A Cross-Class Comparison
A Cross-Class Comparison
The Blue-Collar Diligence Game
This chapter explores the distinct job search strategies and unemployment experiences of American blue-collar workers. Labor market institutions in this context shift the focus away from both subjective chemistry and objective specs and instead make salient a “diligence” filter where getting hired is widely understood to depend on whether the job seeker is perceived to be a reliable hard worker. In a surprising finding, American blue-collar job-search experiences are more parallel to those white-collar Israelis than to those of their American white-collar compatriots. Drawing on in-depth interviews with blue-collar job seekers the data suggest that similarities in unemployment experiences are rooted in structural similarities between the specs and diligence job search games, including the nature of the required emotional labor and the perceived importance of job search strategies in determining the outcome. Taken together, the cross-class and cross-national comparisons suggest that to understand unemployment experiences the analysis must move beyond culture and class to the specific job-search games unemployed workers must engage in when looking for work, and the concrete labor market institutions that structure such games.
Keywords: blue-collar, cross-class comparison, labor market institutions, culture, one-stop centers, participant-observations
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
