Exploring biographies in a rapidly changing labor world

Abstract

The field of work and employment is among the most rapidly changing fields in current societies. The sociology of work attempts to map these changes, developing concepts that seek to grasp the transformations of labor. Currently, the discussion revolves around two main topics: (a) the ‘normality of non-normality’ expands on the flexible, insecure, and precarious forms of employment, while (b) the ‘subjectivation of work’ has been introduced in order to reflect the newly observed trend in which entrepreneurial strategies and rationales colonize the whole spectrum of an employee’s personal life and the self. It is a paradox, however, that while all these transformations in the labor world are taking place, interest in biographical research on the field has declined. This article aims to show the ways in which biographical narrative research has studied the changes that have taken place in the world of labor and to highlight new research possibilities. We especially wish to highlight ways in which reconstructive biographical research can contribute to the corpus of knowledge generated on this topic. We argue that, through biographical case reconstruction, paths by which transformations of the labor world become biographically significant for individuals and their social life worlds can be grasped in a dialectical manner. Employing systematic reconstruction of the ways in which social actors construct their work experiences biographically can serve a twofold purpose. First, it reveals how social rules, dominant discourses, and social conditions form new workers’ subjectivities, and second, it identifies biographical sources of resistance on the part of the actors.

Introduction

Biographical research focuses on studying the ways in which broader economic, social, and political changes are reflected in the world of labor as well as in the life histories of workers. ¹ Indicative is the research carried out in (West) Germany ² by industrial sociologists with Marxist orientations, such as Osterland (1973), Bahrdt (1975), and Deppe (1978). In order to understand the way of life and thinking of workers, in view of the significant social changes that had taken place since the 1960s, these scholars argued that it was not enough just to study workers’ consciousness. Investigation of their daily life and life histories was also required. In a similar way, Bertaux and Bertaux-Wiame (1981) argued some years later that the sociology of work should focus on the impacts of wider social change from a life-history perspective. Studying the life stories of bakers in France, they focused in their pioneering study on working and daily relationships and practices, illuminating the life and work worlds of these professionals. Their research also revealed latent social mechanisms that explain why, while most productive activities in France are verticalized and carried out by large companies, bread production remains at the level of small family businesses. These latent mechanisms consist of an interesting combination of livelihood practices, business calculations, and marriage exchange practices (see Bertaux and Bertaux-Wiame, 1981). We can point out that in this period, the researchers who used life stories as research data started from a realist epistemological standpoint. Life stories were understood as ‘sources’ that offered insights into ‘realities’ which exist beyond these stories. Such are the components of workers’ consciousness, life forms, life worlds, types of social relations, and social mechanisms. Regarding data collection and analysis, no specially processed methods were used by the researchers.

The establishment of high unemployment rates in the 1980s in the industrialized societies of the Global North resulted in biographical research concentrating on the study of the importance of unemployment in the context of the biographies of the unemployed. Examining the experience of unemployment in the context of someone’s overall life history makes it possible to present a more convincing assessment of the significance of this fact for the person. Alheit and Glass (1986) conducted pioneering work in this field, studying unemployed young people. In this study, on the basis of biographical narrative interviews and their reconstructive analysis, a typology of five different typical patterns for experiencing and dealing with unemployment was developed. The biographical approach was also adopted in the study by Heinemeier (1991), which focused on the collapse of the time structures caused by job loss as well as the transformations of the way life-time and daily-time were experienced in a situation of long-term unemployment. Unemployment brings about the transformation of a person’s biographical orientations and perspectives. However, to the extent that the time perspective at these two levels (life-time and daily-time) is a key component of identity, unemployment brings about significant changes in the ways identity is constructed; consequently, ‘transitional identities’ are produced.

