Hannah Schilling
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Hustling
The symbolic value of in-between work
in Globalized urban precarity in Berlin and Abidjan
Chapter DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526162106.00007
Online Publication Date:
07 Mar 2023
Abstract only
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The third chapter focuses on the symbolic value of the activities for the young men to construct status. It shows how, in a context of apparent convenience and freedom, risks of enduring precarity result from processes of closure among workers. In both Berlin and Abidjan, young male workers were marginalized among co-workers if they valued the activity as their main occupation rather than simply as a bridge or parallel activity. Situating the temporal work in the long term, the chapter concludes that official certificates and institutionalized cultural skills were differently meaningful in both cases. In Berlin, they were functional elements in objectified mechanisms of social reproduction: for the urban youth in Berlin, presenting themselves to others as detached from work and celebrating flexibility concealed the importance of official qualifications for making a living. In Abidjan, official cultural resources and the pursuit of an economic activity served the investment in relationality – being and spending time with others – to gain ‘wealth in people’ (Guyer 1995; Vuarin 1994).

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Globalized urban precarity in Berlin and Abidjan

Young men and the digital economy

eISBN:
9781526162106
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
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