In recent years, the concept of emotion has increasingly been seen as a vital political factor shaping human subjectivity, that is, the process by which one becomes a subject. Emotion is an important component in the neoliberal economy within which well-being is seen to be best advanced by liberating entrepreneurial freedoms and by assuming the interests of workers and companies are commensurate. I approach the job-search process and (un/under)employment as focal spheres in which to examine the everyday production and upkeep of emotional management to produce an employable self. Specifically, I draw on thirteen months of fieldwork at five career development workshops in Arizona to argue that the career advice industry is urging job seeking college educated Americans to use emotional management techniques to become employable in a neoliberal economy. Increasingly precarious employment for college-educated Americans prepares the ground for job seekers to pursue help from career experts. These experts guide job seekers to do emotion work to change their thinking and behavior so that they can be employable professionals ready for the work force. This attempt to repackage and recreate a new employable self is couched in discovering one's "authentic self" discourse, bringing out existing skills, and figuring out what one enjoys doing. Career experts re-frame unemployment and underemployment as a training opportunity for job seekers to become productive people. During these workshops, experts explicitly attempt to blur the boundaries between work and non-work, as well as between social good and profit, which is consistent with the neoliberal economy where the individual is seen as a product or company to be marketed. Therefore, in a neoliberal context, achieving individual well-being involves active incorporation of the personal sphere into the business domain. In addition, a look at the class identities of college educated participants reveals that emotion, particularly a sense of economic security, is also shaping how job-seeking Americans describe their middle-class identity. I illustrate that in the face of decreasing economic opportunities and a tight labor market, very few participants have a negative view of what "middle class" means to them, nor do they describe their class status with an occupation oriented criteria. The majority of participants' descriptions of "middle class" included consumption items, while almost half of them indicated the importance of economic safety, security and the lack of anxiety for basic economic needs. Following and extending on the concept of ontological security, which refers to the constancy of social and material environments, I demonstrate that despite their precarious employment status, participants still believe in the American Dream and they articulate middle-class identity through their ability to continue consuming, even in a more modified form, which allows them to retain a sense of security. This indicates the centralization of safety and security discourses in defining an American middle-class identity.

Current U.S. college graduates are part of the millennial generation, which is the largest and most well-educated generation of all time (PEW, 2014; Twenge, 2006) and are the future of the workforce. Moreover, recent college graduates have unique job searching and career expectations, which underlie the communication strategies used to search for jobs. While the process of job searching is inherently communicative in nature, job searching is an under studied context within communication research. Although previous research outlines the career related expectations of young job seekers, it fails to examine how recent college graduates search for jobs and communicatively respond to violated job searching expectations. This goal of this study was to determine the communicative strategies recent college graduates use to search for jobs and the role communication plays in responding to job searching expectation violations. Expectancy violations theory (Burgoon, 1978), a communicative framework, is applied in this study to understand how recent college graduates respond to violated job searching expectations. Six research questions guided this study to determine the job searching communication strategies, job searching expectations, career expectations, and expectancy violations that occurred throughout the job search. To answer these questions, I conducted interviews with 20 participants, twice over a three-month period, to qualitatively understand and analyze the job searching processes of recent college graduates. The findings from this study demonstrate that recent college graduates use a combination of traditional job searching strategies and online social networking strategies to find, research, and apply for jobs. While participants expected the job search to be difficult, they were surprised at the amount of intensity and effort job searching required. Interpreting the results through the lens of EVT helped note that the participants with the most realistic job searching and career related expectations had greater success job searching over a three-month period and at the time of the follow up interview, several participants had accepted full-time, post graduate jobs. Expectancy violations theory was essential in interpreting how participants network with interpersonal contacts by offering insight for why participants strategically communicate with contacts based upon their potential reward value. The reciprocation and compensation mechanisms of expectancy violations theory also provided an explanation as to why some participants increased their job searching activity in response to violated expectations and others did not. An especially interesting finding illustrates that participants preferred to receive bad news over no news at all, and even evaluated bad news as a positive expectancy violation because it reduced their uncertainty. Collectively, expectancy violations theory (Burgoon, 1978) and anticipatory socialization research (Dubinsky, Howell, Ingram, & Bellenger, 1986) highlight how recent college graduates form their job searching and career expectations. The findings from this study also contribute to existing job searching research by examining the job searching strategies and behaviors of recent college graduates to better understand how they job search and what they expect from their future employers. Lastly, the findings from this study provide several practical application suggestions for organizations to implement in order to recruit and retain the best young job seekers in light of their current expectations and job searching strategies.

<p>Syftet med denna uppsats är att beskriva, tolka och analysera framgångsrikt agerande vid påtvingade brytpunkter i karriärutvecklingen. Fem personer har fyllt i ett formulär samt intervjuats angående deras känslor, erfarenheter, motivation och nätverk relaterat till jobbsökandet. Resultatet visade att en mängd olika tillvägagångssätt använts, t.ex. att berätta för bekanta att de söker jobb, kontakta potentiella arbetsgivare samt risktagande. En del av handlandet utfördes med syftet att skaffa jobb, andra handlingar utfördes av andra anledningar, men hade ändå betydelse för framgången i att skaffa jobb. Erfarenheter och nätverk visade sig spela en stor roll och fyra sorters motivation identifierades. Grundantagandet (<em>att personer som blivit arbetslösa och snabbt skaffat ny sysselsättning (1) har hög 'Self-efficacy' och (2) i stor utsträckning handlar i enlighet med 'Planned happenstance', och slutligen, (3) att dessa personer har en 'Intrinsic' motivation</em>) kunde varken verifieras eller falsifieras till fullo och därmed diskuteras en del förslag till fortsatt forskning inom aktuellt problemområde. </p> / <p>The aim of this study is to describe, interpret and analyse successful strategies used to obtain a job, when unemployed. Five persons have answered a short questionnaire and have been interviewed about their feelings, experiences, motivation and social network, all related to actions taken whilst searching for a job. The result was that a variety of actions were taken that brought them to finding a job, such as telling friends and other contacts that they are available for work, contacting potential employers and taking risks. Some actions were taken with the objective to find a job, and some were not. Experiences and the social network were found to play a big part and four different types of motivation were detected concerning finding a job. The hypothesis (<em>that those who become unemployed and are successful in finding a new job (1) have a high Self-efficacy, (2) to a great extent take actions in accordance with Planned Happenstance Theory and lastly, (3) that they are mainly driven by an Intrinsic motivation</em>) could not be fully verified on any account nor could it be completely falsified.</p>

