The normalization of unstable, insecure Web design employment

How do workers stay committed to unstable, insecure jobs and careers? This question guides this dissertation, which explores how web designers perceive job security in the face of great instability. The author interviewed fifty information technology (IT) professionals in order to map their careers and explore how they constructed narrative accounts of their work. Web workers normalize unusually high levels of instability, characterized by job hopping and horizontal mobility, and insecure employment (unwanted job loss, unemployment, or downward mobility) in response to increased employer demand for "flexible" workers. While not all web workers benefit uniformly from uncertain work arrangements, the creation of adaptive strategies allows several to overlook what many contemporary workers would perceive as risky employment patterns and continue their pursuit of financial success and personal fulfillment in their work.; Unstable, insecure employment is normalized at three levels. This occurs first via a process of structural normalization by which web designers agree to enter into tenuous, short-term and other nonstandard employment contracts while following chaotic career trajectories. I detail three career trajectories here, namely web designers who "play it safe", "get lucky", or find themselves "out of synch." Second, normalization occurs through networking as leaders of local labor market intermediary (LMI) organizations act as important occupational socializing agents for IT newcomers. The final component of normalization, narrative construction, explores how web designers normalize instability and insecurity via an assortment of strategic practices. Workers construct narratives in order to convince themselves and others of the benefits of their work while downplaying the drawbacks. Narrative practices include romanticizing the risk equation, selling the self on the IT labor market, serendipity, talking flexibility, and conversion stories. Web designers "talk flexibility" by focusing on autonomy from authority, flexible scheduling, creative outlet, technical advancement, and buffering against financial risk as benefits of their work. In the dissertation's conclusion I argue that the normalization of unstable, insecure employment within a community of middle-class professionals signals the creation of a post-industrial reserve army of labor, making it easier for firms to outsource labor needs while ignoring the needs of domestic workers.