The influence of the narrative approach, introduced by Schütze to sociological research in the late 1970s (see Schütze, 1977, 1981), is evident in the above studies. The focus of the research lens is on the level of lived experience as well as on the crystallized biographical action schemes (‘coping patterns’). In terms of methodology, well-elaborated methods are utilized, such as the narrative interview for data collection as well as a systematic multi-stage analysis process in which both content and the formal elements of speech are taken into account. The analysis of narrative utterances is considered to provide the researcher with unique insights into the sedimentation of experiences and biographical action schemes, and to the ways in which identities are constructed. Moreover, essential elements of Grounded Theory (see Glaser and Strauss, 1967) such as the concepts of ‘theoretical sampling’, ‘contrastive comparison’, and ‘theoretical saturation’ are included in the methodological framework for biographical research, especially in those studies that aim to have an exploratory character, that is, to ‘discover’ new questions. Through such a methodological standpoint, these studies contributed to highlighting the complexity of unemployment as it was experienced by the persons affected. The impossibility of long-term planning, the inability to organize daily-time, the threat to gendered identity, mainly among men, the problems emergent in the family and in interpersonal relationships, as well as the reduction of their potential for action were clearly identified as consequences of unemployment. The prevailing perception that the unemployed person was a passive Individual was also challenged. Biographical studies have shown that the unemployed are active subjects who oppose the situation of unemployment and try vigorously to counteract its consequences. Finally, through the emergence of different types of experience and action, the homogenized picture of how unemployment affects the unemployed was shaken.

Over recent decades, the rapid changes that have taken place in the production process and that have had significant effects on labor relations and the world of work have fueled the scientific debate around two central discourses: the discourse of flexibilization and precarization of work, and the discourse of subjectivation of work. In the following we will present the main points of these discourses and show how biographical research can contribute to the empirical investigation of aspects of the transformations of work that are highlighted in the context of these discussions.

The discourse of flexibilization and precarization of work

The changes in work and especially in paid employment that have become visible in Global North societies in recent decades have been described in terms of the flexibilization and precarization of work. These changes concern both labor relations and the organization of work, as well as its content. At the level of work organization and labor relations, the liquidation of institutional commitments and safeguards has taken place while at the same time flexible forms of work have been expanded. In particular, the ‘standard employment relationship’ and the ‘normal job form’ have been deregulated. ‘Normal job form’ is defined as ‘employment on a permanent full-time contract in a specified, stable workplace, with career prospects, social security, and a trade-union presence in the workplace’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005: 226). Instead, non-standard or temporary employment that may be poorly paid, insecure, unprotected, and insufficient to support a household (the ‘working poor’) is on the rise. Flexible forms of employment have come to liquidate all those guarantees provided by a ‘standard employment relationship’ and have given birth to ‘precarity’, ³ which means a sense of temporality, instability, and insecurity.

A number of empirical studies have focused on the ways in which employees experience conditions of job flexibility and precarity (see, among others, Castel and Dörre, 2009; Manske and Pühl, 2010; Pelizzari, 2009; Sander, 2012). Some of these studies limit their focus to precarity in the workplace while others expand to precarity as a ‘life form’, emphasizing the ways in which work precarity permeates many aspects of human life. Specifically, these studies address the experience of vulnerability which often accompanies precarious work, as well as the risk of social exclusion. In particular, the deprivation or irregular flow of financial resources, which results in an inability to meet basic living needs, is discussed, and so too are insufficient or unsatisfactory housing conditions, the difficulties of long-term life and family planning, and the impacts of precarity on social ties and intimate relationships. Of particular interest are studies that investigate precariousness as an embodied experience and study its effects on physical and mental health (see, among others, MacEachen et al., 2008).

Changes in the labor world and especially the expansion of flexible forms of employment have resulted in the disappearance of the pattern of the ‘normal biography’. The concept of ‘normal biography’ was introduced into the scientific debate by Kohli (1985) and is cited as the dominant social pattern of organizing the life-course in the industrial societies of the Global North during the era of Fordism. According to this model, the path of life is organized around the axis of the professional career and is divided into three segments: the preparatory phase, the productive professional phase, and the phase of retirement. The productive phase, which has the longest duration, is characterized by stable, continuous, and full employment. This is preceded by the age-determined process of preparation (vocational training) in adolescence and post-adolescence, and followed by the retirement phase. The model is linear; no gaps are predicted either during the transition from one phase to another or within the phases. Over the last few decades, work paths have become increasingly intermittent: working periods alternate with non-working intervals. Unemployment is no longer a state of exception, deviating from the normality of a work trajectory, but a common milestone in the career path. The discontinuity of work paths does not only lie in alternating periods of unemployment with periods of employment. It concerns the alternation of professional roles, but also the insertion of periods of education or training in periods that occur throughout the course of life and not only in the phase of (vocational) preparation.

