiences; b) on interviewees’ experiences of sharing practices and discourses about their personal and collective situation in front of social uncertainty and complexity, with a specific reference to the job market. The research carried out in Milan shows that while individualization processes have become ‘structural’ features of young people’s experience, the way in which individualization is intertwined with subjectivity and individualism is more complex. We can broadly recognise two different attitudes. The first one consists in developing a ‘competitive’ entrepreneurial self, that is, investing in the constant empowerment of the self through the capacity to seize the moments, to take advantage from the favourable circumstances and to avoid putting oneself in critical situations. The second attitude consists in developing a ‘cooperative’ entrepreneurial self. In this case, the need to invest in oneself to become an autonomous subject, continuously improving one’s own abilities, is accompanied by the refusal of an individual solution. Cooperative and collaborative space of sharing are at the base of new forms of collective action as a web of individualized connections of emotions, values, commitments and everyday practices, where individuals can make a difference while being recognized in their uniqueness.