8 - VORTEX PATHWAYS: UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMISM OF NON-PERMANENT WORK Sahara Sadik Institute for Adult Learning Singapore
INTRODUCTION This chapter calls into question the application of the workplace literature to the experience of non-permanent work. Socio-cultural approaches for researching work and learning are rich in studying the situated individual, but have traditionally privileged understanding learners in stable, site-specific communities. This may make the field less ready to respond to the changing nature of work that comes with the rise of neo-liberal global forces, where non-permanent work arrangements are set to grow while permanent workers can expect to undergo more frequent job and career changes. Using stories based on semi-structured interviews with four non-permanent workers in Singapore, I propose studying the dynamism inherent in the pathways of non-permanent workers, or what I call “vortex pathways”, as an important lens towards shedding new light on alternative approaches for researching learning through, for, and at work, with significant implications for research and policy-making in Singapore and elsewhere.
THE WORKPLACE? In 2014, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, delivered a wide-ranging speech in support of Continuing Education and Training (CET), declaring that the workplace would be a “major site of learning” (Shanmugaratnam, 2014, para 6). This marks a paradigm shift in Singapore’s evolving CET system that has been anchored, thus far, by a competency-
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