Biographical research has been pursued not only to supply empirical documentation, but also to test the assumptions included in the above theoretical description. Studies by feminist researchers have challenged the universal validity of the ‘normal biography’ model, arguing that it fits male professional biographies, especially of public sector employees (see Dausien, 1996). Women’s paid work has historically been precarious as it was lower paid, more temporary, and more insecure than men’s, and often complementary to it. Women’s careers were very often characterized by discontinuity. As many dimensions of modern ‘precarious work’ resemble these diachronic conditions of female employment, some authors have proposed the concept of ‘feminization of work’ (Betti, 2018; Fudge and Owens, 2006) to characterize the growing subordination of the workforce to temporary and unstable (in terms of labor rights) employment status.

However, in addition to the historical investigation of whether the model of ‘normal biography’ is universal for both male and female biographies, the regulatory validity of the above model has also been questioned (see Manske and Pühl, 2010; Schiek, 2012). The new conditions that characterize the working life of contemporary employees, such as ruptures and discontinuities in work paths, a high level of mobility, and low commitment to the professional role and position, result in the following research questions. (a) Do the workers, especially young employees, orient themselves toward the model of ‘normal biography’ or have they developed new work orientations and biographical models through the experience of precariousness? (b) Does work continue to be a main biography generator? (c) Does work function as a central axis for the formation of individual and collective identities? (d) And finally, what is the impact of precarity on biographical planning?

It is obvious that the above questions correspond to a different perception about the scope of biographical research and the research potential of biographical narratives: the biographical narratives are no longer considered only as a source for the investigation of already existing structures of experience. Biographical narratives refer to the social construct ‘biography’, which has important functions in the societies of late modernity. Biography, as a social construct, constitutes both social reality and the subjects’ worlds of experience, and is constantly being affirmed anew and transformed within the dialectical relationship between life-historical knowledge and experiences and societal normative patterns (Fischer-Rosenthal and Rosenthal, 1997: 138). By taking a constructionist turn, biographical researchers explore the ways in which individuals construct biographical constructions and thus chronologically organize their experiences, integrating them into a coherent structure. They also investigate the role the narrative recapitulation of biographical experiences plays for the formation of individual and collective identities. Finally, recognizing the key role of the biographical institutional of self-description, in the form of a curriculum vitae, for the integration of individuals in the various social subsystems (e.g. education, work, the insurance system), researchers turn their attention to dynamics of integration and exclusion caused by whether or not individuals follow institutionally required biographical standards. The above complex understanding of biographies as social constructions which include both the dimension of structural and institutional figuration and the emergence of individual action requires a complex and multilevel process of analyzing biographical narratives. While such a synthetic approach has been long been pursued in the field of biographical research, integrating the different levels of analysis remains an ongoing challenge, especially as regards research into the multiple transformations of work and their impact on processes of subjectivation, addressed in the field of sociology of work.

Of particular interest in this regard is the research of Reckinger (2010). He investigated young people who dropped out of school and entered precarious jobs, finding that the ‘new normality’ of precarity is experienced as ‘non-normality’. The precarious employees continue to be normatively oriented toward the ‘standard employment relationship’ and the ‘normal biography’. The expectation that it will be possible to build an identity around a profession and that stable, satisfactorily rewarded working relations will be established has not disappeared. Going through precarious working conditions is perceived as inevitable but as a temporary ‘trial phase’ in the process of finding a stable job.

