{"id":6778,"date":"2020-01-20T13:47:54","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T12:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogit.itu.dk\/ethos\/?p=6778"},"modified":"2020-02-28T16:36:10","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T15:36:10","slug":"training-for-precarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogit.itu.dk\/ethoslab\/2020\/01\/20\/training-for-precarity\/","title":{"rendered":"Training for Precarity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Training for precarity<\/h1>\n

Blogpost by Lotte Schack, Anthropologist and intern in ETHOS Lab >>><\/em><\/h4>\n

For a few months, unemployed university graduates have been subject to heated debate (Berlingske 2019, Politiken 2019), which coincidentally started around the time I entered the unemployment system after having completed a degree with unpromising employment prospects. I graduated with a master in anthropology in the middle of September, perhaps ironically with a thesis about precarious employment in Berlin. This blog post explores how the Danish unemployment system trains newly unemployed graduates to approach job searching and asks how that shapes unemployed graduates\u2019 relationship to the labour market. As I have experience with the system myself, I conducted a mainly auto-ethnographic project (Reed-Danahay 1997; Williams 2015), complemented by a few interviews with other unemployed university graduates.<\/p>\n

Morality of work<\/strong><\/h3>\n

According to political theorist Kathi Weeks (2011), contemporary Western societies are what she calls work-centred societies: Work is broadly understood as a moral and political good and as something our lives are expected to be centred around (we are all familiar with the usual first question when meeting someone: \u201cSo, what do you do?<\/em>). When work is seen as a moral good, unemployment comes to be seen as amoral. In this way, it is not surprising that the unemployment system makes certain that the unemployed show that they are doing their utmost to find work through weekly obligations. After becoming unemployed, the most visited web sites in my browser have changed to Jobnet, the municipal digital platform for unemployed people, and my a-kasse\u2019s self-service website. Here, I log the jobs I apply for, register that I\u2019ve checked for automated job suggestions and upload applications and CVs. Apart from this, I have been required to go to a meeting with the jobcentre and a meeting with my a-kasse each month and have been sent into a two weeks job searching course and am now doing an internship.<\/p>\n

The emotional labour of being unemployed<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Weeks argues that work today is increasingly about who we are<\/em> rather than just what we do (Weeks 2011:54). Therefore, unemployment is seen as an individual problem rather than caused by issues in the political economy or prejudices in the labour market. Likewise, in the unemployment system, the emphasis is on teaching us how to write CVs and applications\u2013 and how to optimize ourselves in our job searching effort. At an a-kasse meeting, the following advice was given on how to structure our everyday life:<\/p>\n

\u201dA lot of you probably exercise. And that\u2019s really great, you get a lot of energy from doing that. But have you thought about what time of the day you do it? Because if you do it in the evening, then all that energy goes to waste. But if you do it first thing in the morning, then you can use of all that energy in your job search.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Weeks detects a new \u201cideology of work\u201d, one that requires us to find love and happiness in our workplace, rather than merely seeing it as a source of income. However, the love we are supposed to feel should come from us, regardless of what we do \u2013 \u201clove what you do\u201d rather than \u201cdo what you love\u201d is the mantra (Weeks 2017:52). Similarly, when applying for jobs, one has to approach each job opening with enthusiasm and passion, throwing your whole heart (and body as the above quote shows) into the application. \u201cI\u2019m missing a sense of who you are as a person<\/em>,\u201d I was told by a job consultant looking through one of my applications. I had written about my education and my work experience \u2013 but that wasn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n

The requirement to show a high level of enthusiasm reminded me of Arlie Hochschild\u2019s (2003) concept of emotional labour<\/em>. Hochschild uses the term to describe how certain occupations require workers to display particular emotions at work \u2013 her example is that of flight attendants (ibid.:24). Similarly, the unemployed must always appear to be enthusiastic and outgoing. In the \u201cprofessional profile\u201d one is required to complete on Jobnet (figure 1), I have written that I am \u201csmiling and outgoing\u201d \u2013perhaps an exaggeration: I have one of those faces that always makes people ask me whether I am mad at them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 1. The author’s “professional profile” on Jobnet<\/em><\/p>\n

