The hunt for a job: narrating the process of gaining employment for people in recovery from lives dominated by drug use

Abstract

Employment is (1) an important predictor of sustainable recovery for people with drug-use problems, (2) a high priority among those in recovery, and (3) an important goal for welfare policies. However, previous explorations of the process of gaining employment have been inadequate. The purpose of this study was to explore how people in recovery from lives dominated by drug use engage in securing paid employment, and how they make sense of this process. In-depth interviews were performed on three different occasions over 2.5 years with people experiencing the demanding process of gaining employment. We analyzed their stories employing a narrative approach, and located them in a social structural context drawing on human-capital framework. Our findings show how our participants drew on socially circulating stories of the ‘useless addict’, ‘normality’, and the ‘employable citizen’, which intersect with human-capital logic embedded in public activation programs. The knowledge obtained from this study demonstrates how socially circulating stories and human-capital logic contribute to the perception that people have about their readiness for work and how they can become employable. Further, it illuminates how recovery discourses mirror neoliberal values constituting the contextual setting in which the job hunt takes place.