In his research on ‘hired’ employees, Kraemer (2009) established that these employees experience the risk of losing control of the future development of their professional biography as well as the suspension of long-term life-planning prospects. This dimension has been validated by other studies conducted in Germany (Dörre et al., 2006; Vogel, 2009) and also in France (Bourdieu et al., 1997; Castel, 2000). Under the conditions of precarious and discontinuous employment, the possibility and the capacity of the employees to plan their future are lost. Instead, under the pressure of the need to survive, a focus on the ‘critical present’ emerges and establishes a culture of the ‘accidental and the ephemeral’. The experience of precarious work also destabilizes the belief that the living conditions of each generation will be an improvement on those of their parents, and that personal improvement will be part of collective upward social mobility. On the contrary, the belief has now become established that the improvement of social status is the result of individual success in a context of generalized competition (see also Vogel, 2009).

Schiek (2012) conducted a study where, through biographical case reconstruction, she tried to investigate the biographical significance of precarity. In particular, she studied the ways in which precarious workers, who are directly threatened by social exclusion, develop a biographical perspective and retain their ability to plan for their future. A central finding of the research was that precarity and instability ‘threaten what is defined, not only as “good life” but as “life” in general: the biography, i.e. the temporalized and individualized, active perspective, which connects the individual with society’ (Schiek, 2012: 63). The precarious workers, however, actively oppose this situation and seek to reestablish full social integration through their inclusion in a ‘standard employment relationship’. Consequently, this research shows that, although empirically the model of the ‘normal biography’ has been liquidated, it continues to function as a regulatory pattern that defines the prevailing perception of how individuals are fully integrated into the (working) society.

The research summarized above has highlighted the rise of flexible, precarious forms of work as a source of insecurity and social exclusion. These authors have confirmed the normative validity of the ‘normal biography’ model without identifying clear alternative ways in which individuals can structure their biography to include work in it. As a result, cases of employees who develop a positive attitude toward flexibility and work mobility have attracted increasing research interest. Such is, for example, the case of young workers who use the transition from precarious jobs as a preparatory stage for entering the labor market (‘precarious jobs as entry jobs’). Also of interest are those cases of employees (e.g. managers, executives) who do not define themselves as ‘victims of necessity’ but appear to represent the figure of the autonomous, dominant subject who acts of their own volition as an ‘entrepreneur of himself’ – one who masters the techniques of self-management and develops a strong emotional commitment to his (precarious) work. In these cases, the elements of flexibility, mobility, and polyvalence in working conditions are described as the basis of a constant demand for creativity and self-development (see also Pieper et al., 2009).

Of particular interest is the position of Kalff (2017, 2018), who argues that contemporary biographies, due to the liquidation of the ‘normal biography’, are structured on the basis of the organizational structure of the ‘project’. This structure provides coherence in discontinuous paths by connecting different individual projects (tasks, occupations, roles, tasks) with each other whether they evolve simultaneously or sequentially. It makes it possible to produce coherence even if the various ‘ventures’ are permeated by contradictory rationales. The project is an organizational scheme of limited duration, which organizes individual elements and parallel actions in a flexible way provided that the deadlines are met. The organizational structure of the projects corresponds well to modern biographies that do not develop linearly but are fragmented, discontinuous, and evolving simultaneously at different levels. It also corresponds to the moral challenge of neoliberal capitalism to individuals, who are called upon to take responsibility for shaping their life plans and organizing their biographies. The format of the project allows the individual to produce her own unifying narrative and to invest meaning in fragmentary elements of her actions. In fact, in view of the delimitation of work, the organizational structure of the project allows the individual to actively establish the boundaries between different spheres of life as well as between different jobs, while allowing the individual to place all the fragmentary units in a single, meaningful, and legitimizing framework. This interesting theoretical approach remains to be tested in research practice, and biographical research could make a significant contribution.

The discourse of subjectivation of work

The discussion of flexibilization and precarization of work relates to another interesting approach, which attempts to capture and describe the transformations of the world of work: this is the subjectivation of work approach, which has been developed strongly in the German-speaking social sciences. The concept of subjectivation of work is encountered in two different versions in the scientific debate.

