Constructing Talent and Flexibility in Focus Group Discussions on Inequality and Unemployment in Greece

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which participants construct talent and flexibility in accounts of income inequality and (un)employment in Greece. Eight (8) focus groups with forty-one (41) Greek citizens, aged 18–65 years were conducted. Analysis used the principles of Critical Discursive Social Psychology (CDSP). Participants were asked to evaluate the compensation that should be given to employees from different professional categories and to discuss changes in the Greek (un)employment policy. Findings indicated that in the first conversational context, talent (as one's inherent characteristic or as a byproduct of personal effort) was constructed as important for professional success. Besides, putting the right (talented) person in the right job was constituted as necessary for achieving maximum productivity. On the other hand, in the second conversational context, when participants discussed the new law on unemployment, they underscored the obligation of the unemployed to conform with the labour market's needs, regardless of their qualifications or talents. The ideal unemployed individual was represented as highly active and adaptable, while productivity was linked to flexibility. The discussion relates these potentially contradictory argumentative lines mobilised by participants to dilemmatic aspects of neoliberal ideology and its reproduction.