I interviewed Simone who is very proactive in her job search: She is an avid user of LinkedIn and has approached numerous companies to inquire about the possibility for an internship. Although she felt optimistic about the search, she described being tired of \u201cselling herself\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201dIt\u2019s so unnatural (…) having to verbalise how good you are all the time. Of course you have to sell yourself in a workplace, but you aren\u2019t going to be like \u201dI\u2019m an agile and ambitious colleague\u201d (..) I also think I\u2019m lovely and good, but do I have to say it? Do I have to write it? I mean that thing with getting it out of your fingertips, it just seems so unnatural to have to address it all the time.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here, Simone describes having to constantly name her positive traits as \u201cunnatural\u201d. Hochschild argues that when managing feelings becomes part of the job, they become a commodity the worker has to sell (Hochschild 2003:7). This commodification can alienate the worker from her own feelings (ibid.:187). Following this, perhaps the expectation to put so much of yourself into the job application process is part of the reason why Helen, who has been unemployed for six weeks and have applied for 40 different positions, finds rejection \u201creally hard\u201d and names it as one of the reasons she finds entering the labour market \u201canxiety-inducing\u201d. In spite of this, we imagine that all the applications we write and all the rejections we meet will pay off in some (hopefully) not too distant future. Simone told me that she saw all the time spent on applications as research about the labour market she would be able to utilise in a future job.<\/p>\n

However, this will probably not be the last time we find ourselves in the unemployment system. The full-time, long term employment protected by collective labour agreements I and the other graduates strive towards achieving is gradually disappearing and replaced with an increasingly precarious labour market. In this regard the training to put all of our hearts and bodies into selling ourselves to the labour market makes perfect sense: We must learn to be constantly employable. The UK-based Precarious Workers Brigade (2016) criticises the heightened focus on employability in higher education as well as the increasing expectancy for students to take on unpaid internships (oops) for training students to accept bad working conditions once they graduate. I suspect that something similar goes on in the unemployment system. Take this quote from an a-kasse consultant:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re writing a job application, make sure to focus on what the employer gets out of hiring you rather than what you get out of working for them. You have to think about that you\u2019re quite expensive to hire: With your monthly salary, pension and perks, it adds up to quite a lot.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Talking about us as expenses companies have to take on rather than workers creating value risks creating \u201ca labour force that embraces its own exploitation\u201d (Tokumitsu in Weeks 2012:49). By teaching us that we should be thankful for being employed, by instigating a high work morale and an obligation to love all work and by training us to manage our feelings, we become a labour force willing to compromise on salary, job security and protection in exchange for employment \u2013 and as such, perfect for a precarious labour market.<\/p>\n

Read the next blogpost on illuminating the invisible work of the unemployed through Linkedin<\/a><\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Berlingske 2019. \u201dHummelgaard til ledige akademikere: Man skal ikke f\u00f8le sig for fin til at sidde i Netto.\u201d Written by Bent Winther 8th of November 2019. Link: https:\/\/www.berlingske.dk\/danmark\/hummelgaard-til-ledige-akademikere-man-skal-ikke-foele-sig-for-fin-til-at<\/a>. Last accessed: 02.12.2019.<\/p>\n

Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 2003. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling<\/em>. 20th anniversary ed. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press.<\/p>\n

Politiken 2019a. \u201dBorgmester: A-kasser overbeskytter luddovne nyuddannede.\u201d 12th<\/sup> of November 2019. Link: https:\/\/politiken.dk\/indland\/art7490917\/Borgmester-A-kasser-overbeskytter-luddovne-nyuddannede<\/a>. Last accessed: 02.12.2019.<\/p>\n

Precarious Workers Brigade. 2016. Training for Exploitation? Politicising Employability and Reclaiming Education. <\/em>London: The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest Press. Link: https:\/\/www.joaap.org\/press\/pwb\/PWB_Text_FINAL.pdf.<\/p>\n

Reed-Danahay, Deborah. 1997. Auto\/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social<\/em>. 1st Edition. Oxford\u202f; New York: Berg Publishers.<\/p>\n

Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries<\/em>. Durham: Duke University Press Books.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014. 2017. \u2018Down with Love: Feminist Critique and the New Ideologies of Work\u2019. WSQ: Women\u2019s Studies Quarterly<\/em> 45 (3\u20134): 37\u201358. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1353\/wsq.2017.0043.<\/p>\n

Williams, Kaiton. 2015. \u2018An Anxious Alliance\u2019. Aarhus Series on Human Centered Computing<\/em> 1 (1): 11. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.7146\/aahcc.v1i1.21146.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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