¹ In Germany, recent generations of university graduates refer to themselves as “Generation Praktikum” (“generation internship”). Another telling self-description is that of the “neither-nor-generation” of people who are neither “normally” employed nor permanently unemployed, neither grown-up (as they continue to depend on parental support) nor children (as they are – nominally – adults), neither “here” nor “there”, as they have to be mobile and flexible, and neither “at home” nor “at work”, as both is often both; as Standing observes: “Work places and play places blur in a haze of alcohol and stewed coffee”.

² The intuition here being that skills are a perishable good: If you are not allowed to practice your skills and to do what you can do, chances are that you cannot do it any longer after a while.