The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary

The summary of the selected article appears at the bottom of the page. In order to get back to the contents of the issue this article belongs to you have to access the link from the title. In order to see all the articles of the archive which have as author/co-author one of the authors mentioned below, you have to access the link from the author's name.

  
       
         
    STUDIA SOCIOLOGIA - Issue no. 2 / 2020  
         
  Article:   DEPOLITICIZING THE FIRM: REVISITING EMPLOYABILITY AS A STRATEGY AND A NARRATIVE FOR HIGH-SKILLED AND SKILLED WORKERS IN AN EASTERN EUROPEAN CITY.

Authors:  NORBERT PETROVICI, NEDA DENEVA-FAJE. 		 
       
         
  Abstract:  
DOI: 10.2478/subbs-2020-0008

Published Online: 2020-12-30
Published Print: 2020-12-30
pp. 55-76

VIEW PDF

FULL PDF

Our main aim is to unpack the notion of employability as a narrative and as a strategy by contextualising it in an Eastern European setting and by scrutinizing how it is defined and experienced by two different categories of employees: high-skilled and skilled workers. We look at the case of Cluj, a mid-size Romanian town fast developing into an IT hub and a centre of reindustrialization. Drawing on qualitative interviews with employees in the IT and HR sectors, and in medium-sized factories, we argue that personal development and gaining expertise are a successful employability strategy for the high-skilled, but make the skilled workers more vulnerable and at risk of becoming redundant. We argue that the employability discourse draws new lines of divisions between employees. By shifting the lens away from the organization and towards the individual worker’s responsibility, the employability discourse depoliticizes the relationship between the employee and the employer.

Key words: employability, narratives of work, personal development, class divisions. 		 
         
     
         
         
      Back to previous page