Possibilities and boundaries in the socio-political shaping of unemployment
Project Description:
Contemporary policies and discourses aligned with neoliberal rationality dominantly locate the causes of unemployment within the behaviours, attitudes, knowledge, and skills of individuals. In turn, service-based and other solutions for long-term unemployment activate individual responsibility, engagement in employability-enhancing activities, and the ‘quickest route to work’ . This approach fails to address structural and systemic features, such as labour market sector changes or various forms of discrimination, that shape long-term unemployment.
Our collaborative ethnographic study, done in one Canadian and one U.S. city, critically examined the implications of an individualizing approach to long-term unemployment at the levels of service provision and everyday life. We aimed to generate knowledge that could create more just, humane and effective ways of supporting persons experiencing long-term unemployment, not only in the domain of employment but also within the range of occupations important to individual, family and community well-being.
In this multi-phase collaborative ethnography, qualitative data were generated with government and organizational stakeholders, employment support service providers, and persons experiencing long-term unemployment. Analysis revealed a pervasive situation of being ‘activated, but stuck’ for persons experiencing long-term unemployment: they experienced insecurity, a life ‘on hold’, restricted occupational possibilities and mobilities, and social marginalization, despite engaging in individual activities promoted as solutions for unemployment. All participants called for broader and more diverse official definitions of long-term unemployment to address societal and individual needs more effectively; participants also highlighted a need to work against an individualizing approach that downloads responsibilities onto persons experiencing unemployment and their service providers.
Employment service organizations and persons experiencing long-term unemployment need a secure base of resources to move towards innovative, effective approaches to addressing long-term unemployment. The findings highlighted the need to build collaborative approaches across sectors and stakeholders, such as employers, policy makers, service providers, and persons experiencing long-term unemployment, to address intersecting structural, systemic, and individual factors that make meaningful, sustainable employment difficult for particular people and collectives. To foster individual to community well-being, it is vital to not only focus on employability but also address the restricted occupational possibilities and social and financial precarity that accompany long-term unemployment.
Research Team:
Dr. Beccy Aldrich, St. Louis University
Dr. Suzanne Huot, University of British Columbia
Dr. Lilian Magalhaes, Federal University of Sao Carlo
John Griffiths, Goodwill Industries
Dr. John Grundy, Post-Doctoral Fellow
Dr. Carlo Fanelli, Post-Doctoral Fellow
Melanie Stone, Research Coordinator
Awish Aslam, Research Assistant
Funder:
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Insight Grant, 2014-2018)
Publications:
Aldrich, R.A., Laliberte Rudman, D., Park, N.E., & Huot, S. (2020). Centering the complexity of long-term unemployment: Lessons learned from a critical occupational science inquiry. Societies, 10(3), 65, https://doi.org/10.3390/soc10030065
Grundy, J. & Laliberte Rudman, D. (2018). Deciphering deservedness: Canadian Employment Insurance reforms in historical perspective. Social Policy & Administration. 52(3), 809-825. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12230
Fanelli, C., Laliberte Rudman, D., & Aldrich, R. M. (2017, August). Precarity in the Nonprofit Employment Services Sector. Canadian Review of Sociology, 54(3), 331-352. https://doi.org/10.1111/cars.12153
Huot, S., Aldrich, R., Laliberte Rudman, D. & Stone, M. (2022). Picturing precarity through occupational mapping: Mapping the (im)mobilities of long-term unemployment. Journal of Occupational Science, 29(4), 529-544.
Laliberte Rudman, D. & Aldrich, R. (2021). Producing precarity: The individualization of later life unemployment within employment support provision. Journal of Aging Studies, 57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2021.100924.
Laliberte Rudman, D. & Aldrich, A. (2017, October). Discerning the social in individual stories of occupation through critical narrative inquiry. Journal of Occupational Science, 24(4), 470-481. https://doi.org/10.1080/14427591.2020.1821244
Laliberte Rudman, D., Aldrich, R.M., Grundy, J., Stone, M., Huot, S., Aslam, A. (2017). “You got to make the numbers work”: Negotiating managerial reforms in the provision of employment support service. Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Inquiry, 28, 47-79.
Laliberte Rudman, D. & Aldrich, R. (2016). ‘Activated, but stuck’: Applying a critical occupational lens to examine the negotiation of long-term unemployment in contemporary socio-political contexts, Societies, 6 (28), 1-17, https://doi.org/10.3390/soci6030028
Other Related Resources:
Phases I and II Transportation Summary
