Pathways of work: precarious jobs and temporary entries

Abstract

Abstract Youth pathways are significant for studying the reconfigurations that happen in the contemporary world, in its various social spheres. Youth is the social contingent most directly exposed to the dilemmas of our society, and nowadays unemployment rates among young people in the country are expressive. In addition to the barriers to entering and keeping a first job, the difficulties they face to remain in a decent and protected job are even greater. The data also show that informality is higher in this group when compared to the group of the adults. Regarding the condition of formal employment, the presence of young people in occupations with greater turnover and temporary entries is notorious. In this sense, aiming at unveiling the pathways of work built up by part of the Brazilian working youth, this study intends, by using singular paths and jointly triangulating with national databases, to analyze two forms of entry in the job market: the first job through the youth apprenticeship law and employment in the telemarketing sector. The young people pathways analyzed contributed to the flexible forms of employment being a gateway to the exercise of a paid activity. However, the great transformation that has occurred in recent years lies in the fact that both precarious jobs and new forms of underemployment – apprentices and telemarketing operators – assume less and less the form of a bridge leading to job stability. For many young people, this type of job stopped being a particular biographical event to become a way of life.