The material and symbolic in young women’s negotiation of precarious employment: the case of the Israeli service and care sectors

The literature focusing on young people’s negotiations of precarious employment has tended to split between material and symbolic resources and has mainly stressed coping mechanisms, which support young people’s ability to persist in precariousness at work as opposed to resisting precariousness and demanding change. Analysing interviews with 20 socially marginalised young women working in the Israeli service and care sector we could validate earlier scholarly emphasis on those resources which build young people’s capacity to bear precarious employment. These were topped; however, by young women’s knowledge of workers’ rights and labour law which we interpreted as a symbolic resource building self-advocacy and the capacity to demand change.