Dreaming of Flying When Grounded: Occupational Identity and Occupational Fantasies of Furloughed Airline Pilots

Abstract

This article analyses the effects of job loss on the occupational identities of a group of United States pilots, laid off (or 'furloughed') twice by their employer in the decade following 9/11. Using a narrative methodology, the paper examines how the childhood dream of flying, referred to as the Phaëthon dream, serves as an identity anchor that sustained their occupational identities. When the circumstances of the aviation industry (restructuring, outsourcing, and downsizing) led to extensive lay-offs, this identity anchor functioned in two contrasting ways. Some pilots moved on to retrain and start new careers, without abandoning their occupational identities or relinquishing the dream of flying. Another group of pilots, however, were stuck in occupational limbo waiting to be recalled by their employer, unwilling to forsake this dream and refusing to contemplate a move that would decisively take them out of their pilot seats. The paper's contribution lies in theorizing how a dream originating in childhood, linked to a long-standing archetype of flying and subsequently hardened into a shared occupational fantasy, acts as an identity anchor and how this shapes responses to the trauma of job loss. The paper concludes by linking the Phaëthon dream to its mythological counterpart in order to highlight its enduring, shared, and unconscious character.

Sandwiched: Exploring role and identity of middle managers in the genuine middle

“…Although we have sympathy with the story-telling approach taken by Sims (2003) and acknowledge that the narration and dramatization of organizations, people and events as well as self are crucial (Fraher and Gabriel, 2014;Sims, 2003), we are somewhat worried about studying only words and assuming that stories capture major parts of organizational reality or people's experiences (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2011). There may be a difference between the narrative-discursive and the behavioural-dramaturgical (Down and Reveley, 2009), since managers, like most people, tell stories but also interact in other ways.…”

Individual‐level Foci of Identification at Work: A Systematic Review of the Literature

“…Examining occupation as a focal identity also reveals how individuals construct identities in precarious occupational positions. For example, pilots forced to take a leave of absence due to adverse economic conditions retain strong occupational identities as pilots, despite not being able to perform the desired job (Fraher and Gabriel ). Similarly, professional visual artists develop criteria, such as ‘showing work’, to distinguish themselves from amateur artists, thus incorporating the important aspect of being in a paid occupation, rather than engaging in an activity as a pastime (Bain ).…”

Occupational identity and culture: the case of Michelin-starred chefs

“…is increasingly seen by many social interpreters in an occupational sense". An examination of the relationship between work roles and identity is thus seen as an anchor point to the study of identity formation (Fraher & Gabriel, 2014). Cooper (2012) suggests that social thinkers have always, since the birth of sociology, shown some concern for the relationship between work and identity, albeit implicitly.…”

“…Through participant observation, Fine systematically analyses the work of chefs and cooks from a sociological perspective and depicts how chefs use occupational rhetorics to describe themselves as scientists, artists, accountants, surgeons, psychiatrists, and handymen in a complex and malleable conceptualisation of their professional self. These bundles of rhetorical images were provisional, situationally dependent and, like self-constructed narratives, not necessarily consistent with each other (Fraher & Gabriel, 2014). Yet, neither Chivers nor Fine are concerned with chefs and cooks working in haute cuisine restaurants, and both their findings are now significantly dated.…”