The first refers to the period of Taylorism-Fordism, where in conditions of intense and detailed division of labor, intensive managerial planning, and close supervision of work, the worker was attached to a specific station of the assembly line (see also Watson, 2017). These working conditions produced a critique, developed since the 1970s, that Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) have described as ‘artistic’. ⁴ This critique focuses on the alienated working conditions within Fordist capitalism and in particular on the lack of freedom, autonomy, and creativity, as well as the standardization of life (through the mass consumption of similar products and the domination of the patriarchal nuclear family model). On the basis of this critique arose the demand for the subjectivation of work, which brought to the fore the increased ‘subjective’ demands that employees made of their work beyond its alienation terms. These claims were related to the need for self-affirmation and recognition through work, as well as the demand to increase the autonomy of their activity. Baethge (1991) characterized these claims as ‘normative subjectivation’.

On the basis of this critical approach, studies were conducted focusing on the ways in which workers invest with subjective meaning even monotonous and executive activities, rejecting the instrumentalization of their work. ⁵ These studies have shown that work, even in its alienated forms, remains the central axis for the formation of identity and for the appropriation of reality. A typical biographical approach in this direction is the study by Alheit and Dausien (1990). These authors conducted narrative interviews with industrial workers, and through the reconstructive analysis of the data came to the conclusion that work experience always contains a surplus of subjectivity. According to Alheit and Dausien (1990: 317, emphasis in original),

For each of the biographical narrators, ‘work’ is more than a specifically-professional form of ‘activity’. Work is an unmistakable aspect of subjectivity. Or the other way around: Every narrative about the work contains a surplus of subjective experiences, interpretations, meaning and focusing. ‘Work’ is the life and personality structuring factor in the biography of wage workers.

Similar results emerged from the study by Tsiolis (2002), who investigated the biographical significance of work in the Greek industrial city of Lavrion, which found itself in a deindustrialization crisis during the 1990s. Through the collection and reconstructive analysis of biographical narrative interviews with former industrial workers who were forced to change jobs or became unemployed after the closure of factories in the area, Tsiolis showed that stable wage work is not only a way of earning one’s livelihood but also the basis for the formation of identity and the articulation of biographical plans. The loss of work creates an unfilled gap in the way people give meaning to their existence and organize their daily lives. The normative validity of the ‘normal biography’ model as the only socially acceptable model for the organization of men’s biographies was also confirmed (Tsiolis, 2002: 349–362).

The second, more recent version of the debate on the subjectivation of work (see, for example, Kleemann, 2012; Moldaschl and Voß, 2002; Nickel et al., 2008) refers to the period of post-Fordist capitalism. In this context, the concept of subjectivation of work indicates the tendency to embed an entrepreneurial logic in the whole selfhood and life of the employee, which, in turn, become fields of exploitation. At the same time, employees are required to participate in their work actively and voluntarily (Pieper et al., 2009). As Neilson and Rossiter (2008) point out, work, to become more productive, is integrated into the time of non-work, and the exploitation of the labor force is distributed across all aspects of life.

The subjectivation of work approach points out that the new (post-Fordist) organization of labor presupposes the construction of a specific type of employee, different from that of Fordism. The working subject no longer corresponds to the figure of a disciplined subject who falls within a framework of compliance requirements and performs activities that follow the norm, with clearly separated identity positions between working life and private life – a subject who is part of and supported by a nuclear family and is ensured by the functioning of a welfare state system (Pieper et al., 2009). Contrary to such a fixed and ‘one-dimensional’ view of subjectivity, tied to a stable lifelong professional role, the subjectivation of the employee in the conditions of post-Fordist capitalism should be understood as an ongoing process. This process involves processes of reframing and reinterpretation not only due to the employee’s shifts to different jobs, positions, and employment statuses but also due to the need to invent or adopt renewed practices within ever-changing environments.

