Could there be a public value to unemployment?
by Jonathan Birdwell
29/07/09 Jonathan Birdwell questions whether full employment and a robust sense of community could be mutually exclusive goals.
To be unemployed at this point in time is for many a victim’s badge, often worn wearily. “I am a living casualty of the global recession,” it reads. But could there be a silver lining to the rising tide of unemployment? Could the sudden “gift” of free time be used productively in the community, provided of course that individual and family basics are taken care of through the welfare state?
In the course of speaking to many elderly people through fieldwork, I’ve often been subjected to paeans for yesteryears when a sense of community was almost palpable. What hastened the slow death of community? According to some it was the influx of immigrants in the 1960s, 70s and 90s and the consequent breakdown of shared backgrounds, values, languages, and religions. Yet, even if these things make fostering a sense of community easier, they are neither sufficient nor necessary.
I think a large part of the answer is the death of leisure – the fact that we’ve crammed our lives with individual pursuits, work, family, friends, ambitions, and blogs. The more we work (and indeed, we are all working more these days), the less energy we have to devote to the demands of a robust civic society. Could it not be then that the goal of full employment would lead to a hollowing out of civil society, of community organisations and advocates? Perhaps then the two pillars are mutually exclusive: aim for full employment and you may just undermine ‘community engagement’.
Gordon Brown, perhaps the man most visibly at risk of losing his job, recently released his Government’s legislative strategy entitled Building Britain’s Future which, among other things, expressed the twin goals of increasing employment and community engagement. For the first time in the history of the British welfare state, individuals on benefits (NEETs under 25) for over a year will be forced to either take a job or lose their benefits. The profile of these individuals probably makes them less likely to make good use of their free time, but the shift is significant.
Our research into the experiences of social housing residents reveals that a number of unemployed residents spent their time as unpaid carers for family, friends and neighbours, or as community organizers and advocates. They were community wardens, organisers of the resident association, leaders of youth clubs. To nudge them into work could have the effect of decreasing the public value that their free time allows them to create.
This is of course not to say that we should look upon the rise of unemployment with satisfaction and optimism. It is rather to point to a potential contradiction within policy debates: that the dual goals of full employment and a rejuvenated and robust civic society / sense of community just might be mutually exclusive. It is also to argue against making broad generalizations about the “idle unemployed”. Many unemployed or economically inactive people play a vital role in their community, and the value they create for their neighbours and their community should not be ignored.
Kika
'Our research into the experiences of social housing residents reveals that a number of unemployed residents spent their time as unpaid carers for family, friends and neighbours, or as community organizers and advocates. They were community wardens, organisers of the resident association, leaders of youth clubs. To nudge them into work could have the effect of decreasing the public value that their free time allows them to create.'
errr...or maybe these people could be actually paid for their hard work? could become employed and fully using their potential? is this sounds as a good idea? vide women being paid for their house work.
Replica Loutoutin
I think th ban shld b lifted. A drink is gud n necessary 4 us all. It raises th economy of a town
Will Davies
Two thoughts:
1. This reminds me of a campaign that went around the indie music scene in the mid-90s, as John Major was beginning to introduce greater 'workfare' and conditionality measures, which New Labour then expanded. Various fading punks and Noel Gallagher-types came out arguing that, if it weren't for the 'free lunch' aspect of the dole, they would never have formed bands. No doubt there's something in this (if Britpop occurred precisely 3 years after John Major's recession, perhaps 2012 will reveal the fruits of Gordon Brown's...) but I'd be interested to see how it goes down in DWP.
2. What about non-employment? After all, this has been the preoccupation for the government for the last 12 years, and remains something that countries like Germany are grappling with. The conservative conservative (as opposed to his 'progressive' cousin) would argue that the exclusion/exception of women from the labour market performs an efficient economic role, in sustaining non-monetary areas of the economy, such as the household and local neighbourhood. One of the many troubling implications of Robert Putnam's work is that the drop-off in American civic engagement coincides with the entry of women into the labour market, post 1970. Not sure what the millions of non-employed German women do with the hours before 3pm when they pick their kids up from school, but the conservative conservative would want to find out.
There might be less controversial areas of non-employment, such as people who are forced to retire or aren't suited to full-time work. The Slivers of Time website exists partly to give these people tasks. Or there was that Crabtree/Field Prospect article, arguing for 'civic service' for school-leavers (I guess a gap year is a posh version of youth non-employment). So rather than push the non-employed towards the labour market, DWP style, the answer could be civic. I can see it now: a volunteer army, consisting of 50-something ex-policemen with dodgy backs, and 20-something stoners suffering from 'daily fatigue syndrome'...