{"id":2626,"date":"2020-11-10T10:12:56","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T09:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/economiststalkart.org\/?p=2626"},"modified":"2022-12-14T04:59:51","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T04:59:51","slug":"are-internships-in-the-cultural-industry-unfair-a-study-of-the-demand-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturaleconomics.org\/are-internships-in-the-cultural-industry-unfair-a-study-of-the-demand-side\/","title":{"rendered":"ARE INTERNSHIPS IN THE CULTURAL INDUSTRY (UN)FAIR? A STUDY OF THE DEMAND SIDE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Ellen Loots and R\u016bta Skuji\u0146a<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Work in the cultural industry has been labelled \u2018affective labour\u2019: many workers experience a strong affective attachment to arts and culture, originating and resulting in feelings of wellbeing, connectedness and excitement (cf. Hardt and Negri 2000). Young aspirant workers find the industry a highly appealing work environment, despite increasing evidence of drawbacks of cultural work, including underemployment, low pay and health problems due to the flexibility and insecurity that come with working in the cultural industry. Being able to enter such a labour market often requires a set of unpaid work experiences, including internships. How (un)fair is that?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Internships are work-based learning experiences. When they are unpaid and the standard after education, they imply an opportunity cost and add to the formation of obstacles to the socio-economic mobility that (public) education seeks to attenuate. Indeed, the \u2018fairness of the intern economy\u2019 has become a topic of debate and lawsuits, by which the cultural industry is not unaffected. Unpaid internships \u2018exacerbate the problem of wealth inequality by inculcating in our youngest workers the expectation that a certain amount of unpaid labour is a necessity for \u201csuccess\u201d in the contemporary economy\u2019 (Discenna 2016, 437), a phenomenon that was found pertinent in cultural sectors. Internships have been identified as the only route into them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the employer, internships could provide cost advantages: they entail human capital usage at the cost of training, and, when paid, payment is lower compared with regular jobs. Internships provide flexibility, because interns who do not meet the performance standards of an organisation can be easily discharged. However, internships in the cultural industry have been found associated with questionable employer practices, including poor learning content and working conditions, inadequate compensation and the usage of interns as substitutes for regular staff, with organizations repeatedly renewing internship contracts without ever offering permanent positions. Young people are eager to do internships chiefly to acquire the credentials believed to enhance their chances to bridge the gap between education and employment. Out of fear of others taking those positions and losing the prospects of working in such a preferred industry, graduated students believe that refusing the conditions put by employers may be a waste of their resources spent on education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The demand side of internships has remained relatively understudied: questions as to what extent employers in the cultural industry make use of internships, which employers do so, why and how they do so, are largely unaddressed. Based on data of over 900 available positions in the cultural industry in Belgium,<\/a> collected from the website of the government agency responsible for cultural affairs in the French-speaking part, we examined the demand for intern workforce and addressed issues such as substitution and efficacy in the intern economy (the joint demand for and supply of internship positions). Substitution occurs when employers hire interns instead of regular workers; internship efficacy includes features as compensation, supervisor behaviour (mentoring and support) and work content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our findings are along the following lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n