Employees are required to demonstrate constant availability and willingness for mobility (both professional and geographical) and flexibility. They must also accept the permeability of the boundaries between working and leisure time and transfer their work obligations beyond their formally defined working time. They are called upon to meet the demands of self-management, self-regulation, and self-control of their activities, taking responsibility for them. They need to develop a value base that recognizes as the top priorities the optimization of efficiency and the rational use of available personal resources. At the same time, they should cultivate skills of simultaneous handling of different and multiple activities, as well as skills of managing intense mobility in different spaces and tasks, and should also be able to deal with an abundance of communication, collaboration, teamwork, and interactivity. They need to manage fluid intimacy in the workplace, ranging from sexual harassment to ambiguous gender relationships and affinities. They are called upon to develop a sense of commitment and enthusiasm even toward activities or contexts in which employee engagement is expected to be short-term and limited (see also Moldaschl and Voß, 2002). Finally, the employee must be subjected as such, not through a formal (professional or academic) education or through the claim of institutionally defined qualifications, but through the creation of a singular (unique and non-exchangeable) portfolio of skills, talents, potential, and performances (Reckwitz, 2017). ⁶

An interesting research approach to subjectivation processes in work has been proposed by researchers who proceed from a knowledge-sociological discourse analysis starting point (see Keller, 2011; Keller et al., 2012) and seek to combine discourse analysis with biographical research. ⁷ According to this view, individuals are subjectivized by undertaking ‘subject-positions’ that are produced by hegemonic discourses, that is to say, through a process of discursive ‘positioning’. Hegemonic discourse in neoliberal capitalism ⁸ produces subject-positions for contemporary employees which determine the characteristics they must display: to be flexible, energetic, creative, kinetic, polyvalent, able to learn and to develop skills, and to behave as an entrepreneur of oneself and the workforce. Studies that adopt the knowledge-sociological discourse analytic logic seek to study the ways in which individuals appropriate elements of this hegemonic discourse (that is to say, are ‘placed’ within it) and thus are formed as subjects. By drawing on the governmentality approach as well, ⁹ this might also be able to answer the question of why people who experience precarious work conditions are attracted to the rhetoric of the ‘new spirit of capitalism’. This research also utilizes biographical narratives, which in this context are understood as a mode of identitarian positioning, and their analytical elaboration can highlight which discursive statements can be more relevant to subjectivation than others. As Bosančić (2014) argues, the knowledge-sociological discourse analysis aims to work out by means of self-narratives to what extent discursively constituted subject-positions and motive vocabularies play a role in identity positioning. In other words, it seeks to establish how these are referred to and what transformations take place in the appropriation processes (Bosančić, 2014: 196). The analysis of biographical narratives can, according to this approach, gain no access either to the lived life history (the stratified stock of biographical experiences) or to processes of ‘biographical work’ ¹⁰ of biographical experiences. ¹¹

Bosančić’s (2014) study on the modes of subjectivation of unskilled workers is an excellent example of such an approach. His research showed that subjectivation does not take place through a passive adaptation and internalization of the elements of hegemonic discourse. It is much more a process of active and productive subjectivation, since the formation of the subject is done through an active appropriation of role models, identity forms, and patterns (‘subject-positions’) which are embraced, rejected, or transformed (Bosančić, 2014). Bosančić comes to an interesting conclusion: that subjectivation is not a reflection of the structural, institutional logics and claims to which subjects are passively adapted but involves a creative dimension on the part of the employees themselves. But how can this energy potential that can generate resistance to the dominant discourse be explained? Where do the subjects get to resist? One answer would be: from the stock of personal, family, or collective experience. However, the position of the knowledge-sociological discourse analytical approach that biographical narratives cannot reveal anything about the experienced life history deprives biographical research of such a possibility. The general disavowal of the possibility that a biographical narrative produced in the present might offer cognitive access to dimensions of the past (facts, experiences, ways of meaning) deprives social research of the possibility of studying social phenomena in their historical dimension; this would mean highlighting their genesis, reproduction, and transformation; reconstructing patterns of relationships and action; and revealing latent social functions and causal mechanisms. In the following, we will attempt to show how reconstructive biographical research can offer a more synthetic proposal ¹² for the study of the transformations of labor, one which combines understanding how the actors achieve biographical appropriation with the requirements of causal explanation of the differences between them.

