Colletcive representations of unemplyoment in generational change
Empirical Social Research
Final Report Abstract
The project "Collective representations of unemployment in intergenerational change" aimed to investigate intergenerational differences in the perception and valuation of unemployment and the unemployed. The focus of the research project was whether observations made in the previous project about intergenerational differences in the collective representations of unemployment can be substantiated on a broader empirical basis and how they can be further developed and differentiated. If such differences in the perception of unemployment and the unemployed could be detected between people of different ages, it still had to be cleared whether these are age rather than generational differences. Due to the methodological approach, it was necessary to approach this question interpretively. For this purpose, in addition to the analysis of collective representations, a biographical approach was chosen and employment biographies and perceptions of unemployment were examined for conditional connections. In this way generation-specific experiences were reconstructed. These show that older respondents, based on their own biographical experiences, often attribute "mass unemployment" to structural (economic) factors. For younger respondents, on the other hand, high competitiveness in the labor market is regarded as a normality and not further questioned. Unemployment is individualized quite “easily”. (This essentially confirmed the assumptions formulated in the project application.)
Publications
-
Deutungsmuster von Arbeitslosigkeit im Wandel der Zeit. In: Paula-Irene Villa (Hrsg.): Polarisierte Welten. Verhandlungen des 41. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Bielefeld 2022.
Spreen, Dominik; Ullrich, Carsten G.; Vukoman, Marina & Rottgardt, Nils
