As when a connected land breaks away and sinks

Men’s unemployment shame in contemporary working-class fiction

Abstract

This article deals with men’s unemployment shame in contemporary working-class fiction. With an intersectional approach I am looking to find what causes unemployment shame and how it is tied to both masculinity, class, and age. From the analysis of Møller (1991), Slagterkoner og bagerenker (2016) and Dagpengeland (2012), this article argues that unemployment shame must be understood as an affect that influences the individual both internally and externally. Even though the men in Møller and Slagterkoner og bagerenker become unemployed due to changes in the labour market and because they belong to the precariat, which is particularly vulnerable to unemployment, unemployment shame arises as a reaction to the fact that they feel excluded from a community. They thus internalize social conditions to a point of interpellation. In addition, a large part of their unemployment shame is due to the men’s own heteronormative and chrononormative ideals, which associate masculinity with the ability to provide, and unemployment with lack of purpose in life. When the unemployed are then met by the shaming unemployment system, which is expressed in Dagpengeland, unemployment becomes even more associated with a personal deficiency.