Abstract
This study investigates how young, well-educated, unemployed people are governed and how they govern themselves through affective capacities, focusing here on shame and passion. The empirical material consists of field observations made at an unemployment fund and in-depth interviews with 33 young unemployed people in the Danish welfare state. Inspired by governmentality studies including recent contributions concerning affectivity, I analyse how affect, emotions, and feelings are pivotal instruments of governmentality. On the one hand, unemployed people are encouraged to cultivate a passion for their profession and display this passion in their quest for a job. On the other hand, they are encouraged to feel ashamed for receiving unearned money from the state. The study applies the theoretical framework from governmentality studies and combines it with concepts in Ahmed (2014) in order to unfold the affective sides of governing young unemployed people. The study contributes theoretically by developing Ahmed’s idea of “sticky emotions” in an explicit psychological manner by identifying an embodied and a phenomenological dimension. It concludes that shame and passion influence unemployed people differently in relation to their subjective life courses as well as in relation to their social and societal circumstances and that people deal with the stickiness of unemployment shame in different ways. Some get rid of it by sticking it to other unemployed groups and some by dis-identifying with their formal status and instead conducting themselves as freelancers. The study begins to fill in the gap of how the more diffuse sides of governing can be made psychologically identifiable and in doing so it sheds light on the intimate relationship between politics and psychology.
The unemployment fund is housed in a building whose decoration is inspired by a hotel. The waiting hall is reminiscent of a lounge furnished with couches and there is an upmarket coffee machine offering espressos and café lattes. The meeting rooms are named after metropolises around the world; there is a Buenos Aires room, a New York room, etc. When people arrive at the introduction. Meeting for unemployed members they usually have to go to the Buenos Aires room on the first floor. There, one can choose between course titles such as “Persuade Others to Say Yes,” “Personal Branding,” and “Learn to Network.” A consultant at a seminar, Susan, advocates that people find their passion: “Find your passion and everything will be solved.” (Field Notes, Pultz, 2017)
The present labour market is increasingly characterised as precarious, with a proliferation of freelancers across a wide range of professions (Kalleberg, 2013). Periods of unemployment are thus becoming an integral part of work life and education no longer provides protection against unemployment, as is recognised in Standing’s (2011) label “the academic precariat,” which is the main focus here as the present study investigates governmentality among young, well-educated people. Related to this development towards increasingly precarious labour markets, unemployment as a social phenomenon is currently undergoing a semantic recoding, as echoed in the opening statement in which unemployment is problematised as a matter of passion. Concretely, the terms “unemployed” or “unemployment” have almost vanished from the Danish employment system. They are not to be found in the letters from job centres or unemployment funds, and they do not appear in the on-line material or at the seminars and courses for unemployed people. Inspired by enterprise vocabularies, new terms such as “job seeker,” “in transition,” and “looking for new opportunities” have replaced the label “unemployed” (see also Vallas & Cummins, 2015). This recoding seems to affect how young unemployed people perceive themselves and, furthermore, how they—in Foucauldian terms—are encouraged to live their lives and govern themselves. It is not only the behaviour of the unemployed people that is governed, but also their self-understandings and ways of relating to themselves and here, affects, emotions, and feelings play a key role.
The notion that emotions play an important role in the social organisation of power relations and society is not at all new (Durkheim, 1951; Weber, 1958). Elias (1997) characterises shame, embarrassment, and humiliation as some of the dominant emotions in modern societies as they form the basis for morality. These emotions are taboo and not only have to remain hidden from others but also from oneself. Sennett (1980) notes that an individual who feels ashamed tends to conform to prescribed codes of behaviour and that shame thus serves a socialising or disciplining function. In particular, self-conscious emotional experiences such as shame or pride have been shown to play an important role in conducting behaviour (Gibson, 2016; Goffman, 1963/1968; Scheff, 1990, 2000), and, specifically, shame has been identified as a mechanism to induce compliance to social norms (Combs, Campbell, Jackson, & Smith, 2010). Studies show that people struggling with poverty tend to feel ashamed or humiliated (Nussbaum, 2004). Scheff (1990) characterises shame as a feeling that comes from negative evaluations which threaten or break social bonds.
Unemployment and shame
Unemployment is a negative and unwanted social identity as paid employment not only has a financial but also a moral component, in that there is a long tradition in Western societies of perceiving work to be an honourable activity (Creed & Muller, 2006; Sennett, 1980). Answering the question “What do you do?” is painful for many young unemployed people and often they refrain from social encounters, simply to avoid answering that question (Sharone, 2013). Being unemployed is often experienced as a personal failure and unemployed people frequently look for personal shortcomings or deficits to explain how they have found themselves in their situation and why they haven’t been able to get out of it (Newman, 1988). Recent studies have documented how unemployment is increasingly privatised and perceived in individualised terms (Beck, 2008; Engelbrecht-Larsen, 2013; Pultz, 2016). Studies have linked the important role of self-responsibility to a tendency toward self-blame among unemployed people (Pultz & Hviid, 2016; Sharone, 2013). Accordingly, studies investigating attitudes toward unemployed people find empirical support for the negative representation of the unemployed as “lazy” or “incompetent” (see, e.g., Furåker & Blomsterberg, 2003). Early studies associated unemployment with shame (Bakke, 1933) and, later, Eales (1989) found that around a quarter of unemployed men reported feeling ashamed. Alm (2001) showed that shaming is associated with ill health among unemployed people. Rantakeisu, Starrin, and Hagquist (1999) found that 42% of a large survey sample of the unemployed reported shaming experiences and that shame was differentiated by gender, with men reporting more shame, which increased in accordance with their period of unemployment. Inspired by Foucault’s concept of productive power as effects emerging from social relations, W. E. D. Creed, Hudson, Okhuysen, and Smith-Crowe (2014) construct a comprehensive framework of shame. Here, what they term “systematic shame” is of particular relevance. Systematic shame is defined as comprising shared understandings of the conditions that give rise to what they illustratively term “felt shame.” Institutions develop shared rules defining what is appropriate and inappropriate behaviour and the authors note that these boundaries between appropriateness and inappropriateness are often taken for granted and perceived as objective and natural (Creed et al., 2014). In their view, people are capable of assessing any given situation in terms of shame and they perceive themselves and others in accordance with these assessments. This intersubjective surveillance underpins how people regulate themselves in order to avoid shame (Gibson, 2016, p. 122).
