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Positively Precarious: How the Long-Term Unemployed Construct the Future

Sat, August 16, 4:30 to 5:30pm, TBA

Abstract

The Great Recession exposed a wider range and greater proportion of people to the experience of long-term unemployment than any other economic crisis since WWII. This paper examines the experience of long-term unemployment as a tear in the fabric of social time. I focus on the lives of white-collar job seekers. I find that long-term unemployment has a unique “staccato” temporal structure that forces individuals to reconfigure the connections among three types of future-making: protention, narration, and planning. I discuss the implications of these findings for sociological theories of the future as well as our understanding of the effects widespread long-term unemployment on the culture of work.

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