Abstract
Since the 1990s, the pressures on the unemployed have intensified in Sweden owing to increasing demands on individuals to be employable. This article centres on unemployed youths’ experiences of their visits to the public employment services in four Swedish municipalities and how these experiences can be understood against the background of the intersection of social class and gender. A total of 18 unemployed youths were interviewed and their reasoning was compared with their respective employment-agency officers. The analysis shows that the employment agency gives priority to young working-class men over young working-class women and to middle-class youths over working-class youths, respectively. Young working-class women’s wish to combine employment with caregiving is seen as an encumbrance by the employment agency and these women expressed the harshest criticism against the employment agency. When the advisors meet youths who do not correspond with the current expectations and ideals of the labour market, they risk taking part in an institutional process of exclusion of these youngsters.
Highlights
Starting work for the first time or re-starting after a period of unemployment can be a complicated process involving more than merely individual aspects
The aim of the study has been to investigate the interaction between jobcentre advisors and the young unemployed with an emphasis on the young people’s experiences and emotional coping, and if the unemployed youths’ own living conditions generate different patterns of experiences
Our study shows the interplay between the employment agency as an institutional setting and how gender and class relations interact
Summary
Starting work for the first time or re-starting after a period of unemployment can be a complicated process involving more than merely individual aspects. In Sweden, the Public Employment Service has a central role in labour-market politics. It is an important actor because of its double role of providing service to job-seekers and employers, on the one hand, and identifying unemployed people who abuse unemployment benefits, on the other (Calmfors, Forslund, & Hemström, 2002). Current labour-market policy is implemented through increased monitoring. The officials’ authority to assess and question an unemployed person’s steps and actions in the labour market makes for an asymmetrical power relationship, meaning that the officer has the interpretative prerogative of defining a situation
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