Youth labor in socialist Bulgaria - from ideology to labor practices
The research is aimed at an important part of the state policy in socialist Bulgaria - the forced engagement of young people, future intellectuals as an unpaid or low-paid labor force in various sectors of economy. Through this compulsory employment of high school and university students in...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Institute of Ethnography, SASA, Belgrade
2022-01-01
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| Series: | Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0350-0861/2022/0350-08612202037P.pdf |
| Summary: | The research is aimed at an important part of the state policy in socialist
Bulgaria - the forced engagement of young people, future intellectuals as an
unpaid or low-paid labor force in various sectors of economy. Through this
compulsory employment of high school and university students in summer free
months the ruling elites aim to discipline the young intelligentsia and to
educate them in work habits. The main form of forced labor is the
participation in youth brigades, but other alternative forms of youth labor
are gradually being adopted and imposed. The text presents an ethnological
study of youth seasonal labor in the sector of international tourism in the
1970s and 1980s, looking at the perspective of young intellectuals working
during their summer vacations in the Youth Travel Bureau “Orbita” as
part-time tour guides of foreign groups. This form of temporary employment
of young people is accepted as an alternative to the participation in youth
brigades and is related to intellectual work. The aim is to analyze the main
features of the labor culture of part-time guides working at the
International Youth Center “Georgi Dimitrov” near Primorsko. The officially
imposed principles and norms for the work of the young collaborators are
presented and their application in the working life of the guides is
studied. The subjects of research are the attitudes for working with
tourists, the relations in the work environment, the labor practices, the
difficulties in everyday working life and the ways of overcoming them, the
informal aspects of the activities. The study is based on biographical
interviews with former guides between the ages of 50 and 65, conducted in
2019 and 2020. As a participant for six summer seasons in this type of work,
the author also relies on the method of the reflexive anthropology. The
results of the study show how the discrepancy between the expectations and
intentions of the ideologues of the provided tourist services, on the one
hand, and the behavior and labor practices of young people actually occurs.
The examples are indicative of the changes “from below”, through everyday
strategies of young people, of the initially conceived system of the
international youth tourism in socialist Bulgaria. |
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| ISSN: | 0350-0861 2334-8259 |