The sub­tle, relent­less pres­sure to do an intern­ship is now part of being young. In my first years of high school, I dim­ly under­stood that an intern­ship was a priv­i­lege or a nec­es­sary humil­i­a­tion, but wasn’t sure which. When I final­ly made the plunge and took an intern­ship, I was 23, enrolled in a master’s pro­gram at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, and wor­ried that my résumé was look­ing increas­ing­ly impractical.

Required by their school to take ‘a social internship,’ two girls in the Netherlands, aged 14 and 15, intern as prostitutes in the local red-light district.

I hoped to put a long-fes­ter­ing anx­i­ety to rest. I had been inse­cure about intern­ships for years – as long as I’d been watch­ing friends announce their life’s pas­sion and then maneu­ver, by all means nec­es­sary, to score the match­ing internship.

My intern­ship was locat­ed in Isling­ton, an NGO (and intern) ghet­to of sleek lit­tle offices hid­den down nar­row streets. Dur­ing the dampest half of a Lon­don year, I spent two days at the NGO each week, unpaid except for a basic lunch stipend and tran­sit costs. Often bare­ly noticed, I’d look up from my lap­top, brought from home, to the rain drip­ping down beyond the win­dow. My ​“desk” could be any­where in the hip dis­ar­ray: interns shift­ed spots depend­ing on the day’s con­fig­u­ra­tion of reg­u­lar staff. I trans­lat­ed mate­r­i­al on the NGO’s web­site from Chi­nese to Eng­lish. Or, I wrote com­ments in the online forums, did image search­es or fin­ished schoolwork.

The interns – and we were a mer­ry lit­tle band – earned an hon­or­able men­tion dur­ing the office Christ­mas par­ty, but it back­fired in humil­i­at­ing fash­ion: no one knew who we were. The clap­ping of our full-time col­leagues was polite and con­fused; they craned their necks in var­i­ous direc­tions, attempt­ing to direct their forced smiles toward someone.

Soon after, at a dingy lunch counter where the measly sand­wich­es fit our stipend, a fel­low intern said to me, ​“The best thing about intern­ships is that you can spin them.”

He had it exact­ly right. Intern­ships are a world of spin. You can spin them because – whether you’re an intern or an employ­er – no one knows what they mean. Even the word ​“intern” is a smoke­screen, more brand than job descrip­tion, lump­ing togeth­er inter­mit­tent and pre­car­i­ous roles we might oth­er­wise call vol­un­teer, temp, sum­mer job, and so on.

The intern­ship has become a dis­tinc­tive new form of labor, a prod­uct of trans­for­ma­tions in high­er edu­ca­tion and the work­place dur­ing the last half-cen­tu­ry. Ever since the Vic­to­ri­an demar­ca­tion of child­hood as a time for learn­ing rather than labor­ing, cap­i­tal­ist soci­eties have strug­gled over how to ush­er young peo­ple from the world of the class­room into the world of fac­to­ries and offices.

After a cen­tu­ry of exper­i­men­ta­tion, the intern­ship, a late­com­er to the field, has emerged vic­to­ri­ous as the unri­valed gate­way to white-col­lar work, now backed by gov­ern­ment poli­cies across the globe, employ­ers’ hir­ing prac­tices, a near­ly unan­i­mous Acad­e­my and a mil­lion aux­il­iary efforts.

Today, interns famous­ly shut­tle cof­fee in a thou­sand news­rooms, con­gres­sion­al offices and Hol­ly­wood stu­dios. But they also deliv­er aid in Afghanistan, write newslet­ters for church­es, build the human genome, sell lip­stick, deliv­er the weath­er report on TV and pick up trash. They are col­lege stu­dents work­ing part-time, recent grad­u­ates bare­ly scrap­ing by, thir­ty-some­things chang­ing careers, and – increas­ing­ly – just about any white-col­lar hope­ful who can be hired on a tem­po­rary basis, for cheap or for free, often tak­ing on work once per­formed by full-time, paid employees.

Our favorite peons, we load them with lit­tle indig­ni­ties. An intern for a New York the­ater com­pa­ny car­ries urine sam­ples to her boss’s doc­tor. A super­vi­sor directs an intern to load his own car with leak­ing bags of garbage and dri­ve around until he finds a dump­ster. Required by their school to take ​“a social intern­ship,” two girls in the Nether­lands, aged 14 and 15, intern as pros­ti­tutes in the local red-light district.

