The Loneliness of the Precarious Youth: An Anthropological Exploration of the Nexus between Loneliness and Waged Labor

Sažetak

The phenomenon of loneliness has been publicly constructed as a major social issue –a hallmark of the 21st-century pandemic – and is essentially viewed as negative. However, contributions from the anthropology of loneliness extensively problematize it. In line with this topic, sustained ethnographic fieldwork on loneliness spanning two years with individuals aged 18 to 30 in Spain shows that, in contrast to the public construction of loneliness, it is a socio-cultural affect, at times contradictory and ambivalent, and rooted in structural and cultural processes that go beyond mere individual experiences. Within this framework, waged labour and the logics of precarization are described by the young individuals involved in the ethnography as major causes and motivations for those experiencing loneliness. This paper aims to analyse the links between loneliness and waged labour, which, far from being univocal, are complex and ambivalent, encompassing aspects such as alienation, fatigue, and discomfort, as well as agency and forms of resistance.

Ključne riječi: loneliness, solitude, precarity, capitalism, wage labour