School of Social and Political Science

Introduction

Not having a (proper) job, comparatively speaking

Though unemployment is a universal feature of capitalist labour markets, public policies directed to the unemployed differ enormously between otherwise very similar countries. This goes well beyond diverse approaches to the same problem. By specifying who should and who shouldn’t interact with the welfare state because of not having a (proper) job, and on what terms, nationally-specific social policies essentially define unemployment in practice and set the terms for social and political discourse about it. In this lecture I discuss how my research to date has shed light on this in different ways, and in the process contributed to some important debates about welfare state change in the 21st century.