Reflecting Flexibility: From the Security of Regular Employment to Coping with Casual Work

This chapter sets out to explain how the new, flexible employment policies of regional firms rely on the flexibility of the individual worker, of his or her household, and on the provisions of the welfare state. It is based on a study of two manufacturing locations: one is the steel plant in Mo i Rana situated in Northern Norway, the other, the woodworking and house prefabrication industry of Moelven in Ringsaker, in the south-east of Norway. Redundancy in manufacturing industries and changing manpower practices are new experiences for workers who until recently have considered their jobs permanent. How do individual workers and their households cope with the change from permanent employment to the insecurity of casual work and unemployment? Occupational identities are challenged in the transition from regular to temporary employment. Orientations and careers can be looked on as mediations between a changing labour market, the functioning of the household and identity management. How then are workers’ identities bound up with their orientations and careers? The chapter examines how households cope when the main breadwinner loses a permanent job, and faces the prospect of casual work and unemployment, and how this relates to changes in the construction of identity.