13. Writing Task 1.2. Essay

 

Write an essay in which you:

 

Long coveted by job centres and PowerPoint presenters, the old image of moving up the career ladder makes less and less sense by the day. In France and other Western societies, it is increasingly common to see interior designers become bakers, ex-bankers opening up cheese shops, and marketing officers taking up electricians’ tools.
In January 2022, 21% of French working people were in the course of changing careers, while 26% were reported to be considering a career switch in the long term. As part of this trend, executives or the highly educated are increasingly drawn to the world of craft. The practice is sometimes referred to as downshifting in English, which, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is “the practice of leaving a job that is well paid and difficult in order to do something that gives you more time and satisfaction but less money”.
These career changes are a puzzle for sociologists, who have traditionally sought to understand the factors driving upward mobility, class reproduction, or social downgrading. These days, the latter can be observed on an intergenerational scale, with children increasingly occupying lower positions in the social hierarchy than their parents, but also on an intragenerational scale with individuals carrying out jobs for which they are overqualified. In both cases, the phenomenon at play is thought of as something people are subject to, not the result of their own decisions. How, then, can we get our heads around managers moving into the craft industry?
[…] As part of my PhD, I embarked onto a mission to understand downshifters’ motivations, interviewing 55 of them.

The first takeaway to emerge from these interviews is the majority of career switchers show a relationship to work which we can describe as “experiential”. This means that, more than material resources or the prestige of professional status, these professionals prioritise satisfying and fulfilling work lives. 

Admittedly, the craft trade corresponds to a more working-class job sector than the one their initial background had accustomed them to. It requires a lower education level than theirs, and generally confers lower or more irregular income. But the experiential relationship with work leads the career switchers to focus less on these criteria than on the satisfaction that their new job can intrinsically provide. This experiential relationship to work often leads career switchers to indicate that craft work would have more “meaning” than their former profession. […]
Several shortcomings are attributed to computer-based “office” jobs. First, the sedentary nature of the work, both in terms of being indoors and time sitting. Second, the feeling of unproductivity that “intellectual” work sometimes brings is often mentioned. Finally, such “office jobs” often involve a strong division of labour, which can make people feel like a “number”, a “link” or a “cog in a mechanism”.

In contrast, craftsmanship is given qualities that mirror these shortcomings. First of all, it allows people to work outside – which many people who have retrained in construction value – and to exercise their bodies.

Second, craftsmanship is valued for its “concrete” character. By this we mean that the product of the activity is palpable and tangible, which makes it easier to equate the efforts engaged with the result they produce.

Finally, the craft often allows retrained workers to supervise all stages of production, which is valued as opposed to an overly marked division of labour.

This concern for professional autonomy can be seen in the very high proportion of career switchers who become self-employed in the very short term […]. From this point of view, access to independence emerges as an essential condition for retraining in the craft trade.