This chapter has examined the literature on internships to establish what is known and not known, and to highlight key issues associated with the practice. Although there is no one definition of internships it has been argued that graduate internships can be distinguished from other forms of work experiences and that a defining feature is that they are something that individuals engage in in order to work towards particular career aims. In terms of features, the literature suggests that internships can take a variety of forms, lasting from a few weeks to over a year, and consisting of a range of tasks from challenging, developmental work to routine and mundane tasks with little developmental benefit. However, in nearly all of the literature on internships it would appear that one common feature is that they comprise a temporary, and some would say precarious, form of employment. It could be argued that this situates the practice within wider debates about employment and labour market change on the one hand, whereby increasing financialisation and flexibilisation is argued to have led to greater risk aversion among employers and use of flexible and insecure forms of employment (e.g. Standing, 2011; Thompson, 2003, 2013; Appelbaum, 2012;
Rubery, 2015), and careers and transitions into employment on the other, in which individuals are increasingly expected to take charge of their own training and employability and a positional labour market increasingly requires graduates to exhibit additional credentials in order to compete for the best opportunities (Ware, 2015a, 2015b; Brown and Hesketh, 2004; Brown, 2013; Bathmaker et al., 2013). In fitting in with this context, it could be argued that the literature reveals a kind of ‘dual view’ of internships. On the one hand they are thought to convey a range of potential benefits to individuals, employers and wider society, although the benefits to individuals tend to be the principal focus. While, at the same time, there are real concerns about exploitation and the extent to which the practice presents a barrier to social mobility and is a mechanism of socio-economic reproduction. Whilst a number of qualitative studies have been illuminating on the subject, the extent to which either of these aspects of internships applies in practice, or even the prevalence of internships, has not been demonstrated empirically. While attempts have been made to estimate the incidence of internships in the UK graduate labour market, the figures vary wildly, and whilst some studies have looked at questions of outcomes and patterns of participation, none of them have provided definitive answers. This research aims to address these gaps by exploring the following research questions:
1) To what extent is the practice of internships a feature of the graduate labour market, what forms do they take and what are the perceived benefits?
2) Are there issues around access to and participation in internships and do these have implications for fairness and social mobility?
3) What are the outcomes of engaging in graduate internships for individuals and do they improve interns’ positions in the UK graduate labour market? The following two chapters of the literature review attempt to situate internships within wider debates on labour market change and careers, transitions into work and the graduate labour market. They outline and discuss key theories in these areas in order to contextualise the practice and to propose how internships fit in with the theoretical context.
3 Theories of employment and labour
market change
The previous chapter has discussed the literature on internships. It was argued that, despite a lack of reliable quantitative evidence in relation to internships, qualitative research has suggested that on the one hand internships can be seen as a means for labour market entrants to improve their employability and get a foothold in the labour market, while at the same time there are concerns about the practice’s impact on social mobility and that the precarious position of interns may leave them open to exploitation, particularly in an increasingly individualised and insecure labour market. This chapter discusses theories of labour market change in order to locate internships within wider developments in the labour market and to describe the pressures and trends that may go some way to explaining the emergence of the practice. It is argued that a desire for flexibility among employers and policy makers, coupled with a reticence about committing to new job entrants, has led to an ‘audition’ or ‘try before you buy’ culture (Smith, 2010; Thompson, 2013). At the same time, a discourse about an increasingly competitive and insecure labour market could be argued to make labour market entrants more inclined to accept whatever opportunities are open to them.
Firstly, the chapter discusses theories of labour market change, starting with early theories about the flexible firm, labour market segmentation and ‘new capitalism’ (e.g. Atkinson, 1984; Doeringer and Piore, 1971; Sennett, 1998). The chapter then moves on to discuss more recent conceptions of labour market insecurity, financialisation and flexibilisation, and the pressures that drive these trends. These theories posit that a number of factors have combined to drive employers to increasingly seek flexibility in their workforce and to be cautious about committing to employees and labour market entrants long term. Internships can be seen as emblematic of this ‘try before you buy’ culture as they offer employers a low-cost way
to ‘try out’ new recruits with little risk and commitment (CIPD, 2010b; GPCF, 2013; Siebert and Wilson, 2013; Frenette, 2013). The chapter then goes on to discuss evidence to support or refute theories of labour market change. It is argued that although there is little evidence of the seismic shift towards insecurity and flexibility predicted by some theorists, there is evidence of a general creep towards more insecure and flexible forms of employment. Although internships are not generally captured in the statistics examining the decline of the standard employment relationship, their emergence is consistent with this creep towards an increasingly precarious labour market. Finally, the chapter concludes by arguing that this creeping insecurity is emblematic of a financialised capitalism that is increasingly concerned with profitability and so seeks workforce flexibility and is increasingly cautious about investing in labour market entrants. This in turn shifts responsibility from employers to individuals and other labour market institutions, such as the education system, for training and developing employability (Thompson, 2013). The emergence of internships then, might be seen as a manifestation of these emerging pressures, whereby interns are expected to take responsibility for developing the skills needed to perform the job and employers can try out new recruits before committing to them long term (Smith, 2010; Frenette, 2013).