Interning and Investing: Rethinking Unpaid Work, Social Capital, and the “Human Capital Regime”

Abstract

For young workers, interning is a strategy for speculating on one's asset portfolio. Students and graduates undertake internships as a way of maintaining their self-appreciation and avoiding depreciation in a "human capital regime." In this article, we explore the specific example of interning in the creative industries as the self-management of human capital vis-à-vis the human capital theses. Taking three cultural objects and recent representations of the issue of unpaid internships-Intern magazine, an advert for a "volunteering opportunity" student placement, and testimonies from interns-we analyze how unpaid work in the creative industries and the neoliberal version of human capital entrepreneurship can be seen as embodied by interns.

Precarious labour in waiting: Internships in the Chinese Internet industries

“…TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique , an important journal in the field of critical digital media studies, also published a special issue on internships in 2015. Topics included a clarification of the concept of internships (Corrigan, 2015; Frenette, 2015; Hope and Figiel, 2015), the relationship between the internship system and the development of cultural and creative industries (Boulton, 2015; Ciccarelli, 2015; Mirrlees, 2015), and the relationship between internships and higher education (Chong, 2015; Einstein, 2015; Smeltzer, 2015), as well as labour movements (Cohen and Peuter, 2015; Webb, 2015). Within the same special issue, Rodino-Colocino and Berberick (2015) highlighted the role higher education institutions play in students’ decisions to take internships, colleges and universities encouraging students to do so by offering them credit-based internship programmes.…”

Falsos autónomos y falsos becarios: una aproximación institucional al caso español

“…En el Reino Unido, la Low Pay Commission (GMB, 2013) ha recibido un volumen considerable de pruebas, en los últimos años, que sugieren un aumento de prácticas, programas de experiencia de trabajo o voluntariado para referirse a actividades no remuneradas que, en la práctica, deberían ser tratadas como relaciones laborales y estar cubiertas por el salario mínimo. Estas prácticas perpetúan la desigualdad de oportunidades e impiden la movilidad social, con consecuencias especialmente negativas para las minorías (Hope y Figiel, 2015). Se observa, en suma, un creciente interés por una irregularidad o fraude que no solo precariza el acceso al empleo de los jóvenes, sino que puede tener consecuencias en la igualdad de oportunidades o en el deterioro de las condiciones laborales de los trabajadores, sujetos a la competencia y presión de relaciones más flexibles y menos costosas.…”

Knows no weekend: the psychological contract of cultural work in precarious times

“…This is of course all unpaid labour, but labour that can be seen as part of being an entrepreneur of the self, a work or investing, or perhaps speculating on one's human capital. This kind of entrepreneurship, or 'social self-investment' can be seen in unpaid internships in the creative and cultural sector (Hope and Figiel, 2015). Just as there are now many similarities between the artistic and cultural mode of production and other spheres of the post-Fordist and now highly precarious economy, there are similarities between the kinds of unpaid labour required on the part of recent graduates and interns, and the unpaid, invisible Neff has explored further how this dynamic of psychological and social self-investment does not confine itself to occupations more obviously thought of as artistic and cultural, but is embraced more widely across tech and media sectors.…”