Waiting for the Future: Temporal Immobilization and the Impact of Precarization on Young Italian Workers

This thesis critically examines the effects of precarious employment on how young people imagine and relate to the future. It is based on twelve in-depth interviews with Italian young adults, aged 27 to 32, who are engaged in precarious forms of work and currently reside in the northern Italian city of Padua. The analysis reveals that waithood emerges as a prevalent subjective temporal experience under conditions of precarization, with participants frequently describing their lives in terms of stagnation, immobility, and feeling stuck. Drawing on research in the field of (im)mobilities, the thesis argues that this experience of waithood is both shaped by and co-constituted through the mobilizations of neoliberal labor regimes. Finally, it proposes post-work imaginaries as a utopian framework for envisioning alternatives to the current configuration of social relations, offering a critical lens through which to challenge the centrality of work in our lives.