Syftet med denna uppsats är att beskriva, tolka och analysera framgångsrikt agerande vid påtvingade brytpunkter i karriärutvecklingen. Fem personer har fyllt i ett formulär samt intervjuats angående deras känslor, erfarenheter, motivation och nätverk relaterat till jobbsökandet. Resultatet visade att en mängd olika tillvägagångssätt använts, t.ex. att berätta för bekanta att de söker jobb, kontakta potentiella arbetsgivare samt risktagande. En del av handlandet utfördes med syftet att skaffa jobb, andra handlingar utfördes av andra anledningar, men hade ändå betydelse för framgången i att skaffa jobb. Erfarenheter och nätverk visade sig spela en stor roll och fyra sorters motivation identifierades. Grundantagandet (att personer som blivit arbetslösa och snabbt skaffat ny sysselsättning (1) har hög 'Self-efficacy' och (2) i stor utsträckning handlar i enlighet med 'Planned happenstance', och slutligen, (3) att dessa personer har en 'Intrinsic' motivation) kunde varken verifieras eller falsifieras till fullo och därmed diskuteras en del förslag till fortsatt forskning inom aktuellt problemområde. / The aim of this study is to describe, interpret and analyse successful strategies used to obtain a job, when unemployed. Five persons have answered a short questionnaire and have been interviewed about their feelings, experiences, motivation and social network, all related to actions taken whilst searching for a job. The result was that a variety of actions were taken that brought them to finding a job, such as telling friends and other contacts that they are available for work, contacting potential employers and taking risks. Some actions were taken with the objective to find a job, and some were not. Experiences and the social network were found to play a big part and four different types of motivation were detected concerning finding a job. The hypothesis (that those who become unemployed and are successful in finding a new job (1) have a high Self-efficacy, (2) to a great extent take actions in accordance with Planned Happenstance Theory and lastly, (3) that they are mainly driven by an Intrinsic motivation) could not be fully verified on any account nor could it be completely falsified.

This thesis explores the everyday experiences with unemployment and job searching practices in a so-called work club in Northern England. A work club is a place, often a community initiative, where jobseekers who are finding it difficult to look for work independently can go to for support and assistance. These initiatives are encouraged to be set up by volunteers by the UK Department for Work and Pensions and its Jobcentre Plus and are aimed at reducing unemployment levels by helping people apply for jobs. Specifically, the thesis focuses on contemporary job searching practices and asks what Banterby SC work club, the fictional name of the field work location, can tell us about how neoliberal ideologies influence both these job searching practices as well as the way we think about the relationship between employment and citizenship. Work clubs have only received scant academic attention, and this study shows how more in-depth explorations can provide us with some valuable insights. Specifically, because doing so helps us to look beyond policy formulations, framings and imperatives to the implications of neoliberal ideologies in peoples everyday lives. The study uses an iterative inductive ethnographic approach, focusing on one single site field work location, encompassing two hundred hours of field work, during which at least 96 jobseekers have visited the premises of the work club. The study s approach to doing ethnographic fieldwork was based on viewing participant observation as hanging out ; that is, more than merely being somewhere, but rather as engaging and being active in an informal fashion, something that the flexible and unstructured nature of the field work location suited very well. Through this ethnographic, in-depth exploration, then, I do not only explore the observations and findings as offered by some of the previous scholars exploring work clubs, but also seek to connect the findings to Bourdieu s theories of symbolic power/violence as a theoretical framework, which allows us to explore the wider implications of neoliberal governmentalities imposed on jobseekers that influence their everyday practices. This study extends not only our knowledge of the lived experiences of unemployment, but also provides a contemporary insight into work clubs, and how Banterby SC work club has proven to be a valuable site of knowledge about everyday experiences with neoliberal governmentalities toward unemployment and job searching practices. It also extends the application of a symbolic power/violence lens by bringing it together with Foucault s neoliberal governmentalities. Specifically, the study argues that neoliberal governmentalities influencing job searching and unemployment practices are a form of symbolic violence. This approach helps us to problematise job searching practices at work clubs in order to argue for increased critical attention on these sites. Furthermore, the study uncovers the extent to which a welfare system gearing towards a digital by default administration disadvantages many jobseekers who are finding it difficult to work with computers and navigate the internet. The study also addresses and explores to what extent compliance with symbolic power/violence is also shared by staff and volunteers of third sector organisations whose main goal it is to alleviate the burden of unemployment by assisting jobseekers to fulfil their job searching obligations as asked of them by the Department for Work and Pensions and the Jobcentre Plus. Finally, the study calls for more beneficiary-centred voluntary sector research, and proposes a new methodological model for exploring voluntary action and organizations, arguing for a more integrated analysis of the experiences of various actors.

Social Work / D.Phil.(Social work)

Social Work / D. Phil.(Social work)