Living and Working in the Event City: The Political Economy of Youth Precarity in Milan

Abstract This article advances a theoretical temporal-spatial framework for analysing youth conditions in event cities, developing an account of youth economic vulnerability in Milan in the Milano–Cortina 2026 conjuncture. It argues that the conditions shaping young people’s lives are produced at the intersection of labour-market restructuring, housing dynamics and urban revalorization, and cannot be adequately captured through separate analyses of “transitions”, “cultures”, “identities”, or “politics”. The mega-event is approached as a temporal and symbolic accelerator of ongoing processes, touristification, city branding, and the expansion of consumer services, intensifying pressures on labour conditions and access to housing. Adopting an intersectional perspective, I conceptualize a “chronotope of precariousness” and a mechanism of “double precarity” in which temporal fragmentation in service work and housing insecurity mutually reinforce one another, reshaping youth autonomy, life planning, and urban belonging.