Elena Ayala-Hurtado

Mario and Emma, two young college graduates in Spain and the U.S., were both unemployed, having trouble making ends meet, and dependent on financial support from their families. They shared similar experiences with “socioeconomic insecurity” (defined as employment precarity and economic instability). But, as they talked to me about their experiences and plans, they revealed very different perceptions of how insecurity textured their lives. For instance, Mario described a sense of being stalled waiting for better conditions: “There’s a lot of plans we can’t make now, and we have to hang on with what we have.” Emma, in contrast, described a sense of being in constant movement, trying to figure out a way forward: “You go with the flow and you make it work no matter what.”

In my recent article, published in Work and Occupations, I sought to understand these cross-national differences. I asked: How do people perceive socioeconomic insecurity? Where do their perceptions come from, and what are the consequences?

At this point it has become common knowledge: leveraging your social capital will help you on the job market. We hear it from scholars, who illustrate the benefits that job candidates get from referrals; from career counselors, who encourage us to reach out personal contacts at companies where we hope to work; and online, where we are relentlessly reminded to expand our professional networks to advance our careers. To get a job, it often seems, you have to know someone.

Yet leveraging connections during the job search is at odds with another widespread belief, that hiring should be meritocratic, based on candidates’ qualifications rather than their connections. This gives rise to a tension. On the one hand, we want to maximize our chances of getting the job by getting a foot in the door. On the other, we feel committed to the principle of meritocracy and concerned that using connections may shade into nepotism.

As Julia, a 28-year-old college graduate in Madrid, Spain, described she and her friends’ persistent experiences with unemployment and precarious, low-paying employment, she burst into tears:   

“We’re doing badly in absolutely everything…It’s a limbo, what I call the professional limbo, in which the logical progression, which is you study, you go to high school, college, you have a job, has changed completely.”

Nonetheless, when Julia imagined her life in five years, she described herself in a stable professional trajectory—in a job she disliked as a private school teacher, but one she would be in permanently: