Flexible Work Arrangements as a Desired Future or a Vague Prospect: Dilemmas of Working Russian University Students

Flexible employment arrangements seem to be an attractive proposition in the modern labor market. Young people are often seen as focused on a flexible schedule, remote work and platform employment. At the same time, sociologists warn about the downsides of flexibility associated with the risks of precarity, deprofessionalization and decreased work efficiency. This study analyzes the preferences of young people regarding the organization of their future work. Based on the materials of 38 interviews with working undergraduate students in different fields of study and from different regions, narratives of understanding the problems of choosing a form of employment are highlighted, associated not only with the analysis of contextual opportunities in the labor market, but also with the correlation of work with one’s own life and professional trajectories. We identified dilemmas centered on the problems of productivity, convenience, and the rationality of flexible work arrangements. The “professionalization dilemma” draws attention to the contrast between the convenience of remote work and the relatively higher subjective assessment of work efficiency and professionalization opportunities in the office during early stages of the career-planning process. The “dilemma of maturation” introduces the life trajectory of an employee into the discourse. Respondents, in addition to the established efficiency of working from home, begin to rethink the concept of “comfort”, which in the long run implies separating the realms of work and personal life and is tightly connected to acquiring new social roles (marriage, parenthood). The dilemma of “free employment” demonstrates that students receiving tertiary education at Russian universities who identify themselves with specific specialties perceive freelancing as a temporary and frivolous activity that does not provide the potential for professional development, and, as such, is not included in the pool of long-term career strategies. The article is useful for understanding youth`s discourses around preferred work arrangements, as well as the inconsistency of their statements regarding work flexibility, which taken as a whole questions the general prioritization of new types of employment and can be interpreted as the priority of variable work arrangements for various professional groups, and at different stages of the modern youth’s maturation.