Among status crisis and the desire for autonomy: a generational analysis of solo self-employment and the change of work and biography

This article addresses the issue of solo self-employment from a biographical and generational perspective combined. Based on a qualitative case study this paper demonstrates the specific biographical challenges of entrepreneurship as an individualized lifestyle pattern. After analyzing opportunities and standardizations that affect the biographical work of the interviewee, we consider its embeddedness in the context of generation, academic milieu and within the market of professional cultural services. This reflects that the desire for individuation and autonomy evolved against the backdrop of generation-specific experiences and anticipations of social mobility and social security. Confronted with a lack of traditional careers, a changing labour market and a decline of social security rights, the project of solo self-employment seems for members of the baby boomers generation and academic milieu as a risky, but viable strategy to simultaneously fulfill employment norms and the demands of "authentic self".