The ones that never knock: Career opportunities during the Covid-19 pandemic

Research Area: Management - Strategy, International Management & Business, and Entrepreneurship (SIMBE)

 

Abstract: In this paper, I use ideas from necropolitics and necrocapitalism to explore narratives about career opportunities by frontline professionals in the health sector in Chile during the pandemic. Findings suggest a picture of what could be characterised as an overarching necrocapitalist career narrative, where the starting point of precariousness is normalised and unquestioned as a result of the position of the profession in the labour market and the features of employment. As a result, the professional practice of this group both responds and reproduces logics of commoditization of the profession and its value. Against this backdrop, the possibility of anything (a very precarious job) is equated to the possibility of everything (a successful career). The paper challenges the linearity of ideas about individual career ownership and empowerment prevalent in the careers literature and instead positions ideas about career and career success as part of the necropolitical framing of capitalist power.