Paper short abstract:

I aim to understand the relation between the employee and the firm by putting in doubt the classless imaginary of the employability discourse. I explore the way employability is producing class tensions between the middle and the working class in Cluj, a second tire city in Eastern Europe.

Paper long abstract:

Job creation was predicated in the Eastern European cities on service offshoring, consultancies and managing the sale of state assets and the creation of new economic institutions, local business-to-business chain making, and command and control function for the new production facilities set up in the region. However, the firm becomes increasingly unreliable in providing a stable position or even the prospects of advancement, but may offer the necessary support to enhance one's employability. Employability promises the freedom to choose between successive positions and transform them in learning experiences within a career field. A new wave of optimism came with the narrative of "portfolio worker" as the social structure of the city accommodates an expansion of the professional positions at the expense of the blue collars relocated in the suburbs and surrounding towns. In this paper I aim to better understand the relation between the employee and the firm by putting in doubt the classless imaginary of the employability discourse. Focusing on the employability narrative among the middle class and working class in Cluj, Romania, a second tire city in the urban hierarchy of Central Europe, I will question the very assumption that the whole issue of the employee-employer relation is a one-to-one relation between a person and the firm, without political consequences for the other employees. In this paper I explore the way employability works in producing new class tensions between the middle class and the working class, following the classification effects of the self-development, self-bettering and self-education narratives.