Beggars and Used Car Salesmen: The Experiences of Networking among Long-Term Unemployed Workers

• In Event: 2250 - Job Search and Opportunity

Abstract

While research on the structures and effects of networks abound, this paper examines the far less studied process of networking—the activation of pre-existing social ties or the establishment of new ties—in the job search of long-term unemployed (LTU) workers. Examining the networking process is imperative for understanding the institutional obstacles facing LTU workers, the well-documented mental health toll of LTU, as well as the forces that can lead to job search discouragement. Among LTU workers I strategically focus on the group of workers for whom we might expect networking to be easiest. The middle-aged LTU workers discussed in this paper are all college-educated and have a track record of long professional careers prior to their LTU. By conventional sociological understandings these unemployed workers have abundant reserves of social capital—many former colleagues and professional relationships to draw upon—and are thus presumably well-positioned to use their networks to find work. A key puzzle explored in this paper is why this group of workers encounters obstacles in networking to find work. Going beyond individualizing explanations about introversion or “networking comfort” I use in-depth interviews to uncover the structural conditions that make networking challenging for all LTU workers. Contrary to static conceptualizations of ties as social capital, a metaphor implying that social ties are congealed resources available to be drawn as one would draw on financial capital at the ATM, this paper argues that more attention needs to be paid to the process of how social ties are activated or formed, and the structural conditions that facilitate or hinder such activation or formation. Specifically, it shows that that under conditions of precarity networking demands uniquely challenging forms of emotional labor and the masked instrumentalization of social ties that over time undermines workers’ subjective identities as self-sufficient and moral adults.

Author

• Ofer Sharone, University of Massachusetts Amherst