The current study builds on the work of Creed et al. (2014) and applies a similar theoretical framework which is characterised by an understanding framing subjective experiences on a political level. However, it differentiates itself by focusing on unemployment among young, well-educated people who are part of the “academic precarity” (Standing, 2011). Furthermore, this present study differentiates itself by conducting a context-sensitive analysis with inspiration from Tomkins (2008), who links shame with interest. In the context of unemployment, this translates into linking shame with passion. Unemployment today does not only involve working on objective qualifications but it entails learning how to cultivate and display passion as well as being encouraged to feel ashamed for receiving money from the state, rather than contributing to society. Affects, emotions, and feelings are not reduced to peripheral phenomena but rather core capacities to be governed by and through. The main objective in this study is thus to investigate the specific affective subjectification processes in an unemployment context in the Danish welfare state, inspired by governmentality studies and developing ideas and concepts from affect studies, in particular, the concept of “sticky emotions” (Ahmed, 2014) in an explicitly psychological manner.
Governmentality studies and affectivity
To investigate the experiences of unemployment among young people and the workings of affects and emotions in the governing of unemployed people, I turn to governmentality studies, as they offer a critical approach while at the same time also providing a helpful analytical approach. The concepts of technologies of power and technologies of the self from governmentality studies allow for the political level and subjective experiences to be seen as intimately linked. While subjective experiences comprise the main empirical focus in this article, they are shaped by how unemployed people are governed at an administrative and political level and thus we will briefly touch upon the theoretical background of these concepts.
Governmentality studies build on the work of Foucault as well as more recent developments of Foucault’s thinking, with proponents such as Mitchell Dean, Nikolas Rose, and Peter Miller (Burchell, Gordon, & Miller, 1991; Dean, 2010; Miller & Rose, 1995; Rose, 1996). Here, the concepts of technologies of power and of technologies of the self point us in the direction of investigating specific practices and their underlying rationalities and production of subjectivities. Foucault’s understanding of how individuals are made subjects in the matrix between technologies of power and of the self is defined as: Technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject; … technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality. (Martin, Gutman, & Hutton, 1988, p. 18)
Technologies of power include objectivising the subject and defining what is prohibited and what is allowed. However, technologies of power also include guiding people towards certain ends such as happiness (see also Greco & Stenner, 2013). They offer normative ideals, strategies, and techniques and people use these to govern themselves through adopting strategies aimed at self-regulation and improvement (Foucault, 2007). The technologies of power to some extent affect how people manage and relate to themselves, how they conduct themselves, and what they strive for in terms of values, goals, and desires. Rose notes that neoliberal governmentality prescribes ways for people to conduct themselves as enterprising individuals. He writes that they are required, “to conduct themselves with boldness, and vigour, to calculate for their own advantage, to drive themselves hard in the pursuit of goals” while displaying “energy, initiative, ambition, calculation and personal responsibility” (Rose, 1996, p. 154). Rose describes how enterprise culture and the precariat thrive on anxiety as people monitor and evaluate themselves according to existing ideals. They identify areas in which they fall short and have to do additional self-work to be employable in the face of considerable competition from others (Hickinbottom-Brawn, 2013; Neilson, 2015). Competition is identified as the social order underpinning neoliberal governmentality and it works by affecting wishes, interests, and desires (Foucault, 2008). While desire mostly entails an emotional or affective element, these aspects of subjectification practices are only scarcely developed within the work of Foucault and Rose. Thus, I join other scholars in advocating for a more explicit supplement of an affective analytical strategy in governmentality studies (Bjerg & Staunæs, 2011; D’Aoust, 2014; Isin, 2004) in order to be able to address exactly how feelings, emotions, and affects play a key role in how the unemployed are governed and govern themselves.
Affective subjectification
Affective subjectification involves understanding the becoming of subjects as a complex process that involves not only language as a constituent force but also broadening the analysis to take into account how affects, emotions, and feelings also partake in the subjectification process. As Bjerg and Staunæs (2011) write: “affects and affectivity are not simply by-products or something to be overcome, but the core matter to be managed by and through” (p. 138). Following Wetherell (2012), I view affective circulation as embedded in situated practices and linked with subjects’ embodied capacity to affect and be affected. Wetherell (2012) stresses that we need to specify how we define affects, as “everything is not always circulated” (p. 142). To do so, I join Brøgger and Staunæs (2016) in distinguishing between determinate affects and indeterminate affectivity. “Determinate affects” are embodied experiences either belonging to positive registers (excitement, thrill) or negative registers (shame, despair, disgust). “Indeterminate affectivity” allows us to think more broadly in terms of processes of being touched and moved (Brøgger & Staunæs, 2016, p. 228). Indeterminate affectivity attunes and affects matter. Particular places can be characterised by either a “good vibe” or a “bad vibe,” and either vibe can give rise to determinate affects that manifest themselves as embodied experiences, but do not necessarily do so. For instance, a funeral creates strong pushes towards feelings of grief and sorrow, however, people do not respond uniformly at funerals. To address these diffuse attunements and attend to the pre-personal or trans-personal dimensions of affective life in everyday experience, Anderson (2009) uses the fruitful concept of “atmosphere.” With inspiration from phenomenology, atmosphere is defined as a “class of experience that occurs before and alongside the formation of subjectivity. … As such atmospheres are the shared ground from which subjective states and their attendant feelings and emotions emerge” (p. 78). An “atmosphere” is thus a complex collective construction that leaves particular and singular tracks in the subject with the potential of manifesting itself in feelings such as passion and shame. In the unemployment fund, as illustrated in the opening statement, the atmosphere is intentionally modulated to subjectify unemployed people as competent, passionate, and active jobseekers. Summing up, I investigate the affective subjectification both in terms of determinate affects as embodied experiences and as indeterminate affectivity as atmospheres, tones, and moods in order to grasp how people are affected or attuned or “tuned” in specific ways in an unemployment context.
