Paradox of Opportunity

For quite some time, the idea of an institutionalized "three-box" life course has been sharply criticized for the narrow definitions of normality and "normal aging" that it implied, and the restrictions it seemed to place on the options and developmental opportunities of many midlife adults (e.g., Dannefer 1991; Riley and Riley 1994). The norms of the single career and the three boxes of life now seem largely to have evaporated, but—ironically—as a result of forces entirely unrelated to emancipatory notions about the possibilities for successful aging and development. The forces have been technological innovation and corporate concerns about competitiveness and profit margins, which have led to corporate downsizing, restructuring, and the exporting of work from advanced capitalist societies to lower-cost labor markets. Far from utopian, the result is "… a concept of ‘work’ and ‘life’ which might be termed ‘short-termism’" (Bernstein 1996, p. 72). Perhaps predictably, some have celebrated these changes as heralding a new era of choice and lifestyle options (Featherstone, 1991). These changes represent, for many, a reduction in economic security in the United States and an obfuscation of traditionally recognized mechanisms of stratification in Europe (Furlong and Cartmel 1997). In the United States, the organizational dismantling of the "one-career life course" has left many mature, mid-career adults economically and psychologically stranded, experiencing downward mobility at a point in their lives at which they might have hoped to see their earnings continue to grow. Job security has become the top issue in labor negotiations (Sleemi 1995). But the age categories most directly hit by this evaporation have probably been young and young middle-aged adults. Entry-level jobs that lead to long-term, primary sector employment are being replaced by a growing number of low-paying, dead-end jobs that result in sporadic earnings patterns (Gittleman and Joyce 1995). Department of Labor analyses indicate that 20% to 30% of college graduates do not find positions for which they have been trained within the first year after graduating from college (Greenwald 1993). All advanced societies now confront similar technological and economic issues as they intersect with age and the life course (Antikainen, Houtsonen, Kauppila, and Huotelin 1996; Taylor and Walker 1996). However, societies appear to vary both at the collective level—in the governmental and corporate responses to the challenges posed by these strains—and at the individual level in the behavioral and subjective responses of individual workers, who may be increasingly impacted by them as they age. These differences are relevant both to issues of age integration and to structure of the life course. A consideration of how commonly experienced forces of social change produce contrasting responses in different societies can be a fruitful way of understanding social dynamics that are less visible under conditions of stability. Following this strategy, this essay considers some contrasting aspects of how the United States and Germany are responding to these pressures. In the United States, responses to these forces have fallen heavily upon individuals. Accounts of job erosion often emphasize that some such workers have become successful entrepreneurs with relatively high earnings. On the other hand, others have resorted to "moonlighting"—taking a second job, working part time, working at temporary or other marginal jobs or, paradoxically, working more overtime. This is especially the case for midlife (age 35–54) men and women who have heavy family responsibilities and whose prior work experiences accustomed them to a higher income than one or even two low-paying jobs can support (Stinson 1990, Stinson 1997). Some workers are working increasingly long hours through the entire year (Rones, Ilg, and Gardner 1997). Full-time employees, both young and middle-aged, work more overtime than ever; it is estimated that this growing trend has succeeded in the elimination of 3 million jobs with their accompanying costly benefits (Schor 1991). These general trends have also been felt across Europe, where the term "risk society" (Beck 1992; Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1995) has come to prominence. Despite these trends, the situation remains quite different. In Germany, almost all of these individual-level practices have been structurally blocked because union-backed legislation kept many enterprises from being open evenings, weekends, or holidays. Compared to the United States, this will remain true even with recent legislative changes that have relaxed some of these restrictions. The German response has included governmental support for job-sharing (through providing unemployment benefits to part-time workers) as well as more corporate-sponsored retraining programs. In short, the German response has reflected more institutionalized protections in response to collectively articulated needs and worker interests, while the U.S. response reflects more individual-level efforts at adaptation and survival. These behavioral contrasts obviously cannot be understood apart from social policy and must be seen in the context of the more general posture of work organizations, unions, and the state in relation to workers. In general, European unions appear more likely to press for skill upgrading or retraining as integral parts of the job (Worndl 1992), and unions themselves also provide some retraining. Additionally, unions, businesses, and government jointly have supported strong government subsidies for early retirement. Some German unions also have pressed aggressively for further reductions in the work week (Swenson, 1989). In considering these contrasts, the location of workers—both structurally and culturally—must also be noted. As in the United States, skepticism toward unions has been growing in Germany. Nevertheless, German union membership (which by law must be voluntary) has continued to run between 30% and 40%; more significantly, union-negotiated wage agreements cover about 90% of workers (Markovits and Silvia 1992; Worndl 1992). And one year after unification, 50% of East German workers were recruited into the West German unions. By contrast, union membership has declined sharply in the United States and has shifted into less skilled occupations. As a mode of response to adverse change in the occupational structure, collective mobilization in the form of union activity appears to be increasingly weak in the United States but remains a formidable force in Germany. Comparable data on subjective orientations remain sketchy. Although precisely equivalent survey questions are unavailable, there are some limited