Living “Out of the Loop”: Unemployment in the Context of Long-Term Illness

Abstract

This article is part of the special issue “Laboring from Ex-Centric Sites: Disability, Chronicity and Work” (title of SI; AWR July 2025; 46(1)) edited by Giorgio Brocco and Stefanie Mauksch. This paper examines the experiences of work and unemployment among residents of an East London borough living with multiple long-term health conditions. Through ethnographic research, we explore the psychopolitics of unemployment in an urban setting, focusing on the cyclical relationship between (un)employment and (ill-)health. Our findings show the double bind participants often experience regarding work: while they desired employment and could only imagine a fulfilling life through work, they found it impossible to remain in most workplaces they had experienced, as these environments worsened their health conditions. This contradiction created a sense of existential stuckness among our study participants. Additionally, our analysis highlights the moral and bureaucratic challenges involved in managing unemployment. The benefit assessment process, combined with social isolation, often reinforced a chronic identity among long-term unemployed participants, leading to a diminished sense of their own capabilities. By theorizing the seduction of labor in contemporary societies as a distinct form of psychopolitics inherent to neoliberal governance, we aim to highlight the troubling pressure governments place on individuals to work, even under conditions of long-term illness.