Paper short abstract:

The project Work habits deals with lack of employment opportunities and non-functional strategy for working with long term unemployed. The purpose of the project is to identify the potential of local communities to generate new job opportunities in the region through qualitative social research.

Paper long abstract:

The interdisciplinary project called Work habits is a study that aims to test the innovative instruments of integration of long-term unemployed people into the labor market. The project is based on the premise that if you want to effectively intervene in any given social environment, you need to have enough understanding of the local relationships. Intense relationships in real time are a prerequisite for the integration of the unemployed persons and are observable through the methods of qualitative social research.

The innovative component of the project is the establishment of cooperation among the representatives of the local community environment when creating or mediating a job opportunity. Cooperation with local social actors provides a good understanding of their needs and the needs of the whole community environment. Anthropological skills and knowledge will enable the researchers to describe the social structure of the population in the locality, understand the nature of social relationships between key individuals, between formal community groups (associations, institutions, businesses, political groups and others), and informal community groups (people with significant cooperation in friendship, neighborliness or activist collectives). The sum of these relationships creates "local imagined communities". Based on the definition of the structure of social relations, functions that the community practices fulfill in the local environment will be identified. The expected result will be a representative knowledge of the social environment in which a subsequent intervention is possible. This intervention leads to satisfying needs of the local community through creating new job opportunities for the long-term unemployed people.