Social and Private Goods: The Duality Of Unpaid Internships

This review paper offers a political philosophy perspective on the place that unpaid internships occupy within the UK’s graduate labour market. By reviewing a range of sociologically-oriented academic and sources, the paper concludes that we lack an understanding of the deeper historical and philosophical roots of the contentions surrounding this area of work. To address this, the review locates unremunerated internships at the intersections of two opposing liberal philosophies in relation to work: an egalitarian and pluralist strain wherein a job is a key social good; classic political economy in which an individual’s labour is a private good. The paper argues that this contending duality is the origin both of the criticisms that unpaid internships attract for perpetuating social elitism and their persistence in the face of such criticisms.