Career Genre Flailing: Young Women and the Ambivalence of the Future Career

Based on a four-year longitudinal interview study, this paper explores 16 young women’s relations to the future career and how it shapes their modes of career building. Theoretically, it draws on Lauren Berlant to conceptualize the future career as a promissory object of attachment. The analysis reveals that career building for these young women is marked by ambivalence and contradictory movements of ‘bringing closer’ and ‘keeping distance’ from the future career. We refer to their ambivalent modes as ‘career genre flailing.’ We contribute to work and career studies by illustrating how career building unfolds in flailing and ambivalent movements in-between attachment and detachment from the promissory object of the future career.