Paper short abstract:

Social science literature on unemployment has often described how difficult unemployed people find it to structure their day and to escape a feeling of uselessness. The paper analyses the micro work of getting through the day in a context in which employment is an exception, not the norm.

Paper long abstract:

At least since Jahoda's and Lazarsfeld's classic study on Marienthal, boredom, lack of structure and a feeling of uselessness have been described as the main characteristics of unemployment. 'Timepass' and 'waithood' are recent permutations of the general pattern. In this perspective, time spent in unemployment appears as a succession of universally boring days in which the hours blend into each other. My paper does not dispute the general picture, but tries to provide an ethnographic account of how young unemployed people in northern Namibia actually spend their time and try to structure their days. Just as work, unemployment is variously perceived as fulfilling and as alienating, as freedom from constraints and as absence of structure. The necessity to live one's day in a meaningful and bearable manner creates new social forms. These forms sometimes can perpetuate unemployment, but in an environment characterized by widespread lack of employment opportunities, they can also contribute to the emergence of new economic strategies no longer based on one's own participation in the labour market. In describing and analyzing such processes, I try to show that anthropologists' emphasis on waithood can stand in the way of understanding practices of waiting, just as an emphasis on unemployment can hide from our view new patterns of social participation.