This article analyses how the learning – understood as an aspect of individuals’ life-historical experiential processes – of long-term vulnerable unemployed individuals in a Danish context is affected by the neoliberal organisation of the employment system and back-to-work policies and practices. In doing so, a psychosocietal approach to the study of adults’ learning – in which learning processes are explored from the standpoint of the subject – is applied: an approach that is analytically sensitive to the dialectic interconnectedness of subjective and objective conditions of learning during unemployment, that is, of embodied and life-historical experience, conscious as well as unconscious, and the cultural and sociopolitical embeddedness of work(lessness). In seeking to understand the ambiguities related to learning during long-term unemployment, the article argues for the usefulness of applying a broader concept of adults’ learning in addition to a recognition of negative experience. Through the life history of Richard, the article demonstrates how the neoliberal organisation of back-to-work practices – emphasising the standardisation of methods, the maximisation of efficiency, self-reliance, social discipline, externally determined learning goals and the self-transparent subject – conditions the learning processes of vulnerable unemployed individuals in ways that lead to blockages of experience, differentiated forms of self-alienation and defensive, self-preserving psychodynamics: hence, constituting challenges to learning, solidarity and self-realisation while acting as a catalyst for a reproducing subjective embodiment of societal processes relating to the depoliticisation of work.
Benjaminsen, L., Bom, L.H., Fynbo, L. and Grønfeldt, S.T. (2019) Bag om Fællesskabsmålingen – En kvalitativ undersøgelse af social eksklusion og social deltagelse, Copenhagen: TrygFonden and VIVE.
Dejours, C. (1998) Souffrance en France: La banalisation de l’injustice sociale, Paris: Seuill.
Dejours, C., Deranty, J.-P., Renault, E. and Smith, N.H. (2018) The Return of Work in Critical Theory: Self, Society, Politics, New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Herup Nielsen, M. (2019) Optimismens politik: Skabelsen af uværdigt trængende borgere, Frederiksberg, Denmark: Frydenlund Academic.
Hultqvist, S. and Nørup, I. (2017) Consequences of activation policy targeting young adults with health-related problems in Sweden and Denmark, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 25(2): 147–61.
Jaeggi, R. (2016) Alienation, New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Jaeggi, R. (2017) Pathologies of work, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 45(3–4): 59–76.
Jørgensen, H. (2017) From a beautiful swan to an ugly duckling: the renewal of Danish activation policy since 2003, European Journal of Social Security, 11(4): 337–67.
Kananen, J. (2012) Nordic paths from welfare to workfare: Danish, Swedish and Finnish labour market reforms in comparison, Local Economy, 27(5–6): 558–76.
Klindt, M.P. and Ravn, R. (2019) Den ‘rådne banan’ er human kapital – en analyse af kommunernes brug af uddannelse i beskæftigelsesindsatsen, Tidsskrift for Arbejdsliv, 21(1): 48–71.
Larsen, E.L., Andersen, P.T. and Bak, C.K. (2012) Fortællinger om et liv som arbejdsløs og socialt ekskluderet, Tidsskrift for Forskning i Sygdom Og Samfund, (16): 83–103.
Leithäuser, T. (2010) Subjectivity, lifeworld, and work organization, Frontiers of Education in China, 5(3): 312–28.
Leithäuser, T. (2012) Psychoanalysis, socialization and society – the psychoanalytical thought and interpretation of Alfred Lorenzer, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum Qualitative Social Research, 13(3).
Lorenzer, A. (2016) Language, life praxis and scenic understanding in psychoanalytic therapy, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 97(5): 1399–414.
Madsen, P.K. (2011) Flexicurity i modvind – en analyse af den danske flexicurity-model under den økonomiske krise, Tidsskrift for Arbejdsliv, 13(4): 8–21.
McDonald, C. and Marston, G. (2005) Workfare as welfare: governing unemployment in the advanced liberal state, Critical Social Policy, 25(3): 374–401.
Morgen, M. (no date) Worklessness, Experience and Alienation: A Psycho-Societal Tracing of Conditions for Learning During Long-Term Unemployment, PhD thesis, Department for People and Technology: Roskilde University.
Negt, O. (1987) Marxismus und Arbeiterbildung – Kritische Anmerkungen zu meinen Kritikern, in A. Brock (ed) Lernen und Verärndern – Zur Soziologische Phantasie und Exemplarischem Lernen in der Arbeiterbildung, Marburg, Germany: SP-Verlag.
Negt, O. (1997) Soziologische Phantasie und Exemplarisches Lernen: Zur Theorie und Praxis der Arbeiterbildung, Hamburg, Germany: EVA Europäische Verlagsanstalt.
Nielsen, B.S. (2009) Social imagination – democracy, sustainability and participatory learning. Paper presented at the conference Lifelong Learning Revisited: What next? 5th international CRLL conference, Sterling.
Psykiatrifonden and SIND (2019) Undersøgelse af psykisk helbred og livskvalitet hos mennesker med sygdom, der er tilknyttet et jobcenter, Copenhagen: Psykiatrifonden.
Renault, E. (2012) The political invisibility of work and its philosophical echoes, in N.H. Smith and J.-P. Deranty (eds) New Philosophies of Labour: Work and the Social Bond, Leiden and Boston, MA: BRILL.
Ringø, P., Nissen, M.A. and Fallov, M.A. (2019) Aktuelle og alternative menneskesyn i socialt arbejde, Uden for Nummer, 38: 16–25.
Salling Olesen, H. (2007a) Profesional identities, subjectivity, and learning, in L. West, P. Alheit, A. Siig Andersen and B. Merrill (eds) Using Biographical and Life History Approaches in the Study of Adult and Lifelong Learning, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, pp 125–41.
Salling Olesen, H. (2007b) Theorising learning in life history: a psychosocietal approach, Studies in the Education of Adults, 39(1): 38–53.
Salling Olesen, H. (2014) Learning and the psycho-societal nature of social practice: tracing the invisible social dimension in work and learning, Forum Oswiatowe, 52(2): 11–27.
Salling Olesen, H. (2015) Life history approach: biographies and psycho-societal interpretation, Culture, Biography & Lifelong Learning, 1(1): 1–18.
Salling Olesen, H. (2018) Learning and experience: a psycho-societal approach, in M. Milana, J. Holford, P. Jarvis, S. Webb and R. Waller (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook on Adult and Lifelong Education and Learning, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 169–90.
Salling Olesen, H. and Weber, K. (2001) Space for experience and learning – theorizing the subjective side of work, in K. Weber (ed) Experience and Discourse, Frederiksberg, Denmark: Roskilde University Press.
Salling Olesen, H. and Weber, K. (2012) Socialization, language, and scenic understanding: Alfred Lorenzer’s contribution to a psycho-societal methodology, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum Qualitative Social Research, 13(3): 26–55.
Smith, N.H. and Deranty, J.-P. (2012a) New Philosophies of Labour: Work and the Social Bond, vol 13, Leiden and Boston, MA: BRILL.
Smith, N.H. and Deranty, J.P. (2012b) Work and the politics of misrecognition, Res Publica, 18(1): 53–64.
Weeks, K. (2011) The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
May 2022 onwards | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 501 | 184 | 8 |
Full Text Views | 45 | 1 | 0 |
PDF Downloads | 42 | 2 | 0 |
Institutional librarians can find more information about free trials here