Chapter 2: Professionals and Identity Crisis: A Flexibility Matter?

The first chapter investigated the concept of identity understood as a process through a systematic review of the literature on the topic. The debate is fervent and the results have underlined the importance of threats to professional identity. But what is meant by ‘threats’? What dangers does literature really refer to?

An in-depth analysis of the crisis that professional categories are experiencing is the key topic of this chapter. The objective is to investigate some particularly critical and relevant issues that emerged from the unprecedented breakthrough in the first chapter on different (individual, organizational, contextual) levels. In fact, references to de-professionalization, precariousness, and proletarianization of professions emerge, but with a focus and a point of view oriented to the answers that individuals and organizations can guarantee to face these situations. In order to cope with the crisis, professionals adopt a flexibility-oriented approach, in order not to remain anchored to potentially dangerous systems that are capable of annihilating their working stability, as well as their personal prospects.