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"Being Professional, Following Rules": Culture and Inequality in Job Readiness Training
Başlık:
"Being Professional, Following Rules": Culture and Inequality in Job Readiness Training
Yazar:
Chaganti, Sara, author.
ISBN:
9780438051737
Yazar Ek Girişi:
Fiziksel Tanımlama:
1 electronic resource (265 pages)
Genel Not:
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 79-10(E), Section: A.
Advisors: Carmen Sirianni Committee members: Janet Boguslaw; Laura J. Miller; Thomas M. Shapiro; Steven P. Vallas.
Özet:
Job Readiness Training is one in a series of social service interventions to address unemployment and poverty by training job seekers in order to improve their employability, and it is currently one of the most widely prescribed programmatic solutions to unemployment, particularly for low-income job seekers. Job Readiness Training is generally a short-term course that instructs job seekers in resume-writing, interview skills, and job search methods, as well as workplace etiquette, i.e., how to dress and behave in a workplace. Most Job Readiness Training is not sector-based but is designed to move workers quickly into any position. The focus, therefore, is on job seekers' employability in a more generic sense, rather than their employability in a specific field.
Job Readiness Training as a policy strategy is based on the assumption (grounded in economic theory) that unemployment is primarily a supply-side issue, i.e., caused by job seekers not being "job ready." And not being job ready means something very specific: not knowing how to get, and to some extent keep a job, i.e., how to write a resume, dress for an interview and behave in a workplace. Through participant observation and interviews at two Job Readiness Training programs, this dissertation interrogates the practice of Job Readiness Training as a social policy solution, and its sociological significance. By unpacking what is taught in Job Readiness Training for low-income people specifically -- requirements related to presentation of self, personality and identity -- it examines what indicates employability for this population and the social and cultural consequences of these indicators. Considering how low-income job seekers, often with low levels of education and work histories primarily in low-wage service industries, interact with the Job Readiness Training curriculum informs questions about the larger cultural assumptions related to unemployment for this population, and how the network of supports we offer them -- including Job Readiness Training -- may be reproducing social and economic inequality.
The slim existing literature on Job Readiness training, which focuses primarily on welfare-to-work programs in the late 1990s, lays out the debate as to whether Job Readiness Training programs are oppressive or empowering. Following welfare reform, social scientists studying welfare recipients broadly critiqued the practice of Job Readiness Training and the work-first approach to employment services as mechanisms for social control (Broughton 2003; Korteweg 2003), and as implicated in reproducing labor market inequalities (Halpin 2016; Smith, Flynn, and Isler 2006) and reinforcing neoliberal ideology (Purser and Hennigan 2017). A smaller literature points out the potential for Job Readiness Training to empower workers by offering cultural guidance (Goens 2015; Woodward 2013).
In this dissertation, I use the concept of aesthetic labor (Warhurst, Nickson, Witz, and Cullen 2000) to argue that employability is a performance, and Job Readiness Training teaches participants the elements of this performance. And I argue that these elements are cultural symbols, embedded with taken-for-granted cultural norms. Some previous literature engages with the cultural aspects of Job Readiness Training, primarily pointing out that it is a way to provide participants with cultural capital (Goens 2015; Smith, Flynn, and Isler 2006; Woodward 2013). However, this literature does not fully engage with the multiple sociological conceptions of culture to examine how culture is operating and how participants interact with it. Deepening this discussion offers a platform on which to investigate how culture intersects with the policies driving Job Readiness Training, and how alternate conceptions of culture can suggest policy alternatives that build on the positive experiences in Job Readiness Training while moving away from social control and toward collaborative governance.
This dissertation offers a robust critique of Job Readiness Training, arguing that it emerged not as a rational and evidence-based solution to unemployment but as a response grounded in neoliberal ideology that puts the burden of unemployment solely on the job seeker. As a practice, it offers temporary relief from the ongoing anxiety of unemployment, and it helps job seekers move to the top of the cluster of candidates with whom they are competing. But it also reproduces hegemonic norms which act to reinforce inequality and maintain the vulnerability of workers and job seekers. This analysis also uncovers areas for potential change, and alternative practices that build on the successes of Job Readiness Training while mitigating the harm it can do. I argue that this can be accomplished through Job Readiness Training programs leveraging their positions as Labor Market Intermediaries within a multi-stakeholder policy governing structure, to provide lasting support to participants and to address the growing power inequities in the labor market head-on.
Notlar:
School code: 0021
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Yer Numarası | Demirbaş Numarası | Shelf Location | Lokasyon / Statüsü / İade Tarihi |
---|---|---|---|
XX(679649.1) | 679649-1001 | Proquest E-Tez Koleksiyonu | Arıyor... |
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