The contribution of reconstructive biographical research in studying a rapidly changing labor world

The program of ‘reconstructive biographical research’ (see Rosenthal, 2018) points out that social scientists have to study phenomena in their historical dimension and to reconstruct their genesis, that is, their production, reproduction, and transformation. It is also pointed out that, in order to understand the actions and choices of a person, they must take into account both the perspective of the actor and the action within the sequence of his previous actions, decisions, and choices. Consequently, decisions and actions concerning biographical turning points are defined based on previous decisions and choices of the actors. They are also identified on the basis of biographical patterns that crystallize over time as a deposit of biographical experience and knowledge. Consequently, life history can serve as the explanatory framework for the ways in which contemporary workers experience and appropriate changes in the labor world and organize their action within it.

This position is based on the understanding of life history as a dialectical synthesis of the following two levels: the structure of the different key life events and positions taken by the individual in the social space, as well as the constant effort of the actor to shape their life on the basis of available standards. These standards are formed by both institutional and regulatory patterns as well as by biographically tested orientations that have been crystallized during the elaboration of previous biographical experiences. Brose and Wohlrab-Sahr (2018: 487) distinguish these two levels, talking on the one hand about ‘life-course’ and on the other about ‘biography’. The ‘life-course’ includes all the events of life and constitutes the ‘external form’ of a life history, as it includes the sequence of placements within institutional fields. On the other hand, ‘biography’, which is the ‘inner side’ of the ‘external structure’, includes the internalized orientation schemes and emergent informal rules of life formation (Brose and Wohlrab-Sahr, 2018: 487). Although biography draws on socially and institutionally available standards, it is always constructed through the individual endeavors of the actors. The authors argue that the relationship between the ‘life-course’ and the ‘biography’ is circular: there can be no ‘biography’ without a ‘life-course’ to which the former refers. But in modern societies, the opposite is also true. There is no ‘life-course’ without a ‘biography’ – that is, without observation of and reflection on the ‘life-course’ and without ‘biographical work’, especially in problematic circumstances of life. The observation of the ‘life-course’ occurs through biographical communication, which makes the ‘life-course’ visible and understandable. Also, both biographical reflection and ‘biographical work’ are functional components of the way of life and contribute to shaping the life course. As Brose and Wohlrab-Sahr (2018: 487) point out, the way in which people experience particular events, changes, or upheavals in their lives is biographically framed as it comes to be integrated into a history, not only by selectively connecting with past events but also by creating future perspectives. However, the way in which individuals produce biographical constructions and form biographical identities through them draws on a variety of discourses and social typifications as well as collective memories.

Based on the above theoretical assumptions, a multilevel approach can be proposed to investigate the transformations of labor using the reconstructive biographical approach, including three levels of analysis.

The level of the life course

The study of the life courses of contemporary employees can illuminate their structure, their coherence or discontinuities, the paths of transition from one situation to another, and the sequence or even the intertwining of the different sub-courses (educational course, occupational courses, etc.). Of particular interest are the ways of articulating work with education in contemporary life courses, as education is no longer limited by age; periods of education or training can alternate with periods of work or even evolve in parallel with them. Also of interest is the investigation of the alternation of working and non-working periods as well as the alternation of jobs and professional roles. Finally, the study of the individual life course in relation to family history can highlight intergenerational continuity or mobility in terms of social and work status.

The level of experienced life history

The study of experienced life history can highlight ways of experiencing the employment conditions brought about by the transformations of the labor world. It can explore how precarity at work can be transformed into an embodied experience of vulnerability and social exclusion, and what social factors can act as a deterrent to such a process. It can highlight the strategies – both individual and collective – of employees, the orientations of their action, and the ways in which they evaluate their potential for action in the changing world of flexible and precarious work. Furthermore, it can evaluate whether they feel that they have control over their lives or how they try to regain it when they feel they have lost it. ¹³ It can highlight the intersectional dimensions in the ways in which the conditions of flexible and precarious work spread out into the organization of daily life and influence the wider biographical planning. Examining the life history can show the grids of relationships with significant others, both in and out of the workplace, as well as the ways in which a sense of ‘belonging’ is constructed in flexible and precarious working conditions.

