Unemployment is not just the absence of work, but a specific experience, formed historically by various forms of governmentality. Indeed, only those who meet the official criteria are registered as unemployed, and thereafter have their lives shaped and managed by governmental institutions. Generally, social science understands unemployment as the absence of work, particularly through the ‘deprivation theory’. However, this volume demonstrates how these cultural values actually reflexively shape the experience of unemployment and even inform governmental practices. Drawing from multiple studies ... More

Unemployment is not just the absence of work, but a specific experience, formed historically by various forms of governmentality. Indeed, only those who meet the official criteria are registered as unemployed, and thereafter have their lives shaped and managed by governmental institutions. Generally, social science understands unemployment as the absence of work, particularly through the ‘deprivation theory’. However, this volume demonstrates how these cultural values actually reflexively shape the experience of unemployment and even inform governmental practices. Drawing from multiple studies with diverse methods, the book fleshes out the complex experience of unemployment. Then, we turn to the various forms, organisations and sites which governmentally define and shape unemployment, including claims forms, welfare offices, social policy and job-seeking advice. Finally, we examine how unemployment is constituted publicly through the performative measures of official statistics and the relatively limited range of narratives and values within print media coverage. Taken together, these chapters constitute a new perspective on unemployment as a diverse experience, reflexively shaped by the idea that individuals are shaped decisively by the absence of a job, but most particularly shaped by governmental interventions which have accumulated historically over decades and centuries. While drawn from the context of recent Irish experience, this perspective is relevant to any contemporary welfare state.