Unemployment: what kind of problem is it?

Abstract

This paper uses poststructuralist ideas to describe aspects of the battle to retain personal power of one mother of four late adolescent children, when she became unemployed during the restructuring of the New Zealand economy, which began in 1984 and continues in the present. A deconstructive analysis of the text of unstructured interviews with Sonya shows how agencies of the State, including the Welfare, gradually increase their practices of surveillance over her domestic life and reduce her options for agentic action in public life. These practices are linked to an analysis of discourses of economic rationalism and liberal humanism to show that this insidious exclusion and regulation is underpinned by`possessive individualism'Ð a model of the person/citizen who has rights to speak in the public sphere insofar as he/she owns property. It is argued that this model of personhood, which pervades much community psychology, at the same time devalues both the traditional work of women and forms of nonmaterial productivity which can be characterized as human service. The paper claims that the discursive approach can help to avoid disrespectful implications of de®cit in people whose voices are silenced by dominant discourses, including those which dominate much psychological theorizing. # 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Unemployment as Illness: An Exploration of Accounts Voiced by the Unemployed in Aotearoa/New Zealand

“…He may not be the "breadwinner," but he is a "good father" who can provide support for his wife and spend "quality time with his children." In a similar manner to the unemployed mother interviewed by Drewery (1998), Malcolm is crafting a respectable life world for himself through the creative reframing of dominant social expectations.…”

“…Despite the need for research into the meanings people assign to their circumstances, only sporadic interest has been given to people's experiences of unemployment (Drewery, 1998;Furnham & Hesketh, 1989), poverty (Harper, 1996), and health inequalities (Blaxter, 1997). For instance, Furnham (1982Furnham ( , 1988 investigated the range and type of accounts people provide of poverty and unemployment.…”

“…Popay et al, 1998), the use of a contemporary social constructionist approach is appropriate (cf. Drewery, 1998). Such work provides a way of moving beyond the investigation of people's attitudes and beliefs as individualized cognitions to the investigation of the ways in which human thought is communally produced through social interactions within specific material circumstances.…”

“…Such benefit cuts were considered a necessary means of maintaining a difference between low-paid workers and the unemployed and were intended to reduce people's dependence on the state by "motivating" the unemployed to join the workforce, the assumption being that there were available jobs for the unemployed (cf. Drewery, 1998). Because of a lack of available jobs, however, such policies did not result in a reduction in unemployment, but in increased hardship and stigma for the unemployed (cf.…”

“…Sonya has rhetorically negotiated a stronger moral position for herself, which preserves her identity as a worthy member of society, by stating that other people may be unemployed owing to a lack of motivation but that she is motivated and actively seeking work (cf. Drewery, 1998). She avoids moral ridicule by emphasizing that she values the same things in life as the employed and is responding to unemployment in a morally correct manner by seeking work and attempting to upgrade her skills.…”