‘Awesome and Scary’ – Examining youth, risk and accidents at work

Introduction
Each year more than 700,000 people between the age of 18 and 24 are seriously hurt at work in Europe. According to the Danish Working Environment Authority, 5,000 Danes between the ages of 18and 24 are involved in work-related accidents every year. People between 18- 24 are more accident-prone at work than anyone else. This paper examines how safety is experienced and practiced among young employees. The paper offers an insight into young employees’ narratives of risk situations at work. It examines the ways young employees in different organizational contexts talk about- and relate to- dangerous situations at work that they have experienced themselves.

Methods
The narratives in the paper are chosen from qualitative interviews with 47 employees between 15 and 24 years of age, who worked in either: Retail, industrial work, hotel and restaurant, building and construction or care. The interviews were produced from January 2009 to 2011. The analytical focus of the analysis in the paper is the causal accounts that explain and justify accidents in relation to constructions of youth within different organizations. The analysis draws on Silvia Gherardi’s (2006) work on safety and work environment. In her research, safety is considered a product of situated ‘activity of everyday practices’ in organizations.

Results
The paper shows how young employees ‘position’ themselves - and are ‘positioned’ in organizations within different discourses of risk and safety – because they are young, and as a part of practicing youth.

Discussion
The paper questions the tendency to consider risk as a product of being young, and as something that all adolescents pursue. The paper suggests that working risk orientated has to be seen as an organizational phenomenon; as situated practices connected to the conditions and cultures that exists in the work organizations.