Producing precarity: The individualization of later life unemployment within employment support provision

Authors

Debbie Rudman, Western UniversityFollow
Rebecca Aldrich, USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry, University of Southern California

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-2021

Journal

Journal of Aging Studies

Issue

57

URL with Digital Object Identifier

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2021.100924

Abstract

There have been marked policy shifts within many nations towards ‘extended work lives’, with such shifts often underpinned by an assumption that individual aging citizens can make the responsible choice to prolong work and thereby avoid dependency on the state. However, possibilities for extended work lives are inequitably distributed, and older workers who become unemployed often face prolonged unemployment and barriers to obtaining sustainable employment. Drawing on findings from an ethnographic study addressing the negotiation of long-term unemployment in two North American cities, this article attends to how jobseekers aged 50 and older, employment support service providers, and organizational stakeholders understood and attempted to manage later life unemployment. Employing a critical discourse analysis approach informed by a gov- ernmentality perspective, the findings illustrate how possibilities for framing the problems faced by older job- seekers and for managing later life unemployment were constrained by broader individualizing neoliberal mandates. Despite recognition of systemic barriers tied to ageism and its intersection with other axes of disad- vantage, stakeholders and service providers enacted a narrow individualized approach to manage ageism. This individualized approach, in turn, produced tensions within service provision and shaped precarity for older jobseekers through encouraging them to be ‘realistic’ regarding the types of work and wages available to them as older workers. If the extended work life agenda continues to be politically promoted as a key solution in the management of population aging, it is imperative to re-configure policy and service approaches to avoid the downloading of insurmountable barriers onto older jobseekers in ways that increasingly produce precarious lives marked by uncertainty, instability, and vulnerability.

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