Exploring Precarity: The Perceptions, Experiences and Emotional Labour of Young Adult Social Care Workers in Teesside Duncan Fisher, PhD candidate, Teesside University Supervisors – Professor Rob MacDonald, Dr Lorenza Antonucci, Dr Anthony Lloyd Context What can a study of young social care workers tell us Study Implications about the way that care and caring is rewarded and Adult social care is a heavily gendered, under-resourced regulated in the UK welfare and care regime context? The study will be relevant to theories of youth, of social care and under-valued sector of the UK labour market. Can theories of emotional and affective labour aid our work and of contemporary conditions of precarity and Precarious working conditions are common, and the understanding of skills in adult social care? precarious work. Furthermore, it will have implications for sector’s high turnover rate reveals particular difficulties policy and practice in improving the status and conditions of with the retention of young people. Tom Montgomery et How can the working conditions, prospects and social care work. al. raise the question of whether policy interventions standards of living for young adult social care workers aimed at attracting young people to the sector risk be improved? What policies and practices can be Selected References perpetuating patterns of precarious employment during devised and promoted to these ends? youth transitions (2016: 2). This presentation sets out the Daly, M. and Lewis, J., 2000. The concept of social care aims and thinking of a new doctoral study of the Theory and Methods and the analysis of contemporary welfare states. The perceptions and experiences of 18- to 30-year-old social British Journal of Sociology, 51(2), pp.281-298. care workers in Teesside, north-east England. This Influenced in method and approach by the Teesside Hochschild, A. R., 2003. The Managed Heart: investigation aims to consider the following research Studies of Youth and Social Exclusion, this qualitative-led Commercialization of Human Feeling. Twentieth questions which are central to broader issues of the study seeks to explore the intersections of layered Anniversary ed. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: “prolongation of youth” (Côté, 2014), the feminization of inequalities of place, gender, class and income. Guy University of California Press. poverty, and young people as the new poor. Standing’s theory of multiple security lack from the Montgomery, T., Mazzei, M., Baglioni, S. and Sinclair, S., Precariat (2011) forms the theoretical basis for semi- 2016. Who cares? The social care sector and the future of What do the work experiences of young social care structured interview consideration of the interplay youth employment. Policy and Politics, 2016, pp.1-17. workers tell us about the changing world of work? between factors such as low pay, underemployment, and Standing, G., 2011. The Precariat. The New Dangerous Can theories of precarious work and the “New employment transitions. These interviews will be Class. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Capitalism” help us to capture these experiences? conducted with young adult social care workers, with Shildrick, T., MacDonald, R., Webster, C. and Garthwaite, additional methods such as diary accounts and life- K., 2012. Poverty and insecurity. Life in low-pay, no-pay What role does social class and place (in particular the /work-grids under consideration to provide extensive Britain. Bristol: Policy Press. nature of the local labour market) play in shaping the detail on the short- and long-term aspects of time and lives and work of young social care workers? planning. The data will be analysed thematically. For further information, please contact: Duncan Fisher, School of Social Sciences, Business and Law, Teesside University. [email protected].