“Sticky emotions” in the affective economy
In order to be able to analyse how governmental technologies work through affects and emotions as key instruments, I now turn to Ahmed (2014) and her concept of “sticky emotions” to develop these perspectives in an explicit psychological context. We need to be able to explore and analyse what is going on when gathering unemployed people attunes them in a negative fashion, as we will see in the analysis. In order to apply the concept of stickiness in a psychological context, however, a few translations are required. Ahmed’s work is located in the field of cultural studies and therefore it only scarcely engages with the phenomenological experience of first-hand accounts, which comprises the main empirical material here. Ahmed is interested in what emotions do, rather than their ontological status. Emotions are conceptualised not as psychological states per se but rather as cultural practices with political implications as sites of government. Bodies are valorised in what she calls the “affective economy,” charging objects either positively or negatively in relation to ideology and political landscape. For instance, Ahmed uses the concept of “othering” to denote how some groups in society, such as refugees, are constituted through the workings of fear because a given population in a country is subjectified to fear of losing their beloved nation. Similarly, shame plays a role in constituting unemployed people. Ahmed notes that shame is orchestrated by the political and societal affective economy in which having a job and being self-sufficient is valorised and consequently receiving money from the state comes with the affective price of having to feel ashamed of oneself. Ahmed observes, “shame can also be experienced as the affective costs of not following the script of normative existence” (2014, p. 107). Even though unemployment is increasingly common, it does not follow the socially desirable script. Ahmed elaborates; “emotions can move through the movement and circulation of objects. Such objects become sticky, or saturated with affect, as sites of personal and social tension” (2004, p. 11). Unemployment can be viewed as an object of “stickiness,” meaning that people are saturated with affect in certain ways as they become unemployed. In Ahmed’s work on shame, she draws on Tomkins’ (2008) seminal work on the duality of shame and interest—without interest, there cannot be shame and the ability to feel ashamed is made possible by self-reflection. In accordance with Tomkins, Probyn defines shame as, “the body calling out its interest” (Probyn, 2005, p. 28). Interest is thus the prerequisite of shame as it is only possible to feel ashamed of something that is of value to the individual. Inspired by this aspect of Tomkins’ (2008) work, shame is viewed here not as isolated from interest, but rather shame is analysed in relation to interest. In an unemployment context, however, it seems that the unemployed are not subjectified as people who want to find a job (interest) but rather as people who are passionate about their profession (passion).
So far, the politically orchestrated nature and effect of emotions is clear, but in order to use the theoretical framework in a psychological context, we have to get closer to the effects on the individual. Also, the main empirical focus in this article is the subjective experiences of unemployment. Ahmed uses the expression to be comfortable in a society to illustrate a privilege associated with normativity. She uses the metaphor of the “comfortable chair” as an embodiment of the experience of fitting in: “A chair that acquires its shape by the repetition of some bodies inhabiting it: we can almost see the shape of bodies as ‘impressions’ on the surface” (as cited in Raun, 2012, p. 152). Fitting in is thus described as sitting down in a chair in which other bodies have sat and moulded the chair exactly so you feel comfortable sitting down and do not even notice the prior impressions. However, being different from the norm—being “other”—feels like sitting down in a chair already shaped by other people: “where your comfort is contingent and restricted—you have the bulging impressions of other bodies in the back, making your sitting in the chair never quite comfortable” (as cited in Raun (2012), p. 152). Ahmed thus illustrates how being “other” is associated with a bodily sentiment. While her key focus is on how emotions circulate and constitute the social field, Ahmed also includes an embodied dimension, and in the following she addresses the phenomenological underpinnings of shame: “shame can be described as an intense and painful sensation that is bound up with how the self feels about the self, a self-feeling that is felt by, and on the body” (2014, p. 103). In order to translate these theoretical understandings in a specific psychological context, it is necessary to zoom in on these aspects of sticky emotions as they circulate and charge objects in relation to the affective economy more specifically through marking the body in particular ways that change one’s being-in-the-world by drawing bodily awareness to the fact that one inhabits a position of being “other.” The boundaries constituting the unemployed group as being outside the norm are contingent on the workings of emotions, and both fear and shame play a key role here. Sticky emotions can also potentially be deposited as intense and painful feelings moulding one’s way of relating to oneself.
Now that sticky emotions are characterised both by an embodied and a phenomenological dimension, we turn to how people in various ways deal with the stickiness—what they actually do—as this is a crucial area in most theoretical psychological frameworks (i.e., agency, coping, etc.). The shame has to be handled somehow and, on this point, Probyn writes, “through our public statements, we want to distance ourselves from this uncomfortable proximity. In uttering the phrase, we call upon others to witness our pulling away” (as cited in Ahmed, 2014, p. 95). From a psychological point of view, it is also necessary to be attentive to the fact that people are not affected by sticky emotions in a uniform manner, and also, they deal with the sticky emotions in heterogeneous ways. However, there are some patterns related to how people deal with shame. Shame feels uncomfortable and thus people seek to escape it, as also noted by Creed et al. (2014). Scheff (1990, 2000) characterises different ways of dealing with shame. He notes that shame often goes unnamed and that we often try to hide shame—shame can even go unacknowledged. Unacknowledged shame can lead to what Scheff terms a “feeling trap” in which anger and shame mutually reinforce one another with further negative psychological consequences, such as poor self-esteem. Similar to Scheff’s notion of unacknowledged shame, Layton (2010) associates shame with what he terms “disavowal.” Based on a psychoanalytic framework, Layton (2010) associates neoliberal subjectivity with “a perversion of truth,” meaning that people make up little lies about themselves in order to escape uncomfortable truths. To escape the uncomfortable label of “unemployed,” the young and well-educated do not necessarily lie, but they often do present themselves as being “freelancers,” which is far more socially accepted in an enterprise culture (Rose, 1996).
The Danish context
In order to conduct a context-sensitive analysis, a few comments about the Danish system deserve a mention. Denmark has a universal welfare system including a provision of social security and benefits are generous compared to those of other high-income countries, particularly for those who have had a low-wage income (Harsløf & Ulmestig, 2015). Denmark is usually grouped with other Scandinavian countries such as Sweden as having a welfare model in which a well-funded social security system is linked to a dynamic labour market with a high degree of turnover (Bergmark & Palme, 2003). The Danish model is often described as a “flexicurity” system, which is characterised by flexible employment and a high degree of security for employees through an economic safety net and an active labour market policy. The flexicurity system is based on three features: a collective bargaining system with labour laws, an economic safety net, and active employment policies (Pedersen, 2011). One way the existing literature conceptualises differences among welfare states is to consider different countries’ levels of labour “de-commodification.” Esping-Andersen (1990) defines this as the “degree to which a person can maintain a livelihood without reliance on the market” (pp. 21–22) and here Denmark is among the most de-commodified in contrast to more market-dependent countries such as the UK and US.