In its own affec­tion­ate, dis­tort­ed way, pop­u­lar cul­ture alone seems to under­stand the intern. In the Wes Ander­son film The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou, when one of the bland face­less interns on Team Zis­sou threat­ens to leave the expe­di­tion, Cap­tain Zis­sou retal­i­ates by vow­ing to with­hold his aca­d­e­m­ic credit.

We are reach­ing a peri­od when the com­mand­ing heights of Amer­i­can life are dom­i­nat­ed by for­mer interns. Sen­a­tors and cab­i­net mem­bers start­ed polit­i­cal life as D.C. interns, Wall Street’s ​“mas­ters of the uni­verse” cut their teeth dur­ing col­le­giate sum­mers, cul­tur­al and intel­lec­tu­al elites broke in through cozy unpaid gigs and on it goes. It comes as lit­tle sur­prise that these suc­cess­ful for­mer interns now per­pet­u­ate the sys­tem that gave them a start.

“You will not get a high-lev­el job now in the econ­o­my with­out an intern­ship” – this is the blunt assess­ment of Phil Gard­ner, head of Col­le­giate Employ­ment Research Insti­tute at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, who has watched the boom for 30 years.

I worked more than 300 hours with­out pay for the NGO in Isling­ton, but at least I had a schol­ar­ship that cov­ered my liv­ing expens­es. Oth­ers were sup­port­ed by their par­ents or dug deep into their sav­ings. But what about those qual­i­fied young men and women, I won­dered, who can’t depend on their fam­i­lies or their rainy-day funds to pay for hous­ing and food? Would they ever be able to enter the do-good­er world of NGOs? With unpaid intern­ships vir­tu­al­ly a pre­req­ui­site for get­ting hired, I had to admit that the answer was prob­a­bly no. The fact is, intern­ships embody and pro­mote the inequal­i­ties of oppor­tu­ni­ty that civ­i­lized peo­ple have been striv­ing to reduce in courts, schools and communities.

The future of work is at stake

After the titan­ic strug­gles of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the indus­tri­al­ized world reached a degree of con­sen­sus about work. Peo­ple agree that 10-year-olds should be found in school, not in coal mines; that week­ends and vaca­tions should be avail­able to all; that basic work­place pro­tec­tions and a min­i­mum wage are part of a fair and just soci­ety and that work­ers should be able to orga­nize around their com­mon interests.

Many intern­ships rep­re­sent a slow drift away from this firm, humane con­sen­sus about work. Along with the explo­sion of con­tin­gent labor and much scari­er trends such as the resur­gence of sweat­shops and a glob­al race to the bot­tom around labor stan­dards, intern­ships are turn­ing back the clock. They are symp­to­matic of a dras­ti­cal­ly unequal, hyper­com­pet­i­tive world in the mak­ing – one in which, as so many Amer­i­cans right­ly fear, suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions will work hard­er for a low­er qual­i­ty of life with few­er avenues for get­ting ahead.

Present, for­mer and future interns need to take action to restore the promise and dig­ni­ty of work. Until now, young peo­ple have ced­ed every­thing, ask­ing only for a foot in the door. It’s time to stop spread­ing the intern­ship gospel. Stop think­ing your labor is, was, or will be worth­less. Just because you have a stu­dent ID and live in a dorm doesn’t mean you’re not also a work­er. Iden­ti­fy and orga­nize as interns, and form alliances with like-mind­ed groups such as temps and free­lancers. If you’ve moved on, don’t for­get the rook­ie of the work­force, the unpaid kid doing menial and admin­is­tra­tive work: the intern.

We are the future of work. The intern­ship explo­sion is not an emer­gency, yet – it is a sim­mer­ing injus­tice, a glass ceil­ing half-built that there is still time to tear down. And it is more than just a phase or a fluke: when work­ing for free becomes the norm, every­one los­es – except those at the very top. We’ve trust­ed the assur­ances of oth­ers too much, for too long. We’ve been free for the tak­ing. When will our hours matter?

This essay was adapt­ed from Ross Perlin’s Intern Nation: How to Earn Noth­ing and Learn Lit­tle in the Brave New Econ­o­my (Ver­so, May 2011).