The Paradoxes of Entrepreneurial Participation of Young Adults in Quebec
In Quebec, a number of young people engage in social entrepreneurship projects in order to combine their needs for social and political participation with their desire for personal and professional fulfillment. Based on a series of in-depth interviews with these young people, we analyze the meaning of this experience for them and the paradoxes that this social phenomenon raises. The young people explain that they are involved in entrepreneurial projects to feel useful and to express their values of social solidarity and justice. While questioning the logics of the capitalist market, they use the neoliberal language of the “self-entrepreneur”, which raises paradoxes and highlights the paucity of the collectivist and political discourses that society offers them.