Supranational actors such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have played an important role in the historical shift in how unemployment is governed, towards an overall impoverishment of the Danish social safety net. The OECD focuses on supply solutions for unemployment rather than demand solutions and it highlights the active society by placing more of an emphasis on active rather than passive measures in order to construct the active job seeker (Fryer & Stambe, 2014; Immervoll, 2012). Placing more emphasis on active measures means guiding, motivating, and up-qualifying unemployed people or maintaining their skills, while passive measures include the payment of unemployment benefits. Receiving unemployment benefits has thus been made conditional on specific activities. In addition to these, receiving benefits is also conditional on the demand of availability, i.e., being available to the labour market during working hours. Overall, this is referred to as the “activation paradigm” (Lindsay & Daguerre, 2009). The active labour market policy goes back to the 1970s; however, since the 1990s in particular, the activation policies have been expanded and the grip on the unemployed has, overall, been tightened (Engelbrecht-Larsen, 2013). Thus, active labour market policies are employed with the purpose of getting working-age people off benefits and into work, for instance by assistance in searching for work, training, public sector job creation, and subsidised employment in the private sector (Weishaupt, 2011). The Danish political scientist Ove Kaj Pedersen (2011) has argued that various reforms mark a move away from the traditional Nordic welfare state and towards a more competitive state termed the “competition state” that, to some degree, resembles neoliberal societies, what he calls “competition societies,” as in the UK and the US, while still remaining distinct in comparison with these (see also Lindsay & Daguerre, 2009). Thus, although Denmark’s welfare state has retrenched in recent decades (Bengtsson, Frederiksen, & Larsen, 2015), in a comparative context Denmark remains on the high end of de-commodification.
The current Danish employment system consists of government job centres and organisations that provide financial insurance against unemployment. The latter are called “unemployment funds.” The job centres provide social assistance to people who are unemployed and have not accrued entitlements through contributing to an unemployment fund. The unemployment funds pay unemployed members and they monitor members who are receiving benefits, with graduates receiving 460 Euros per week and unemployed persons who, prior to becoming unemployed, worked full-time, receiving 560 Euros per week. Currently unemployment benefits are limited to two years. Individuals become entitled to unemployment benefits if they have worked full-time for a year. The unemployment fund has the power to reduce or stop benefits if an individual receiving them fails to undertake required activities such as attending retraining seminars, receiving career guidance, or applying for new employment. The unemployed person should no longer be passivised and dependent on the system but should, on the contrary, be constructed as an empowered and active job seeker applying for jobs as demanded (Dean, 1995; Walters, 1994). Given the intrinsic link between technologies of power and those of the self, governing practices are associated with a particular, albeit heterogeneous, production of subjectivity relevant to the empirical study and conduct of the young unemployed people.
Methods and empirical material
The empirical material consists of field observations (Pultz, 2017) made at a national unemployment fund, including an introduction and three seminars with the titles: “Personal Branding,” “Persuade Others to Say Yes,” and “Learn How to Network,” together with in-depth interviews with 33 young, unemployed, white men and women, all with a university education and receiving unemployment payment from the Danish welfare state. Thirty of the interview participants are Danish and three were originally from Spain, Greece, and France. The interviewees were between 25 and 35 years of age, they all received unemployment benefits, and they were all university graduates with master’s degrees except one who had obtained a bachelor’s degree. Their educational backgrounds varied between natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
I recruited successive participants through a national unemployment fund for academics until the “point of saturation,” that is, to the point at which further interviews would have provided little additional information (Mason, 2010). I undertook in-depth interviews with each of the 33 young unemployed persons that lasted from 45 minutes to an hour and a half. The interviews were semi-structured, following a prepared guide. Using this guide, I explored the interviewees’ backgrounds, how and why they had applied for benefits, and their experiences with living on benefits and job searching and its relation to other aspects of their everyday lives. The in-depth interviews generated rich descriptions of young unemployed people’s experiences with the various institutions and the demands made on them, and also how they managed their situation and everyday life. I audio-recorded each interview and all the recordings were fully transcribed. The nature of the study did not require ethical approval in Denmark. All institutions and participants were anonymised for the sake of confidentiality and all interview participants signed a letter of consent and were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any time.
Coding and analysis strategy
Informed by a governmentality perspective, I examined the specific practices that produce and govern unemployed people towards certain self-understandings and ways of managing the self. Specifically, I read through the transcripts several times identifying themes and issues relating to a governmentality perspective, such as technologies of power and of the self, and I analysed embedded rationalities in these. More specifically I identified the various technologies of power in the accounts given in interviews as well as in the field observations and I identified how people dealt with these technologies as well as other ways of managing the self as an unemployed person. Based on my initial readings of the transcripts and other documents, I developed an initial set of coding categories (e.g., experiences at the unemployment fund, worry about the future, work experience, relationships). I then developed a coding frame which I, along with a colleague, used to code five interviews with NVivo software. We identified areas of disagreement and further elaborated on the coding categories until we reached a consensus. From there, we went on to code the remainder of the interview transcripts individually. The empirical material is largely verbal in nature which allows for investigating accounts about shame and passion. The analysis strategy is not restricted to identifying places in the empirical material with explicit references to the terms shame and passion—as shame often goes unnamed (Scheff, 1990), but rather aims to broaden the scope and to investigate accounts of moods, sentiments, atmospheres, and attunements. I also addressed these issues in the field observations. Here, I paid special attention to my own bodily registrations of the atmosphere and “vibes” at the specific courses.
Analysis
Inspired by Tomkins’ (2008) idea of the intertwinement between interest and shame, the analysis will first engage directly with the various ways that the young unemployed were governed to cultivate passion as part of their job search. From there, the analysis will proceed to investigate in detail how sticky shame affects young unemployed people, both in terms of accounts of embodied experiences and accounts of feelings. Throughout the analysis, specific attention will be devoted to the affective subjectification as it is orchestrated by the technologies of power as well as those of the self. This entails both investigating how they describe their feelings and talk about displaying certain emotions in the interviews as well as addressing atmospheres and vibes attuning people in specific contexts in the field observations. The last part of the analysis will address how they relate in various ways to the stickiness of unemployment.
Passion as a pivotal currency in job search
Let us rewind to the statement from the beginning of this article: “Find your passion and everything will be solved,” the consultant claimed at a seminar teaching unemployed people to be convincing when persuading potential employers about their competences. The sentence is echoed in the majority of interviews, where several interviewees talk about passion as being the inner force that may potentially move them into a job. Instead of focusing on how to optimise objective skills at the seminars, the young unemployed people are encouraged to “sell” themselves as passionate and interesting people. This cultivation of passion is reflected in the majority of interviews as an important resource in being an attractive job candidate as objective skills are not considered to be sufficient. Elisabeth, aged 32, who has been unemployed for 5 months, reflects on what it takes for her to find a job. It is actually the step before getting a job, she reasons—it is the condition of being able to find a job. However, she is not yet capable of enacting this passion. Assistance is needed. She explains: Personally, I need some clarification. I have to find out where to expend my energy. One of my bosses told me that I have a lot of drive, but that I need to find out where my passion lay, so they could run in the same direction, then I would be okay, or kick some more ass. Even though he is a dickhead, it was correct and spot on.
