Engagement and Alienation among Manchester’s Unemployed

Bibliographic Data

ID12930790
AuthorsJ K Foster (University of Manchester, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume17
Issue1
Publication date2017-04-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropology Matters (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1758-6453 • E-ISSN: 1758-6453
PublisherNomadIT (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.22582/am.v17i1.478
OpenAlexW2613035640
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited14

In this paper, I explore some potential ramifications of what I see as an emergent notion of engagement, which is being utilised across spheres of work and non-work in the UK today. I do this through an analysis of the experiences of the contemporary unemployed in Manchester. I shall argue that, though new discourses champion engaged attitudes towards work and life as preferable to a cynicism and disinterestedness fostered during foregoing modes of work, urges to prompt such an outlook have unexpected consequences. For Manchester’s unemployed population, institutions that aim at promoting their fuller engagement in work and its acquisition have led to unforeseen difficulties and now inform an intrusive disciplinary regime of jobseeking. As these state exhortations to seek work meet the current job market however, the will to engage in work is stunted. Ironically, then, where employability discourse aims to create engaged new working subjects, it contributes to an antithetical condition: that of a new yet familiar mode of alienation

Alienation · Champion · Cynicism · Employability · Pedagogy · Political science · Population · Public relations · Sociology · Work (physics · Work engagement · Employment and Welfare Studies · Engineering · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Social Policy and Reform Studies

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