Policy Press
6 Searching for jobs: qualifications, support for the workless and the good and bad of informal social networks
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Abstract
This chapter explores how motivations to work were put into practice, in searching for jobs. It shows how the local labour market available to informants was instituted through informal social networks and how local knowledge facilitated job search, availability and offer. The chapter shows that this world of association rested more on who informants knew, rather than what they knew. The chapter highlights how statutory, voluntary and private sector agencies were all used by informants in searching for jobs, with mixed outcomes and assessments. Some, in the voluntary sector particularly, were found to offer effective, welcome, practical help, perhaps because less driven by a targets culture and ideological assumptions about the unemployed. On the other hand, private employment agencies, in particular, seemed explicitly designed to feed the offer of low waged, precarious work, again shifting the risks and costs of employment to employees. Statutory sector agencies – Job Centre Plus – fared badly with plentiful evidence of negative attitudes by agency staff toward job seekers and the unemployed generally – attitudes readily reciprocated by the local unemployed The chapter shows how the informality of participants’ job-search methods fitted well with the casualised recruitment methods of employers at the bottom of the labour market and the nature of the work on offer.
Abstract
This chapter explores how motivations to work were put into practice, in searching for jobs. It shows how the local labour market available to informants was instituted through informal social networks and how local knowledge facilitated job search, availability and offer. The chapter shows that this world of association rested more on who informants knew, rather than what they knew. The chapter highlights how statutory, voluntary and private sector agencies were all used by informants in searching for jobs, with mixed outcomes and assessments. Some, in the voluntary sector particularly, were found to offer effective, welcome, practical help, perhaps because less driven by a targets culture and ideological assumptions about the unemployed. On the other hand, private employment agencies, in particular, seemed explicitly designed to feed the offer of low waged, precarious work, again shifting the risks and costs of employment to employees. Statutory sector agencies – Job Centre Plus – fared badly with plentiful evidence of negative attitudes by agency staff toward job seekers and the unemployed generally – attitudes readily reciprocated by the local unemployed The chapter shows how the informality of participants’ job-search methods fitted well with the casualised recruitment methods of employers at the bottom of the labour market and the nature of the work on offer.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- List of figures and boxes iv
- Acknowledgements v
- Introduction 1
- Poor work, welfare and poverty 11
- Researching the low-pay, no-pay cycle and recurrent poverty 39
- The low-pay, no-pay cycle: the perspectives and practices of employers and ‘welfare to work’ agencies 61
- The low-pay, no-pay cycle: its pattern and people’s commitment to work 79
- Searching for jobs: qualifications, support for the workless and the good and bad of informal social networks 101
- Poor work: insecurity and churning in deindustrialised labour markets 125
- ‘The ties that bind’: ill health and caring and their impact on the low-pay, no-pay cycle 143
- Poverty and social insecurity 167
- Conclusions 193
- References 225
- Index 247
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- List of figures and boxes iv
- Acknowledgements v
- Introduction 1
- Poor work, welfare and poverty 11
- Researching the low-pay, no-pay cycle and recurrent poverty 39
- The low-pay, no-pay cycle: the perspectives and practices of employers and ‘welfare to work’ agencies 61
- The low-pay, no-pay cycle: its pattern and people’s commitment to work 79
- Searching for jobs: qualifications, support for the workless and the good and bad of informal social networks 101
- Poor work: insecurity and churning in deindustrialised labour markets 125
- ‘The ties that bind’: ill health and caring and their impact on the low-pay, no-pay cycle 143
- Poverty and social insecurity 167
- Conclusions 193
- References 225
- Index 247
