The Work of Looking for Work: Surviving Without a Wage in Austerity Britain

Abstract

This chapter examines the everyday lifeworld of Jeff, an unemployed individual living in the Welsh Valleys—a highly deindustrialised area that is one of the UK’s most deprived regions. Jeff’s story demonstrates the damaging effects of austerity policies that have introduced greater levels of coercion and conditionality for the unemployed, accompanied as they are by heightened political rhetoric framing waged labour as the route to citizenship. Not only are these transformations callous: they also work against the ability of the unemployed to secure waged labour. Rather than a ‘workless’ existence, Jeff’s story illustrates the many and often desperate works that punctuate his attempts to survive without a wage—works that unfold socially and collectively through the politics of community and place.