A Quest for Passion: Understanding Precarious Migration of Young Highly Qualified EU Citizens as Lived Neoliberal Subjectivity

• Published in: Sociology (Oxford) Vol. 56; no. 4; pp. 621 - 637
• Main Author: Simola, Anna
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.08.2022; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Conceptual development; Employability; Inequality; Insecure; Labor; Labor market; Labor migration; Migrant workers; Migrants; Migration; Mobility; Neoliberalism; Personal development; Social inequality; Social research; Subjectivity; Understanding; Youth; inequality; intra-European migration; precarious labour; self-responsibility; self-precarisation; employability; highly qualified migrants; neoliberal subjectivity; passion; youth
• ISSN: 0038-0385; 1469-8684
• DOI: 10.1177/00380385211051224

In critical social research the concept of employability is associated with the neoliberal imperative that every individual should become a self-responsible, self-improving and enterprising subject in the increasingly precarious labour markets. Despite the prominence of employability in policies governing young people’s intra-European migration, few studies examine migrants’ subjectivities in this context. Building on narrative data, this article adds to our understanding on how neoliberal subject formations function as an instrument for governing young EU migrants’ lives in conditions of precarious labour. Central to this understanding, it develops the concept of passion to depict young migrants’ quest for obtaining work with opportunities for self-development and self-realisation. This concept contributes to the study of highly qualified intra-EU migration by allowing critical analysis of meanings given to mobility in relation to work; by highlighting dynamics of (self-)precarisation in this context; and by advancing debates on social-structural inequality among EU migrants pursuing their quest for passion.