IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v23y2009i1p102-119.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Identity work and the `unemployed' worker: age, disability and the lived experience of the older unemployed

Author

Listed:
  • Kathleen Riach

    (University of Essex, k.riach@essex.ac.uk)

  • Wendy Loretto

    (University of Edinburgh, w.loretto@ed.ac.uk)

Abstract

This article seeks to explore how older individuals negotiate and manage their self-identity in relation to work while situated without paid employment. After reviewing the current positions of the older unemployed in the UK, noting the substantial overlap between age and disability, we turn our attention to conceptualizing the lived experiences of individuals through exploring `identity work' as a means of understanding a non-working work identity. Based upon focus group interviews, our empirical analysis focuses on key dimensions of participants' identity practice and how they sought to manage the following social processes: imposed identities; crafting working identities; and contesting unfavourable working identities.The conclusion contextualizes the findings against a backdrop of increasing individualistic discourses underpinning approaches to employability, closes with the policy implications arising from this study, and makes suggestions for future research agendas.

Suggested Citation

  • Kathleen Riach & Wendy Loretto, 2009. "Identity work and the `unemployed' worker: age, disability and the lived experience of the older unemployed," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 23(1), pages 102-119, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:23:y:2009:i:1:p:102-119
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017008099780
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017008099780
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017008099780?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ronald W. McQuaid & Colin Lindsay, 2005. "The Concept of Employability," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(2), pages 197-219, February.
    2. Zaidi, Asghar & Makovec, Mattia & Fuchs, Michael, 2006. "Transition from work to retirement in EU25," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 6229, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Paul Letkemann, 2002. "Unemployed Professionals, Stigma Management and Derivative Stigmata," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 16(3), pages 511-522, September.
    4. Mats Alvesson & Hugh Willmott, 2002. "Identity Regulation as Organizational Control: Producing the Appropriate Individual," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(5), pages 619-644, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Remnant, Jen, 2019. "Getting what you deserve: How notions of deservingness feature in the experiences of employees with cancer," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 237(C), pages 1-1.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eveline Bruijn & Gail Whiteman, 2010. "That Which Doesn’t Break Us: Identity Work by Local Indigenous ‘Stakeholders’," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 96(3), pages 479-495, October.
    2. Carlos Martin-Rios, 2016. "Innovative management control systems in knowledge work: a middle manager perspective," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 181-204, May.
    3. Minbaeva, Dana & Rabbiosi, Larissa & Stahl, Günter K., 2018. "Not walking the talk? How host country cultural orientations may buffer the damage of corporate values’ misalignment in multinational corporations," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 880-895.
    4. Suzan Lewis & Deirdre Anderson & Clare Lyonette & Nicola Payne & Stephen Wood, 2017. "Public sector austerity cuts in Britain and the changing discourse of work–life balance," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(4), pages 586-604, August.
    5. Paul Spoonley, 2008. "Utilising a Demand-led Approach in a Local Labour Market," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 23(1), pages 19-30, February.
    6. Bruce C. Martin & Benson Honig, 2020. "Inclusive Management Research: Persons with Disabilities and Self-Employment Activity as an Exemplar," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 166(3), pages 553-575, October.
    7. Sharon Koppman & Elisa Mattarelli & Amar Gupta, 2016. "Third-World “Sloggers” or Elite Global Professionals? Using Organizational Toolkits to Redefine Work Identity in Information Technology Offshore Outsourcing," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 825-845, August.
    8. Paul, Michael & Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten & Groth, Markus, 2015. "Tightening or loosening the “iron cage”? The impact of formal and informal display controls on service customers," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(5), pages 1062-1073.
    9. Donald Houston, 2005. "Employability, Skills Mismatch and Spatial Mismatch in Metropolitan Labour Markets," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(2), pages 221-243, February.
    10. Miguel Baião Santos, 2010. "Inserção no Mercado de Trabalho e Formação Profissional - Guia Teórico para Decisores," Working Papers wp052010, Socius, Socio-Economics Research Centre at the School of Economics and Management (ISEG) of the Technical University of Lisbon.
    11. Yves Gendron & Laura F. Spira, 2009. "What Went Wrong? The Downfall of Arthur Andersen and the Construction of Controllability Boundaries Surrounding Financial Auditing," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(4), pages 987-1027, December.
    12. Sciences, Research Coach in Social & Dinh, Ngoan-Thi & Hiep, Pham Hung, 2019. "Examining Fresh Graduates’ Perception of Employability in the Information Technology Industry in Vietnam," OSF Preprints 32ghv, Center for Open Science.
    13. Joseph Olita Omekede & Dr. Joseph Musungu & Dr. Felix Orina, 2022. "Intrafemale Civility: Sisterhood in Ellen Sirleaf’s “This Child Will Be Greatâ€," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 6(8), pages 447-453, August.
    14. Danielle Treiber & Lize A. E. Booysen, 2021. "Identity (Re)Construction of Female Adolescents with Substance Use Disorders," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(13), pages 1-19, June.
    15. Vicki Belt & Ranald Richardson, 2005. "Social Labour, Employ ability and Social Exclusion: Pre-employment Training for Call Centre Work," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(2), pages 257-270, February.
    16. Dentoni, Domenico & Pascucci, Stefano & Poldner, Kim & Gartner, William B., 2018. "Learning “who we are” by doing: Processes of co-constructing prosocial identities in community-based enterprises," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 603-622.
    17. Sörgärde, Nadja, 2020. "Story-dismantling, story-meandering, and story-confirming: Organizational identity work in times of public disgrace," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(3).
    18. Juan-Francisco Martínez-Cerdá & Joan Torrent-Sellens & Inés González-González & Pilar Ficapal-Cusí, 2018. "Opening the Black-Box in Lifelong E-Learning for Employability: A Framework for a Socio-Technical E-Learning Employability System of Measurement (STELEM)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-27, March.
    19. Scott Baum & Anthea Bill & William Mitchell, 2008. "Labour Underutilisation in Metropolitan Labour Markets in Australia: Individual Characteristics, Personal Circumstances and Local Labour Markets," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 45(5-6), pages 1193-1216, May.
    20. Claudia Gross, 2010. "Spiritual Cleansing: A Case Study on how Spirituality Can Be Mis/used by a Company," management revue - Socio-Economic Studies, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, vol. 21(1), pages 60-81.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:23:y:2009:i:1:p:102-119. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.