Paper short abstract:

Optimism came with the narrative of “portfolio worker” as the social structure of the CEE city accommodates an expansion of the professional positions. I focused on the employability narrative in a middle scale city in Romania, Cluj.

Paper long abstract:

Despite diminishing levels of European aggregate demand for

jobs and ”transitional unemployment”, many East European cities were able

to negotiated a new position of command and control in the global urban

hierarchy. The last two decades, for the major cities and some second tire

cities, meant major transformation in terms of connectivity to the global

flows of capital. Job creation was predicated in these cities on service

offshoring, consultancies and managing the sale of state assets. 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 highly skilled, skilled and

unskilled workers in a middle scale city in Romania, Cluj, 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.