indications that Germans' levels of optimism and hopefulness have been less adversely affected than have Americans' by these economic challenges. In recent years about 60% of U.S. respondents agreed with the statement, "In spite of what some people say, the lot of the average man is getting worse, not better." By contrast, in 1989 more than two thirds of Germans responded "with hope" when asked, "Is it with hope or fears that you enter the coming year?" Moreover, there are clear differences between the two societies in the strength of unions and in the degree of support for union positions and union activities (e.g., Worndl 1992). For young people, cross-national surveys have shown repeatedly that American youth worry more than German youth about getting a job. Thus, although individual-level economic turbulence has been experienced in both countries, it appears that Germans' levels of optimism and hopefulness have been less adversely affected than have Americans' (Glatzer 1992; Niemi, Mueller, and Smith 1989). Thus, despite a shared sense of heightened risk (Beck 1992), significant differences exist in the way that workers in the two societies are responding to job erosion. These patterns of response appear to reflect a difference in the underlying sense of collective fate and collective responsibility. In the United States, worker displacement was described by a recent Secretary of Labor as a "secession" of those whose skills remain useful for corporate profitability, and who have experienced considerable prosperity; a secession from the social contract of the larger society (Reich 1991). Hardly less remarkable than the secession is the response to it of U.S. workers: That response has entailed a sense of powerlessness, confusion, fear and self-blame, and, at best, of efforts to survive as a lone individual or family (Newman 1993). This response, which renders the structural forces at work largely invisible, is argued to presage what lies ahead for other advanced capitalist societies. However, in the German case the "dynamics of secession" are likely to be quite different, due to the greater sense of solidarity among workers and the primacy given to the rights of workers. Although German unions engage in fewer strikes than do those of the United States, the strikes that do occur are generally popular and effective. In the tensions following reunification, this solidarity was dramatically reflected in the priority given to equalizing wage rates between East and West (Markovits and Silvia 1992), a practice that clearly produced at least short-run strains on the former West Germany. In sum, I hypothesize that the sense of collective well-being among age peers and between age groups will produce differences in the structure and meaning of age integration, and the sense of the location of one's own life course in a convoy of others of varying ages will produce a different construction of the life course in these two societies. These differences will, of course, interact with other forces, such as general economic conditions. For example, during times of economic contraction, the collective orientation may provide a strong base for collective mobilization within and across cohorts, while the individualist orientation of the United States may invite intergenerational conflict, (see Heclo 1988). During periods of rapid expansion, a collective orientation may discourage entrepreneurship when it could be widely advantageous. As noted, sweeping changes in the calculus of individual risk could alter these trends, one way or the other (Beck 1992). Although these contrasts reflect broad and deep differences in culture and in social practice between the United States and Germany, it is yet possible to identify likely mechanisms through which they are reproduced and sustained. Two analytically distinct types of forces can be hypothesized to be important in their reproduction: (a) internalized differences in a sense of collective fate and collective empowerment, and (b) differences in the structure and culture of the adult social networks—especially as regards the importance of networks among workmates. Although these two sources of difference are probably causally related and may both make a significant contribution, they are analytically distinct and imply two fundamentally different explanatory principles: a life-course socialization principle in the first case, and a structural principle in the second. One version of the socialization hypothesis focuses on differences in education. Schools embody the differing conceptions of the life course assumed by the structure of the respective systems. German schools have historically been stratified into three levels (Gymnasium, Realschule, and Hauptschule), oriented toward developing differentiated competencies that provide labor for a stratified occupational structure. Although there has been a steady trend toward increasing flexibility in recent decades, this system has traditionally set parameters that gave individuals a limited range of occupational possibilities after their early teen years. The apprenticeship system was a key mechanism that structured the aspirations and expectations of youth within those parameters, eased the transition to adulthood (Gitter and Scheuer 1997; Hamilton 1990), and helped to provide a sense of collective solidarity and entitlement. In the United States, education has been guided by the "contest norm" of equal opportunity and open competition in which those with talent can excel. And it has been suffused with the individual hope of upward mobility (Turner 1960). "Rise out of your class, not with it," is Martin Trow's inversion of Eugene Debs' famous challenge, and this ideology remains prominent in education. Of course, the U.S. system is itself highly stratified in ways that serve the needs of the existing occupational structure, its egalitarian pretenses notwithstanding. Thus, the crucial difference between the two is not in stratification per se, but in the visibility of the stratification: In the United States, education as an agent of stratification has been largely invisible, creating a contradiction that has involved massive denial on the part of schools, and confusion and unrealistic expectations for graduating students and young adults (Oakes 1985; Rosenbaum 1978). An obvious consequence of this difference for U.S. students is a lack of realistic understanding of real constraints on their own opportunities, which can lead to a sense of powerlessness and self-blame when expectations for a reasonably prosperous future go unmet. These are, of course, precisely the terms used to describe the response of many U.S. workers to job displacement and downgrading. "Aim for the stars, you can do it" is a