Unemployed people facing future work : analyzing occupational expectations as 'feasible' work

This article explores how unemployed people think of employment and work, in a context of scarcity of jobs and decline of standard employment. Our hypothesis is that unemployment reorganizes unemployed people’s relationship to occupational norms and statuses as a result of their being subject to the uncertainties involved in job-hunting. We suggest that the concept of “feasible work” may prove useful in theorizing about how unemployment changes the expectations towards future employment and work, using the case of self-employment as an example. Our analysis draws on in-depth interviews with 21 unemployed people registered with the French public employment service. This study suggests that unemployment leads to a reconsideration of occupational expectations in response to the difficulties of getting a job. Then, it shows that the extent to which unemployed people sign up to these expectations varies widely, depending on the biographical and relational resources they have