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Paper short abstract:

After the Romanian Jiu Valley’s transition away from coal, the region’s inhabitants are coping on a narrow labour market. This paper shows how the region's young adults take the first steps towards their professional future in circumstances of change, limited and insecure employment, and precarity.

Paper long abstract:

The Romanian Jiu Valley has seen major changes in the past 30 years. Previously, the region’s 14 coal mines have mono-industrially shaped every aspect of life here. With ten of the mines shut down, the remaining four soon to follow, the population in the region’s six cities has halved, employment opportunities have decreased, and most salaries barely cover employees’ essential needs. The region is on a continued quest for viable post-coal futures, while at the present time the shrinking public services, a handful of factories, a threadbare service industry, and an at best aspirational tourism sector make for limited employment options and precarious work experiences.

This paper explores the trajectories of young adults who remain in the Jiu Valley after finishing their school education. In contrast to many of their peers who move to bigger Romanian cities or Western and Central Europe for continued education or work, they make their first work and employment experiences on the precarious labour market of their home region. I will trace their everyday lives as young adults making futural decision about and first steps in their work life on the background of severe deindustrialisation. Through their successes and frustrations, a highly gendered labour market reveals itself, and the role of class and family circumstances as well as the continued power of mining salaries become apparent. In the discrepancies between wishing, planning, and lived realities emerge insights about what living and working in the Jiu Valley should and might look like in the future.