‘Selling the self’: packaging the narrative trajectories of workers for the labour market

Abstract

Based on ethnographic observations in a programme on job search training in Fribourg, Switzerland, I discuss the regimentation that is expected from job seekers on how to ‘sell the self’ in the labour market, i.e. on how to successfully manage a job interview. I will show how in attempting to narratively package their trajectories, the coaches’ focus lies on a particular register that is aimed at the ‘art of getting liked’. The job seekers are instructed in bodily and communicative behaviour that puts an emphasis on affect, positivity, and agency. In this, these practices can be understood as concurrent with neoliberal principles that involve techniques of the self as well as the activation of the individual. Yet, as a result, the potentially mobile and multilingual trajectories of the job seekers become mainstreamed in the monolingual environment of officially bilingual Fribourg, in which French is the dominant language.