According to Elisabeth, affective capacities such as “drive” are essential in order to be employable. However, drive, as the direction of a movement, cannot make it alone: drive has to be underscored by passion, enthusiasm, interest, and strong feelings. Elisabeth thus does not challenge the idea that passion is a crucial currency to have as an employee but rather passion becomes a lens through which she relates to herself. Elisabeth speaks of passion as a sincere and deep interest in a specific work field. However, it seems difficult to find and feel this passion. In that sense, passion also has to be found and cultivated in order to be used as fuel in self-management. It thereby moves from an inner state of mind and body to an external and manageable (out)side that can be scrutinised, governed, and put into action. However, as the quote illustrates, it is not enough to only be passionately engaged. One must showcase and perform one’s passion, make it heard and seen, make one’s desire and engagement affect others in the job search process.
Accordingly, Morten focuses on excitement and interest as important currencies in the eyes of the employer. As he points out in the following quote, almost anything, circumstances, and assignments have the potential to engage him: “Yeah, you have to say it is exciting and interesting. In my world, everything is exciting; everything can be exciting, if you do it every day, it will get exciting.” Morten here elaborates that what he finds interesting and exciting is constantly emerging and his conduct may be transformed. In this way, the currency of interest works at an affective register, as Morten relies on a capacity to be affected as an integral part in the competition to find a job. Everything has the potential for being interesting to him. In this interpretative repertoire, the “currency” is not only what is but also how it will be engaging for him.
The stickiness of unemployment
Despite the explicit strategy in the unemployment fund to subjectify their unemployed members as competent world citizens, as reflected in the naming of rooms after big cities around the world, many of the interview participants describe being affected negatively both by their formal status as unemployed as well as affected emotionally when they are gathered with other unemployed people. Andreas, aged 27, has been receiving benefits for five months, and he reflects on his appropriation of the discourse of being a job seeker rather than using the sticky unemployed category: I have learned to call myself a job seeker. It is probably because my wife is a social worker. She doesn’t think I should call myself unemployed because I am an active job seeker. In my head, I am unemployed. I mean, you have—I have—the feeling of belonging to a group of losers, if I can put it like that. That was the first feeling I had joining one of those meetings [with other unemployed people]. But actually, I have reached the conclusion now that is just the conditions when you are unemployed. It has changed during the last month and a half in a positive direction.
Andreas will strain to avoid using the term “unemployed,” which probably has to do with the fact that the word “unemployed” has, as mentioned earlier, almost disappeared from the vocabulary in the unemployment system. Andreas initially felt that he belonged to a “group of losers” and this was especially salient to him when he attended meetings with other unemployed people. Several times during the interview Andreas mentions his wife who works with a group of unemployed people who receive social assistance. Generally, this group deals with social problems other than unemployment. The distinction between social welfare recipients and the unemployment recipients plays an important role in the construction of the active job seeker as it enables associating the stigma of unemployment with a group that is “farther down the social ladder.” Andreas underlines that he should identify with being an active job seeker but he also claims, “in my head, I am unemployed,” reflecting that initially he did not feel empowered and active; he felt like a “loser.” The dissonance between how Andreas felt and how he was supposed to feel mediated by the technologies and subjectifying capacities demonstrates, as Foucault (1982) has pointed out, how power is never 100% determining. These small cracks and fissures reveal the becoming of a multiplicity of possible identities and experiences. Andreas experiences transforming into an active job seeker and gaining from this transformation in terms of feeling more empowered and actually conducting himself as an active job seeker. Categories such as “unemployed” and “job seeker” are labels; however, labels do something; they move people. They are performative; they bring energy, activity, and direction. As Andreas notes, by familiarising himself with, and using, his wife’s terminology, he reflects on the process of becoming an active person. The active job seeker is in contrast to someone who has simply lost a job or has never had one. He or she becomes a person not only seeking pre-given opportunities but also enquiring, looking for, and creating new ones, in line with the enterprising self (Rose, 1996). This figure is obviously more attractive to others as compared to a passive individual defeated by the circumstances of life. Taking initiatives while training and transforming oneself is crucial. The analysis of this empirical material reveals that labels actively draw us in and out of certain communities and activate feelings of belonging. Consequently, labels work at the affective register and have the capacity to transform our experience of both ourselves and others.
Shame and its workings
As noted, being outside the normative script, being “other,” can be associated with feelings of shame, as unemployment is constituted as an object saturated or sticky with affect. Due to the affective economy, affects such as shame can seize certain subjects and manifest themselves in—in particular—the feeling of shame. A majority of the interview participants describe feeling ashamed for receiving money from the state. One of the ways the sticky shame reveals itself is in accounts of being under suspicion for being lazy or not doing enough to find a job. Ditte, unemployed for five months, tentatively explains how this suspicion is constantly present in her everyday life: Sometimes you can just sense; “does she really do enough” … I think. I don’t know. It’s just something you feel that everybody is thinking, that you have to explain all the time. It’s just there all the time; are you sure you’re doing everything you can? All the time, it’s like that. You feel that way even though that might not be the case.
The little hunches and hints, the “senses” and ideas relating to what the other person might think affect Ditte’s self-understanding negatively. The idea of not being sufficiently (pro)active imposes itself on her and she describes it as being present all the time even though she knows that is not true. From the quote, it is evident that Ditte is infiltrated by ambivalence as to whether people around her really have these implicit accusations. She is undetermined in this sense, but at the same time, she is very clear about the fact that she is marked by these worries. Investigating the specific case of Ditte as compared to other interview accounts, it seems that Ditte is more vulnerable to these implicit accusations due to her lack of professional experience. She has just graduated and is looking for her first full-time job and graduates in general seem to have less psychological ballast to buffer against the negative affective subjectification associated with the negative social identity of unemployment.
Related to this notion of being under suspicion, many of the interview participants mentioned, unsolicited, their hardworking and industrious work attitude early on in the interview as a form of defence against this presumed implicit accusation. Jonas, also unemployed for five months, concurs: “If you think that they see you as lazy, it hurts. Maybe you are under a lot of pressure, so you perceive good intentions differently.” The stickiness of unemployment and the associated negative affective subjectification penetrates the intimate social sphere for both Ditte and Jonas and accounts like these are common in the empirical archive.
