Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the experiences and motivations of self-proclaimed 'proper jobseekers' in Johannesburg. The activity of searching for proper work affords people access social and material benefits as it is carried out, in turn changing how and why people valorise formal work.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the experiences and motivations of self-proclaimed 'proper jobseekers' in urban and peri-urban Johannesburg, South Africa. Many young unemployed persons continue to spend long periods actively looking for formal wage labour, thus seemingly buying into and re-enforcing the significance of 'proper work' in a context of mass-unemployment and decreasing access to stable employment. The social activity of searching for formal work, however, offers a number of social and material benefits as it is carried out. And crucially, these benefits are only partially tied to the outcome of people's search. Far from blinded by the 'fantasy future' (Guyer) of formalised work, Johannesburg's poor unemployed are often keenly aware that their search will not lead to stable wage labour. By positioning themselves as 'proper workers in waiting', however, they are able to access novel forms of institutional belonging, re-negotiate their position within existing social networks, and craft less-than-formal livelihoods. In turn, they can also maintain a degree of separation from the often villainised figure of the 'lazy unemployed youth' in contemporary South Africa. This paper therefore builds on existing works on 'waithood' (Honwana) and unemployed 'timepass' (Jeffrey), as well as the large literature on the plurality of contemporary livelihood strategies, to explore the act of searching for wage labour as a form of 'making do' in itself. Even as young people continue to idealise wage labour, then, they also re-formulate the valorisation of wage labour by building lives in the in-between of bare unemployment and 'proper work.'