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Young Working-Class Men Without Jobs: Reimagining Work and Masculinity in Postindustrial Sweden

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Masculinity, Labour, and Neoliberalism

Part of the book series: Global Masculinities ((GLMAS))

Abstract

Since working-class masculinity has traditionally been closely connected to wage labor and the ability to provide for oneself, the lack of resources associated with unemployment among working-class men implies a need to redefine one’s own self-understanding. This chapter discusses the narratives of 12 young unemployed working-class men living in a small, deindustrialized town on the east coast of Sweden. From a situation much characterized by deficiency and marginalization, an alternative understanding of the meaning of work is developing, intertwined with alternative conceptions of masculinity. These tendencies are partly related to the state of unemployment and the marginalized position stemming from it, indicating that important and critical changes to masculinity are taking place also there, far from the more privileged locations.

I finished school in 2008. Then I worked for a couple of months in the autumn. But then the company gave me notice and then those of us who were the last to be employed were the ones who had to go. I had an industrial job then, in a small factory, installing ploughs. That’s when the years of financial crisis began so they got rid of half the staff.

Isak, 24

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In 2013 the rate of youth unemployment was as high as 4.4 times the rate for adults, which put Sweden in a leading position among comparable countries (http://www.scb.se/statistik/_publikationer/AM0401_2013A01_BR_AM76BR1301.pdf).

  2. 2.

    Other possible explanations exist. For example, the lack of an official apprenticeship system counted as paid work, as in Germany and Austria; the fact that neither upper secondary school students nor university students receive grants and/or student loans for all 12 months of the year, as is the case in, say, Denmark (http://www.scb.se/sv_/Hitta-statistik/Artiklar/Statistiken-over-ungdomsarbetsloshet-ar-jamforbar/ – downloaded 2016–12–27).

  3. 3.

    During 2007 and 2008, Swedish trade unions lost 235.000 members in total, which is a remarkable number for a small nation (Kjellberg 2009).

  4. 4.

    In lower levels of education, girls achieve better grades in all areas except sports—even in mathematics, which was formally an area where boys used to perform at a higher level (SOU 2009: 64).

  5. 5.

    In 2014, 17 % of young men and 13 % of young women were looking for jobs in Västervik. A larger percentage of young women had academic degrees: 35 %, compared with 22 % of young men (https://www.vastervik.se/Global/kommun-och-politik/kommunfakta/scb/scb-kommunfakta-vastervik-2013.pdf-).

  6. 6.

    After nine years of compulsory school, youth in Sweden are entitled to a three-year upper secondary school education. It is voluntarily, free of charge and provides a choice of 18 different national education programs. The vast majority choose to attend upper secondary school.

  7. 7.

    This avoidance of economic and timely investment in higher education among working-class families, and even more so among individuals living in harsh economic circumstances, has been discussed in terms of a rational strategy of risk-reducing (Beach and Sernhede 2011; Gillberg 2010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cultural Studies, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Åsa Andersson

  2. Cultural Studies, University West, Trollhättan, Sweden

    Anita Beckman

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  1. Åsa Andersson
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  2. Anita Beckman
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

    Charlie Walker

  2. Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Steven Roberts

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Andersson, Å., Beckman, A. (2018). Young Working-Class Men Without Jobs: Reimagining Work and Masculinity in Postindustrial Sweden. In: Walker, C., Roberts, S. (eds) Masculinity, Labour, and Neoliberalism. Global Masculinities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63172-1_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63172-1_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

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