The study of experiences and actions in the context of experienced life history enables the researcher to go beyond the purely descriptive level of investigation (‘how’ questions) and to develop explanatory schemes (‘why’ questions). This is ensured in two ways:

• The examination of the life history leads the researcher to take into account in his interpretation the respective historical–social context of the action, that is, the structural conditions and the ways in which the actor perceived his action potential in the past time of the action.

• Analyzing actions and experiences within the different biographical periods of the experienced life history enables the researcher to craft hypotheses regarding the nexus of patterns characterizing biographers’ action strategies and orientations. In this way, researchers can trace the distinctive latent meaning structure for each biography, that is, the peculiar nexus of rules, practices, and meanings upon which life is grounded (Tsiolis and Christodoulou, 2021: 104). This latent meaning structure functions as ‘generative mechanisms’ (Alheit, 2010) as far as action, decision-making, and experiencing life experiences are concerned. ¹⁴ Latent meaning structures are embedded in experienced life history and at the same time they frame how external influences (events) are mediated through their logic by transforming them into biographical experiences and actions. From the above it follows that biographical events can be reconstructed only if one investigates how they are positioned within the sequentiality of previous and subsequent biographical experiences – the ‘Gestalt of life history’ (Rosenthal, 2018: 166, emphasis in original) – and how it is processed through the latent meaning structure that permeate the person’s biography. In this way the researcher can formulate an explanatory frame based on the historical construction of each case in order to grasp the different ways of experiencing the transformations of work.

The level of narrated life story

The study of the narrated life story emphasizes the ways in which the individuals construct their biographical descriptions from their present point of view as well as the ways in which the individuals stand up to their past experiences, renegotiate them, and relate them to other experiences. It provides access to the ways in which the individuals produce a coherent chronological description of the self in the form of a biographical narrative identity. When it comes to studying the self-descriptions of contemporary workers, the analysis can focus on the ways in which professional identities are constructed in the face of new, flexible, and precarious forms of employment. It can study the means used by employees to produce a coherent professional self-description (when in fact their work paths are characterized by discontinuities and rearrangements). It is also interesting to investigate whether current identities are structured around the professional role or whether more pluralistic ways of constructing identities (such as ‘patchwork-identity’ or ‘projectified self’) and of organizing life appear. Such an investigation does not concern only the ‘subjective’ meanings but also their dialectical articulation, both with the dominant discourses and with institutional and regulatory standards and patterns.

Conclusion

In this article, we have tried to highlight the ways in which biographical research illuminates the transformations taking place in the world of labor, focusing on the life histories of workers. We have placed particular emphasis on two scientific debates about the metamorphoses of work: (a) the debate on flexibility and insecurity that points up the deregulation of the ‘standard employment relations’ and the destabilization of the ‘normal job form’; and (b) the debate on the subjectivation of work that points to the trend in which entrepreneurial strategies and rationales colonize the whole spectrum of an employee’s personal life and the self. We have shown the ways in which biographical research can be linked but also contribute to the investigation of aspects that the above discussions highlight. We have proposed a complex and multi-level research proposal, which enables us to study the ways in which employees articulate new working experiences in the structure of their already accumulated experiences, producing new meanings and connections. By studying this process of ‘biographical work’, which of course does not take place in a social and symbolic vacuum but draws from discursive frameworks, the researcher can detect the ways in which individuals appropriate changes in their working life and form a narratively constructed identity. The investigation of the processes of ‘biographical work’ with reference to the experienced life history of the actor enables the researcher to create an explanatory framework in order to combine different ways of biographical experience and action. In this way, (reconstructive) biographical research can, as we have shown above, go beyond a purely descriptive questioning and can elucidate causal explanations as well.