Untangling the narratives of precarious work : an auto-ethnography

Actors wait tables, musicians drive taxis and artists stack the shelves at Coles. The narrative of the welder-makes-dancer or waiter-makes-movie star is a popular one in contemporary society. The precarious work within this narrative is constituted as a rite-of-passage. Meanwhile, young people entering the workforce for the first time are accustomed to the narrative of precarious work as reality, entertaining few expectations of work-based security or benefits for the early stages of their working lives. These narratives are significant entry points into understanding precarious work for young people. Couched in terms of mobility, flexibility and choice, they reflect the individualistic framework of late modernity and obscure the implications of precarious work. Employing a critical autoethnography, this article offers a narrative perspective, charting shifts of narrative in the author’s own biography and the consequent effect of these shifts on perceptions of precarious work