A club of losers
So far, the effects of shame have been explored in subjective life courses. In the following, we turn to accounts about affective subjectification when unemployed people are gathered together. Andreas, who had then been unemployed for five months, further elaborates his experience of the depressing effects of participating in seminars with other unemployed people: The first time I went to one of the meetings I felt like I was at an AA meeting. Nothing negative about that, but the feeling of sitting with a lot of people and it is sort of a club for the outcasts. This is a club for losers. It’s no fun being around other unemployed people … It differs according to which group you are in. I was at a three-day course at Niels Brock [a business school] and that was an entirely different segment. Everybody was looking for a job but it was another group and motivation. It was actually interesting, instead of these standard groups with a lot of middle-aged women and men who got fired because they simply aren’t good enough. Perhaps they are good, but I feel that this is the club for people who aren’t good enough at what they do. I comfort myself saying that we are graduates. I was sitting next to a girl, she was also a graduate, and we could see it was the same feelings—it was weird being there. You sit and listen to a woman in her 40s who is talking about the ethical problems about using her network. I mean—I really don’t need that.
Despite the explicit strategy of subjectifying unemployed members as competent, passionate world citizens, as demonstrated in the opening statement, this recoding is not what dominated the atmosphere at the mandatory seminars that unemployed people have to participate in to get their unemployment benefits. At meetings at the unemployment fund, it is hard to escape the stickiness of the “unemployed” label. There are limits to what a positive recoding can achieve. This instance is central in order to understand that the subjectification process works through diffuse, collective, or atmospheric registers. If we were to analyse Andreas’ experience of feeling like a “loser” from a strictly individualist psychological perspective, we might investigate personality traits, socio-economic background, emotional disposition, and track record of psychological or perhaps even psychiatric experience. This issue will be further addressed in the discussion as theoretically and methodologically investigating the ways that sticky emotions influence people differently remains one of the pivotal challenges of integrating affect studies with psychology. By exploring Andreas’ accounts through the concept of sticky shame, it is interesting to see what he does in order to avoid the stickiness himself. By portraying middle-aged men and women who “got fired” simply because they “weren’t good enough,” Andreas reproduces a negative representation of unemployed people as incompetent. He thus reintroduces the idea that unemployment is caused by shortcomings or deficits of the individual. Furthermore, by sharing this negative appraisal of the middle-aged woman who had been dismissed, Andreas and the other graduates distance themselves from the “sticky” object, the sad unemployed person. In the quote Andreas is clearly ambivalent on the matter, questioning his own statement about the middle-aged people saying, “perhaps they are good.” He thus oscillates between “kicking downwards” and sensing a double standard by subscribing to this perception. If he judges his unemployed peers as incompetent, what does that make him? The effects of shaming documented in this study show that it positions people to judge others who are formally in the same situation as themselves. Apparently, Andreas and the young woman did not identify with some of the others present. However, from his description it is clear that his distinctions do not solely rest on rational arguments but rather on a more diffuse distinction. He makes it clear, however, that being unemployed does not apply to him or other graduates who have not yet been employed. By creating an alliance with one another, the two graduates pull away from the “sticky” label and have each other as a witness in so doing.
John, unemployed for five months, addresses the depressing atmosphere that is created in a gathering of so many unemployed people: “If you gather unemployed people in one place you have a lot of people who lack social competencies and who are tired of being unemployed … You don’t want to see the people next time, you want to get a job and hope they’ll do that as well.” John, like Andreas, reproduces the representation of unemployed people as being less talented when it comes to social competences. He does it to deal with how the sticky emotions associated with the object of unemployment affect people. The individualisation of risks has resulted in a need to identify personal shortcomings or deficits in the unemployed person and the lack of social competencies is one of these explanations. In John’s words: Generally, I do feel that it’s a taboo to be outside the labour market, to be one of those who receive unemployment benefit, but it does not affect me personally. Generally, if I see one of those programmes on television with people who are on unemployment benefit where you see pitiable examples of unemployed, then I am the first to say—that’s not me—even though we receive the same income, I don’t identify with him.
John rejects the stickiness of the shame associated with being unemployed. To deal with it he deflects it from himself and projects it onto others. This move, although not necessarily intentional or deliberate, makes it possible for him to escape the detrimental effects associated with it. John is an example of how handling otherness is performed by subcategorising the unemployed group and, on that basis, distinguishing himself from the “real” unemployed. Also interesting, and in full accordance with the perspective from Ahmed, cultural repertoires in the media and representations of unemployed people play a key role in subjectifying unemployed people.
The freelancer and escaping the stickiness
So far, by reading the material through governmentality and affective categories, I have highlighted how young unemployed people are tuned in different ways. Being unemployed not only brings into play feelings of passion, interest, and courage, but also of discouragement and shame. In the empirical material, I have identified various ways in which young unemployed people manage or deal with this shame. Some deflect it onto other unemployed people, seemingly refusing to identify with the condition of being unemployed. Here, we pursue this issue at length as the various ways that people deal with and cope with their life circumstances and the affective subjectification associated with unemployment is of particular importance in a psychological context.
Approximately one third of the interview participants indeed engage with the reconstruction of being unemployed, but they do so in their own way; not necessarily by creating coherent and passionate brands and selling these on social media as is promoted in the seminars in the unemployment fund, but instead by understanding and conducting themselves as freelancers. Being a freelancer while receiving benefits means being hired for small projects or doing voluntary work outside the permitted activation schemes enforced as active measures by the unemployment fund and job centre. The participants in this study work as graphic designers, as researchers, as journalists, etc. Governing oneself as a freelancer not only rejects the label of “unemployed,” it also demands conducting oneself in a way that optimises seizing new opportunities. At the heart of freelancing is the expansion of connections and the possibilities that accompany them. Here, Anne Kathrine explains what this practice entails: “It demands that you tend to your network. … I am not promising anything, but I see where it’s taking me. That’s my deal; I’m using all the opportunities that somehow arise.” By opportunities, she means taking on small assignments: teaching, writing, providing feedback for others. She does not perceive labour as defined by economy but instead by being needed to solve pressing assignments. She is open to new connections and becomes involved at every networking occasion that appears, and interestingly, this paves the way for cutting the connection to the unemployment identity.
One of the interview participants, Philip, has taken leave after submitting his bachelor’s dissertation in graphic design. He is thus unemployed by his own choice for strategic purposes as he uses the period to work without pay as a freelancer and thus to establish a network sufficient to improve his chances of finding a job when he graduates with his master’s degree. For Philip, who has been formally unemployed for six months, in the choice of using the unemployment benefit as support, the cost seems rather small, almost non-existent: I now have the network and I can keep track of the projects based in these networks and that will help me a lot faster after my master’s. I know what they put weight on at job interviews—through my network—so it only takes interest and courage to do it.
This potentialisation of the future is also beneficial in the present as it will improve his prospects in the future and thus counteract what could have been a fear of not finding a job after his master’s.