familiar refrain of commencement addresses. For many young adults, the translation of this exhortation into past tense is, "It was up to you, and you blew it." To the extent that this underlying sense of lost opportunity survives in adult consciousness, it may be the basis for continued self-blame that is carried over into adulthood and persists throughout the life course. If such feelings exist in non-college German youth, they are often ameliorated by a sense of normative appropriateness and convoy-like collegiality among age peers who are tracked together to vocational destinations. The German counterpart features skill training and greater job stability, resulting in a less isolated and hence less powerless position. In this context, individual mobility and achievement have more subdued emphases. The social-structural hypothesis embodies what is, analytically, a fundamentally different principle. It focuses on the impact of present social circumstances in explaining workers' attitudes and behavior, in contrast to socialization experiences. These circumstances include longer stints in a single job (less job mobility), contributing to both the expectation and the reality of more enduring relations with coworkers, (Hastings and Hastings 1993–1994; 1994–1995), and arguably a greater sense of common fate. These factors suggest the likelihood of differences between Germany and the United States in the amount of social support that adults experience from their workmates. German workers have more enduring relationships with coworkers and share more normative expectations of mutual support than their American counterparts, who idealize an entrepreneurial spirit. The concept of the life-course convoy, defined as a network composed of the "… variety of interpersonal relationships that become the basis for social support …" over an extended span of time (Antonucci 1985, p. 97), provides a framework for analyzing workplace networks. As articulated by Kahn 1979 and by Antonucci 1985, this concept provides a framework for characterizing support networks over time on a number of dimensions, including the settings in which convoys are situated. The convoy concept has been largely associated with family and extended family relationships. The question of how well this familistic focus is justified in cross-cultural perspective is one that deserves attention. Placing the notion of "convoys of social support" in the context of work draws attention to a broader set of issues. As Bengtson, Mangen, and Landry 1984 note, social support is actually a specific subtype of solidarity, which they term "functional" solidarity. The broader concept of solidarity entails affective aspects of affiliation—aspects that are tacit but potentially quite intense—as well as the behavioral and material interdependencies indicated by the concept of social support. Solidarity has been used in the study of families and aging (e.g., Bengtson 1993; but has a more in the on work and worker Although it union and other of social and the of solidarity in the work entails shared and shared as well as p. on the importance of workplace social relations I that the of the life course do well to "convoys of as well as "convoys of the of intergenerational solidarity between workers, the has been in the European context and Walker data are to the question of Germans experience more solidarity with and support from coworkers than do U.S. workers. appears clear that adults in the former East Germany as that they experience more support from coworkers than do West Germans However, some recent that the importance of support from coworkers in Germany is even by the of German social 1993). The that worker solidarity in at least one case, been for innovation may also serve as an of its strength and It is to such a fear in the United In sum, I that the structure and ideology of and the structure and ideology of workplace both the in which adult workers to the of work and In the case of the United States, where ideology individual mobility on the basis of individual a behavioral response of working and is by a subjective toward In the German case, where ideology a social contract among workers whose and work experience are individuals the and responses in more social and both individual and social reflect this These a An system that and social stratification German may lead to more of its graduates than one that an open structure of equal opportunity U.S. If reality not to the the for to a of how work that the But because an integral of the of general of social is to provide that institutionalized state of this at the time a of the of open relevant to age integration, there is also an of this in This concerns the of normative Germany is a more and society than is the United States, where of age or a life course" a it is the case that there is a base of support from coworkers, and there are more institutionalized opportunities for education and retraining through the years in Germany, Germans may have more and more in the of their own age least age spite of what appears to be a less sense of The contrasts are and However, to the extent that the general is it the German other form of education or workplace it for the importance of a that the of whose has not been and cannot be such as those of the U.S. of open opportunity and the normality of upward Of course, in Germany less than the United States, has entailed a of the future that hope for a individual However, differences in notions of the of that life and how to it are to different of the importance of economic and and their in This point to the issue of structural and of the of education to itself in In both the of the labor have led to an of and to a of and age However, in society is this a Despite on age as an the expectation that German will in retraining or and such as provide a set of for more life-course quite apart from those by the associated with the "risk society" Giddens, and Lash 1995). In the United States, more than of those in higher education are and this has been true for more than a many such students seem to enter the system with the that their age them or Despite increasingly to the the that is a lone on a through remains One can a different midlife consciousness, were students in their with a of such as aging and the life course, work and and were they given the for and possibilities for the and of the life course, and for the of such life in the context of a to include an framework that workers to the possibilities and of individual collective If society is to what and identify as its to provide life-course opportunities for such a will likely be a in creating the conditions in which the of opportunity can be more

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