Newcastle Youth Studies Centre Seminar Series: Youth Side-Hustles - Entrepreneurship and Employment in Enterprise Culture
Led by the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences and delivered through the Newcastle Youth Studies Centre, this webinar series brings together researchers working with young people to understand their lives and the social, cultural and economic forces shaping them. The series foregrounds youth-centred research that challenges simplistic or risk-based perspectives, presenting young people’s experiences of inequality, digital technologies, labour market change, housing and climate futures. It highlights the importance of social science research in amplifying young people’s perspectives and informing public debate, policy and practice.
Youth Side-Hustles: Entrepreneurship and Employment in Enterprise Culture brings together David Farrugia (Deakin University), Brendah Churchill (University of Melbourne), Stephanie Patouras (Deakin University), and Kim Allen (University of Leeds) to explore new intersections of entrepreneurship and employment through a focus on young people with ‘side-hustles’—small-scale entrepreneurial activities pursued alongside formal employment. Drawing on a longitudinal mixed-methods Australian Research Council–funded research project, the panel examines side-hustles as both a promoted pathway to passionate self-actualisation and financial freedom and as part of broader anxieties about hustle culture, inequality, and burnout. Informed by sociological discussions of enterprise culture, precarity, gendered labour, and transformations in the nature of work, the discussion uses surveys and interviews to explore relationships between subjectivity, labour, value, and time, the gendered intersections of entrepreneurship and employment, and the implications of side-hustles for theorising precarity and employment in enterprise culture.
Get your free ticket here.
Event Information
- Date:
Wednesday 14 October 2026 from 3:00pm - 4:30pm
Register now
Panel presentations by:
- David Farrugia (Deakin University)
- Brendah Churchill (University of Melbourne)
- Stephanie Patouras (Deakin University)
- Kim Allen (University of Leeds)
This panel discussion explores new intersections of entrepreneurship and employment through a focus on young people with ‘side-hustles’, or small-scale entrepreneurial business activities pursued alongside formal employment. Side-hustles are promoted in popular culture as a pathway to passionate self-actualisation and financial freedom, but are also part of public anxieties about the toxic effects of a ‘hustle culture’ that exacerbates inequalities and leads to burnout. There is also tremendous policy enthusiasm internationally for youth entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment amongst young people, and entrepreneurialism is increasingly regarded as a facet of contemporary employability in a ‘knowledge economy’ that valorises flexibility and an appetite for risk. In this panel we take up these concerns, informed by sociological discussions of enterprise culture, precarity, gendered labour and transformations in the nature of labour. We draw on a longitudinal mixed-methods research project funded by the Australian Research Council exploring the experiences, pathways and subjectivities of young people who combine employment with entrepreneurship. In this panel discussion we draw on surveys and interviews to explore the relationship between subjectivity, labour, value and time enacted in side-hustle labours, gendered intersections of entrepreneurship and employment, and the implications of side-hustles for theorising precarity, gendered employment patterns, and the relationship between entrepreneurship and employment in enterprise culture.
David Farrugia is ARC Future Fellow at Deakin University’s Centre for Research for Educational Impact. His work explores the relationship between youth identities and value relations. He has led current and recent projects in the area of youth and affective labour, youth side-hustles and young people and the everyday politics of precarious labour.
Brendan Churchill is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Melbourne researching in the areas of work and employment, family, youth and gender. His current research program focuses on the changing nature of work and employment for young people, women and families with a particular interest in how the future of work will unfold and impact these groups. He is also researching the gendered dimensions of the gig economy in Australia.
Stephanie Patouras is a PhD Candidate and Research Assistant in the School of Education at Deakin University. Her work examines issues of gender, femininity, productivity and digital platforms, and is recently published in Feminist Media Studies.
Kim Allen is Professor in Sociology of Youth and Culture at the University of Leeds. She is a feminist interdisciplinary scholar whose work sits at the intersections of youth, culture, gender and work. She has published widely on issues including: youth and graduate transitions and ‘employability’; educational inequalities; gender, youth and working lives; and representations of class and gender in popular culture.