The unemployment fund is held to financially sanction a member who fails to comply with the laws and rules defined at a political level. The individual has to handle these tensions or ambivalences between the various technologies in the system. For some, the freelancing practice comes at a cost. There are many rules that counteract the possibility of using the system for something other than its intended purpose. Anne Kathrine explains her fear of being caught: I am shit-scared that the unemployment (fund) calls me up and says that I have failed to do something. When they called, I was petrified. I was horrified. There are a lot of things. Can I blog? I am not paid to do it. Can I write on my LinkedIn that I am a freelancer, even though I am unemployed? I am too afraid to ask those questions, because I am afraid of getting a no. I think that those things bring me closer to a job. But I am not sure the unemployment fund feels the same way … When I am offered these small freelance jobs and the whole finding out how it works with the unemployment benefit; it’s a strange feeling. That of constantly being in the system.
The redefining of the unemployed person as a freelancer for Julie does not allow her to fully escape the ever-present feeling that she is “in the system.” Somebody else has the authority to provide her with money, and they also have the power to take it away from her again. The freelancer frequently does things that are not allowed, such as working on projects that prevent them from meeting the availability requirement. These young unemployed people are thus negotiating new categories and practices in a changing and increasingly precarious labour market. The system, however, is largely geared towards more traditional employer–employee relations. That leaves the freelancers in a situation in which they have to deal with both the opportunities (they actually get money to live on) and the worries (the practice is contrary to the rules and laws): The structure in this unemployment fund is designed for you to find a job, and not create your own job. Of course, everybody shouldn’t be allowed to spend half a year; … —“I don’t want (to) do anything!” under cover of being an entrepreneur.
Being a freelancer while being supported by the unemployment benefit is, in fact, illegal and this brings with it feelings of insecurity and fear, often associated with austerity and precarious living and at the same time it is promoted to conduct oneself as an enterprising self. Dealing with these constricting perspectives creates ambivalence at the individual level. Escaping the shame by being a freelancer involves managing the self in terms of fear and insecurity. Conducting oneself as a freelancer also raises political and moral issues, in that Julie found it problematic if “everybody” were to use the unemployment benefit system in this strategic way.
Discussion
This study contributes to the emerging theoretical and methodological literature on how psychology, in new and unforeseen ways, has been called to the fore in the affective governing of unemployed people and thus it contributes to understanding the relationship between politics and psychology. In accordance, new governmental technologies with so-called performative effects have been identified in a wide range of domains in the welfare state, encompassing the educational system (Brøgger, 2014), management (Bjerg & Staunæs, 2011), and social work on drug treatment (Bank, 2016).
With inspiration from Ahmed and Tomkins, I have analysed the empirical material through literature on the duality of shame and interest (Ahmed, 2014; Probyn, 2004; Sedgwick, Frank, & Tomkins, 1995; Tomkins, 2008), which translates into shame and passion in a current Danish unemployment context. I found that experiences of shame as well as passion were prevalent and significant in both the field observations as well as in the accounts of unemployed people, thus complementing other recent findings in social work (Featherstone, White, & Morris, 2014; Gibson, 2016). In this way, the study contributes to providing empirical support for the importance of investigating the role of self-conscious feelings. So far, self-blame, in particular, has been identified as a prevalent self-conscious feeling among unemployed people (Pultz & Hviid, 2016; Sharone, 2013). I add to this by including shame and passion as relevant capacities and sites of governing in the micro-foundations of social interactions. By more precisely documenting how young unemployed people are encouraged to work on and mould their abilities to feel, and convincingly display, passion in their job searches while also being encouraged to be ashamed of being a burden on society, the study contributes with empirical support for an understanding of shame as something not dissociated from passion. Developing shame based on Ahmed’s work and with inspiration from Tomkins has thus resulted in a more nuanced conceptualisation in which shame and passion are not independent social phenomena but, on the contrary, are co-constituting. In that sense, this theoretical contribution differentiates itself from the literature on stigma based on Goffman (1963/1968) and Creed et al. (2014). The theoretical conceptualisation thus results in a broadening of scope demonstrating the entanglement of shame with passion, rather than separating the two from each other. On the one hand, people are encouraged to cultivate passionate repertoires and experience the positive determinate feelings associated with this. On the other hand, they are constituted as a group negatively affected as a result of being “other”—of being outside the norm.
The interview participants not only talked about the stigmatising effects of particular words or discourses but also addressed a more diffuse way of being affected as unemployed. Interestingly, this study contributes with support for the notion that affects and atmospheres are crucial sites of governing. They are intentionally manipulated as evident in the opening statement and in the field observations, but they are also uncontrollable and unpredictable as they work in heterogeneous ways in different people. In order to unfold the affective subjectifying effects of atmospheres and the more performative effects of labels such as “unemployed” and “job seeker,” I turned to the literature on affectivity. As noted in Foucault and Rose’s own writings, there are certain offshoots of affectivity; however, I have contributed to the venture of elaborating an affective analytical strategy in regard to understanding subjectification processes, as Isin (2004) calls for, in order to be able to understand neoliberalism. Drawing on insights from the affective turn has allowed me to address both the linguistic and material performative effects of how young unemployed people are governed in the unemployment system and in society at large through shame and passion. Answering this question has entailed an analysis of what happens at the various courses and seminars and an exploration of how atmospheres attune young unemployed people in various ways. One of the characteristics of affective subjectification outlined in this study is that these processes not only work through discursive and self-reflexive repertoires but also by “sneaking in” and “sneaking up” on people in a vague sense of feeling that something is going on but it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what and how. The benefit of using a concept such as atmosphere is that it takes hold of a level of analysis that tends to be overlooked in governmentality studies. By using this concept, one can avoid the individualist pitfall characterising much academic work on emotions and feelings. In the following I will sum up and discuss issues related to how they are affected by the “sticky emotions” associated with the object of unemployment and—equally important from a psychological perspective—also unfold how they deal with the affective governing in different ways.
A crucial point in order to integrate governmentality studies, including recent works on affectivity, with psychological research is to be able to address the different ways that sticky emotions and affects influence people in terms of varying life trajectories and social and societal circumstances. One strategy is to attach the sticky shame to other groups and thereby (re)produce the negative representation of these groups. Here, shame is managed by refusing to identify with the unwanted label and by directing the “stickiness” to other objects. Some of the young unemployed people create a counter-figure that they use to distance themselves from, namely, the “real unemployed person.” This manoeuvre allows them to align themselves with the dominant idea of valorising self-sufficiency and consequently shaming unemployed people without having to experience the uncomfortableness of being other themselves.
