Guest of the “Talk franceinfo”, she believes that young graduates are no longer there to “realize themselves” individually, but to carry out collective projects “which can have an impact in our daily lives”.
“There is a return of us, of the collective” among graduates entering the job market, explains Elisabeth Soulié, anthropologist, essayist and author of Generation Z in X-rays (published by Cerf).
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Guest of Talk franceinfo, Thursday March 2, she tells what these under-thirties told her in an interview: “The number of times they tell me: ‘I prefer to have a job, an almost less interesting task, but to do it collectively, to do it together’.”
“Expectations are no longer the same. I am no longer here to fulfill myself within my box, but to do something together”.
Elisabeth Soulié, anthropologistat franceinfo
According to the anthropologist, the generation born after 1995 aspires to “projects that can have an impact in our daily lives, in people’s lives”. “The notion of meaning, she continues, it is located on something that is extremely precise. They tell me: ‘Utopias are very heavy to bear even in relation to ecology, which is important, c concretely what is the point of what we do.” It describes young employees seeking “much shorter assignments with projects in which they can see the whole process”.
Work remains a central value
New recruits who are no longer necessarily ready to accept the working conditions to which previous generations have agreed, as illustrated by the movement of “quiet quitting” (silent resignation), relayed in particular on TikTok. “There is a disconnect between what we expect from work and what we cannot have from work”, observes Daphnée Breton, occupational psychologist.
Generation Z will implement “a kind of individual strategy which becomes collective because a certain number is in this process of protection”.
Daphnée Breton calls however not to stigmatize “this youth who would be lazy, less involved in work, whose place of work would not be central. The numbers are decreasing, points out the psychologist, but they are still very high. In the latest survey by the Jean Jaurès Foundation, 60% of respondents put work first.