Unemployment and learning: the depoliticisation and taboos of work(lessness). (1st October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Morgen, Mikkel
• Is Part Of: Journal of psycho-social studies. Volume 13:Number 3(2020)
• Page Start: 287
• Page End: 301
• Publication Date: 2020-10-01
• Subjects: unemployment -- work -- learning -- subjectivity -- psychosocietal; Social sciences and psychoanalysis -- Periodicals; Psychology -- Periodicals; Psychohistory -- Periodicals; Social interaction -- Periodicals; Politics, Practical -- Periodicals; 302.5
• DOI: 10.1332/147867320X15986395795762
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1478-6737

Abstract

Abstract : This article analyses how the learning ‐ understood as an aspect of individuals' life-historical experiential processes ‐ of long-term vulnerable unemployed individuals in a Danish context is affected by the neoliberal organisation of the employment system and back-to-work policies and practices. In doing so, a psychosocietal approach to the study of adults' learning ‐ in which learning processes are explored from the standpoint of the subject ‐ is applied: an approach that is analytically sensitive to the dialectic interconnectedness of subjective and objective conditions of learning during unemployment, that is, of embodied and life-historical experience, conscious as well as unconscious, and the cultural and sociopolitical embeddedness of work(lessness). In seeking to understand the ambiguities related to learning during long-term unemployment, the article argues for the usefulness of applying a broader concept of adults' learning in addition to a recognition of negative experience. Through the life history of Richard, the article demonstrates how the neoliberal organisation of back-to-work practices ‐ emphasising the standardisation of methods, the maximisation of efficiency, self-reliance, social discipline, externally determined learning goals and the self-transparent subject ‐ conditions the learning processes of vulnerable unemployed individuals in ways that lead to blockages of experience, differentiated forms of self-alienation and defensive, self-preserving psychodynamics: hence, constituting challenges to learning, solidarity and self-realisation while acting as a catalyst for a reproducing subjective embodiment of societal processes relating to the depoliticisation of work.