Individualization and Individualism: Facets and Turning Points of the Entrepreneurial Self among Young People in Italy

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show how young people in Italy deal with the structural injunction to become individuals. While there is a substantial number of works on how institutions converge in promoting individualization and an ‘entrepreneurial self’, in this article we investigate how young people give shape and meaning to social relations in the framework of the injunction to become autonomous entrepreneurs of themselves. The research presented here was conducted in Milan, from 2017 to 2019. We carried out 40 in-depth interviews with young people in order to explore (1) how individualization as a structural historical process becomes an ongoing accomplishment, a part of the ‘common sense’ that people use to interpret their everyday experience; and (2) the extent to which individualization and individualism intertwine and conflict with each other.

Elements of reflexivity in the academic socialization of first-generation students in higher education

“…In many cases, acquiring a university diploma is a conquest with a broader social meaning than the title itself: it breaks away with class and race subordination, representing the students' capacity to impact the structure, re-establishing the horizon of possibilities of their origin groups. The dislodgment of possibilities projected by the individual concerning the determinations of their social condition, in search for autonomy in the face of vulnerability, provokes individuation dynamics (COLOMBO; REBUGHINI; DOMANESCHI, 2021;REBUGHINI, 2019).…”

Elementos de reflexividade na socialização acadêmica de estudantes de primeira geração na educação superior

“…Obter um diploma universitário, em muitos casos, significa uma conquista com um significado social maior do que o título: envolve romper com a subordinação de classe e de raça, representando para os estudantes uma capacidade de impacto sobre a estrutura e configurando os horizontes de possibilidade de seus grupos de origem. Na busca da autonomia diante da vulnerabilidade, o descolamento das possibilidades projetadas pelo indivíduo em relação às determinações de sua condição social provoca dinâmicas de individuação (COLOMBO; REBUGHINI; DOMANESCHI, 2021;REBUGHINI, 2019).…”

‪Traces of solidarity: performing artists’ efforts against individualisation and isolation during Covid-19 pandemic‪

“…Despite the uncertainties regarding the course and the outcomes of the protest, workers in the performing arts have been able to discuss individualisation processes at the workplace, letting emerge a collective sense of responsibility able to question the structural conditions that created insecurity and precarity. If scholars' analysis underline the centrality of entrepreneurial and individualised instances in subjective experiences of work (Bröckling, 2015;Scharff, 2016;Farrugia, 2021), the performing arts' movement that followed Covid-19 outburst hints at the fact that individualisation is not a monodirectional process towards private individualism but that work can -still -be the arena for cooperative and collective subjectivities (Colombo et al, 2022).…”

“…In contemporary times, notions of self-realisation and passionate labour at work have been regarded as increasingly central in contemporary subjectivation processes (Farrugia, 2021;Colombo et al, 2022). Contemporary values' focus on performance and autonomy have led workers to engage in self-monitoring activities aimed at enhancing their potential of success (Bröckling, 2015).…”