‘Shameful work’: A psychosocial approach to father–son relations, young male unemployment and femininity in an ex-steel community

Abstract

Using a psychosocial approach, this paper explores young unemployed men's resistance to work they describe as 'embarrassing' and 'feminine'. The context is the closure of a steelworks in a town in the South Wales valleys, in which their resistance is mediated by father-son relationships that dictate what counts as proper manly work. In this study, young men, as well as their mothers and (where possible) their fathers, were interviewed. The interviews reveal a community suffering the effects of intergenerational trauma and riven with complex feelings about masculinity and femininity. These feelings are projected onto the young men, who feel bullied and shamed by their families, peers and others in the community because they are unable to find gender-appropriate work. The implications of these findings for understandings of youth male unemployment are considered.

Some psychic effects of neoliberalism: Narcissism, disavowal, perversion

“…In a psychoanalytic frame, however, which recognizes no possibility of overcoming dependence, the task is to comprehend the psychic effects of a cultural lack of attunement to dependency needs and a cultural encouragement to split off and project dependency needs and vulnerability. Such effects, as we have seen, include intense shame about dependence (see Jimenez and Walkerdine, 2012), omnipotent versions of autonomy, and narcissistic processes that include oscillations between grandiosity and self-deprecation with regard to the self, and idealization and devaluation with regard to the relation with others. These narcissistic states and oscillations are motored by the fantasies subtending the fetish structure of a perverse society that disavows a reality marked by gross failures of accountability and proper caretaking by those in authority (Layton, 2010).…”

Geographies of deindustrialization and the working‐class: Industrial ruination, legacies, and affect

“…Research on young men has suggested that historically constituted “expectations of masculinity” rooted in industrialism “have a huge impact on expectations of manhood, and the performances that are then deployed link back to these traditions” (Ward, , p. 63; see also Nayak, , , ). In a study of the impacts of a steelworks closure in Wales, Walkerdine and Jimenez (; see also Jimenez & Walkerdine, ) document the extent to which the rhythms, processes, and identities ordered by the steelworks when it was in operation have endured within the study area since its closure. Analysing evidence from psychosocial narrative interviews, the authors identify that fissures have emerged within formations of gender identity caused by service sector jobs, perceived locally as feminine employment, replacing former types of work considered masculine.…”