Youths, work and culture in neoliberal rationality times

Abstract

This article focuses on the theme of youth as an important social category, in a context of social diversity especially interested in the groups that suffer most the effects of exclusion and inequality. The expanded logic of the current social mode of capitalist production and its responses to crises such as neoliberalism and the restructuring of labor relations has resulted in mutations about work and sociability in the contemporary world. It is understood, then, that neoliberal rationality directly interferes in the relation between youths, work and culture and the present essay presents a critical analysis on how this context interferes in the young cultural workers. In the cultural field, labor is a feasible possibility and also enhances the creative essence, new subjectivities and ways of being and being in the world, at the time it faces and reproduces the challenges of precarious work and flexibilization and unemployment or not working as part of this process. In occupational therapy, it is essential to investigate how inequality, exclusion and exploitation intrinsic to capitalism and neoliberal rationality interferes and alters occupations, human activities and daily life, especially of those who most experience its effects.