“Who Sent You?”: How Recent Graduates in the Global South Get Jobs

• In Event: 50220 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8: Hiring and Job Searches

Abstract

Social capital is arguably the most important determinant of labor market outcomes and social stratification more broadly. Little sociological work has examined its role in the allocation of opportunity in the Global South where weak institutions and high levels of unemployment, precarity and inequality call for a close examination of labor market processes. Using in-depth interviews with 60 recent university graduates in Nairobi, Kenya supplemented with 19 key informant interviews, this paper identifies a trichotomy of job opportunities and the distinct mechanisms through which social capital shapes a job-seeker’s access to each type. Open jobs, those that are publicly advertised, are the least reliant on a job-seeker’s social capital. Nevertheless, well-connected graduates enjoy the influence of their connections and receive support with job-readiness. Hidden jobs, the most prevalent type in the Global South, are unadvertised positions. Such opportunities favor job-seekers with access to well-connected contacts who provide them with information on available positions and vouch for their competence and character to employers. Ad hoc jobs, which typically provide the least security, are created as favors to a job-seeker by their personal connections, or at the request of a job-seeker’s well-placed facilitator. Taken altogether, these results demonstrate that successful job-seekers in Nairobi are those who can be “sent” to employers by their contacts. With these findings, I clarify labor market processes in a Global South context which – as unemployment and precarity rises across the globe – are likely to sharply illustrate dynamics that are increasingly present in wealthier contexts as well.

Author

• Salma Mutwafy, University of Virginia