Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the insight that unemployed people are in a particular condition of liminality, my ethnography suggests that the courses for active search of job are a sort of rites of passage and part of neoliberal ideological apparatuses aiming at transforming the subjectivities of the unemployed.

Paper long abstract:

Grounded on an ethnographic research among unemployed people in Turin, Italy, and, in particular, on a period of participant observation of one of the municipal centres offering courses for the active search of jobs, the paper aims to analyse some important dimensions of contemporary neoliberal policies concerning unemployment. Drawing on the insight that unemployed people are in a particular condition of liminality, my ethnography suggests that the courses for active search of job are both a particular kind of rites of passage and part of neoliberal ideological apparatuses. As such, they aim at transforming the subjectivities of the unemployed while supporting an individualized conception of the lack of work, strictly connected to the neoliberal ideology, according to which the unemployed is the main responsible of his or her predicament. My ethnographic research shows that the strength of the courses largely rests upon the hidden ritual and symbolic qualities of this dispositive. Indeed, as rites of passage, the courses offer a new fictive role to the participants, which are no longer represented only by the negative figure of the unemployed, but through the more positive one of the job-seeker. Moreover, the courses can be seen as having a “magical” dimension: like magical rites they offer a symbolic defence against the risk of the lack of presence. The ideological and ritual dimensions of the courses are quite clear, but we can ask: which actual effects do they have on unemployed’s subjectivities and livelihoods?