Constructing Unemployed Job Seekers as Professional Workers: The Depoliticizing Work–Game of Job Searching

Abstract

Unemployed Americans overwhelmingly describe their predicament as an individual and private challenge, and not as a public issue with structural causes and political solutions. This case study utilizes participant observation and in-depth interviews at a support organization for unemployed white-collar workers to explore the concrete dynamics that render the structural and political dimensions of unemployment beyond discussion. Whereas the existing literature focuses on the role of ideology in shaping subjective understandings of unemployment, my ethnographic data indicate that the lived experience of job searching is critical to understanding why individualist ideologies resonate with unemployed job seekers. Engagement in the process of job searching is analyzed as a type of work that generates an absorbing "work-game." Playing this game depoliticizes unemployment by channeling the players' practical energies towards strategic decision-making and individual level maneuvers and away from larger structural contexts. The depoliticizing effects of the game endure even after job seekers cease to play. For job seekers who encounter obstacles to finding employment in the labor market and become discouraged, the process of playing the game generates the experience of being a loser, and thus reinforces individualized understandings of unemployment.

Active labour market policy and its outcomes

“…The main argument is that modern labour market policies shift responsibility to the individual; thus, personal responsibility has become more important to successful job searches (Sharone, 2007;Wright, 2012). Uchitelle (2007) describes "a shift from a shared, we're-in-it-together way of thinking to a go-it-alone world of personal responsibility" (Uchitelle, 2007, p. X); in this world, structural and economic forces are ignored, and job loss is regarded as an individual failure (Silver et al, 2005, p. 35), which, in turn, decreases self-efficacy.…”

Effects of (un)employment on young couples’ health and life satisfaction

“…Negative self-attributions are likely to converge with public stereotypes, given that unemployed people are often stereotyped as being less educated, less competent, or unmotivated to find work (Stettner & Wenger, 2003). For many job seekers, attempts at finding work can be discouraging and can foster the feeling of incompetence (Sharone, 2007), even in highly educated unemployed people (Newman, 1999). Despite indicators that unemployed people had already reported poorer health before their job loss than workers who remained working (Kroll & Lampert, 2011), the majority of studies point to a deterioration of health due to a job loss (Andersen, 2009;Thomas, Benzeval, & Stansfeld, 2005).…”

“If I Don’t Have to Work Anymore,Who Am I?”: Job Loss and Collaborative Self-Concept Repair

“…The cooperative practices observed in this study are thus best seen as emerging from the conditions under which people came together to deal with a common problem and from the operation of self-concept motives. This interpretation is supported by the finding of Sharone's (2007) study of a state-supported job search group for displaced professionals. Once convened, group members developed cooperative practices and supportive relationships much like those reported here.…”

“…Sharone 2007). Unemployment thus became a challenge or a problem to be overcome rather than a crisis to be passively endured.…”