Unemployment, a Social Construction. Institutional Programs, Experiences and Meanings in a Comparative Perspective

Nadya Guimarães Araujo (1) , Didier Demazière (2) , Helena Hirata (3) , Kurumi Sugita (4)

1 Departamento de Sociologia
2 CSO - Centre de sociologie des organisations (Sciences Po, CNRS)
3 CRESPPA - Centre de recherches sociologiques et politiques de Paris
4 IAO - Institut d'Asie Orientale

A tradition of sociological research that goes back to the 1930s (Lazarsfeld et al., 1932) has constantly pointed out the diversity of reactions in the face of job deprivation and the consequent differences in the life stories of the persons concerned. In this sense, the category of unemployment – which differs from professional activity in that it implies being deprived of that activity, and from professional inactivity in that it implies actively seeking employment – can sustain a variety of interpretations: the people categorized as unemployed attribute various significations to their own situation and adhere to different sorts of identifications (...).

Keywords: unemployment; comparative perspective; sociological research

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Sociology

Nadya Guimarães Araujo, Didier Demazière, Helena Hirata, Kurumi Sugita. Unemployment, a Social Construction. Institutional Programs, Experiences and Meanings in a Comparative Perspective. Economic Sociology (European Electronic Newsletter), 2010, 11 (3), pp.10 - 24. ⟨hal-01509634⟩