Another identified strategy is to engage with other social identities such as the freelancer. Unemployment is, in a Danish context, recoded in affective self-help and enterprise vocabularies. The freelancer is a relatively new configuration construction but he or she plays against the disciplinary backdrops of regulations and being inside or outside the norms and has to deal with the ever-present fear of being caught and thus losing income. In addition, the figure of the freelancer offers young entrepreneurial unemployed people an identity more in alignment with the virtues and competencies valorised in the precarious labour market marked by austerity (Fryer & Stambe, 2014; Kalleberg, 2013). Constructing oneself in the image of the freelancer implies a particular affective economy—it demands the ability to perform with intensity and passion and a willingness to stay active, even if this means working without pay and thus outside what is allowed in the unemployment system. However, the practice comes at a price. Receiving the economic income of unemployment benefits while at the same time acting as freelancers creates an ever-present fear of being caught and having to repay the benefits. Work for freelancers is not delimited to paid work or to formal employment but is viewed as practices and assignments that are needed, and thus they challenge the traditional understanding whereby work is defined in economic terms, an issue also taken up by feminists (Hardt & Negri, 2001). The freelancers are aware that they are more likely to get a job if they get a “foot inside the door” and keeping active is pivotal. This study expands on the finding from Pultz and Mørch (2015) who identified an alternative and subversive practice among young striving artists whom they termed “unemployed by choice.” The practice is not restricted to artists but is present across a range of professions. In this dispersion, the romantic figure of the artist who does not need to be paid for his or her work, because the activity in itself is reward enough is also translated into other professional fields. Contextualising this figure in contemporary labour markets makes it easy to see how it fits like hand in glove. The practice challenges traditional borders between work and pay. In accordance, Fogh Jensen (2009) has characterised “project society” by the mantra: “it is better to be abused than unused.” By keeping active, the passion is not only cultivated but also displayed as visible to others.
While neoliberal social policies have been introduced in the unemployment area in Denmark, the Danish welfare state remains a distinct case in comparison with more neoliberal market states such as the US or the UK. The Danish “flexicurity” model provides citizens with better social security as compared to other countries, even though it is increasingly impoverished. In a sense, the Danish welfare state inadvertently offers citizens a possibility to use the unemployment system as entrepreneurial support and in that sense it facilitates and supports a freelancer practice characteristic of precarity (Standing, 2011). Interestingly, the workings of shame transcend, so to speak, the societal conditions in the sense that the social security system does not function as a buffer against feeling ashamed of being unemployed. The present empirical study identifies strategies of deflecting and escaping uncomfortable truths about oneself in accordance with the existing literature on shame (Layton, 2010; Scheff, 1990, 2000). The formal unemployment status indeed challenges young well-educated people’s identity narratives and the negative and sticky effect of unemployment is bypassed by many by engaging with the image of the freelancer, who is more socially acceptable in times of neoliberalism.
The theoretical payoff developing governmentality studies by including affective subjectification through Ahmed’s idea of “sticky emotions” in an explicit psychological context can be summed up as follows. Cromby (2015) states that it is notoriously difficult to agree upon definitions of feelings, emotions, and affects since an important component is the embodying nature of these complex phenomena and therefore they are, to some extent, ineffable, that is not wholly representable in words (see also Smail, 2005). Cromby (2015) draws attention to the methodological difficulties in analysing such ineffable phenomena such as affects in qualitative analysis, mainly drawing on explicit linguistic resources. This study has demonstrated how field observations comprise a promising method to investigate and track the diffuse aspects of affective subjectification. Methodologically, this implies that qualitative analyses that transcend the narrowly linguistic offer some promise in regard to this challenge, such as visual data suggested by Cromby (2012). Empirical material consisting of video might show even more methodological promises for future research as this allows for integrating these theoretical conceptualisations with, for instance, the large area of non-verbal communication in psychological research. Theoretically, the study contributes by zooming into some of the aspects of the theoretical framework such as focusing on understanding shame and “othering” mechanisms as having an embodied dimension illustrated by the comfortable chair metaphor. Being “other” is deposited as an increased bodily awareness and thus an embodied sensation of not fitting in. Also, shame is phenomenologically experienced as painful, inciting people to take action to get rid of the stickiness of shame. Focusing on specific affective capacities in a delineated context of studying young well-educated people—the academic precarity—the study has shown the benefits of addressing specific affects or emotions rather than participate in the construction of them as the mysterious substance called “affect in general” (Anderson, 2014; Probyn, 2005). Affects are characterised as embodied, as infiltrated with how people experience institutional practices, and shaped by cultural and political discourses affecting how lives are felt and lived.
This study illuminates the fact that meaning does not exclusively reside in language but also in atmospheres or moods that affect the production of meaning as well as subjectively experienced feelings. In order to understand current workings of governmentality it is crucial to further develop concepts and methods that take feelings, emotions, and affects into account as key instruments in welfare state governing. Future research should look into these possibilities to shed light on affective subjectification in the unemployment field as well as other governing sites in the welfare state. Future studies should focus more directly on the political level and its orchestration of the affective structures and in this way supplement the current study focusing on how these dynamics are played out at the personal and social level. Also, future research should address whether these dynamics are to be found among segments of the population other than the well-educated young precariat, which has been the main focus here.
Concluding remarks
Affects and feelings are identified as key instruments of governmentality—and that goes for both positive and negative affective capacities. The present study has contributed theoretically by further developing Ahmed’s (2014) term, “sticky emotions,” in an explicitly psychological theoretical manner by operationalising relevant areas and methods to investigate these as promising ways of addressing the diffuse affective sides of governing and self-governing. Empirically, this study has drawn attention to new practices of governing young unemployed people through shame and passion. Based on interviews and field observations, I have shown how passion and excitement are economised in unforeseen ways. This poses a particular challenge for unemployed people who also have to deal with the “stickiness of shame” associated with unemployment. The discomfort and pain of not fitting in incite people to get rid of their sticky shame in various ways. Some attach the stickiness to other unemployed groups and some dis-identify with the unemployed label and instead present themselves as freelancers. The practice of the freelancers in this study underlines the importance of maintaining heterogeneity in the study of unemployed people, as unemployed people are not a homogenous group (Wanberg & Marchese, 1994). Similarly, affective governing does not subjectify people homogenously, as these processes are not determining but rather dispositioning (Foucault, 1982). The joint venture between governmentality studies and affect studies seems promising in getting closer to understanding subjectivities without losing sight of the (affective) politics and management of today. The category of unemployment seems to be a particularly fertile ground for researching the affective sides and entanglements of subjectification as feelings, emotions, and affects are identified as key instruments of governmentality.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.