Symbolic Violence and Cruel Optimism: Young Men, Un(der)employment, and the Honda Layoffs in Swindon

Abstract

This chapter uses the concepts of structural and symbolic violence to discuss the experience of un(der)employment of working-class men in Swindon, a southern British town, who are struggling to find secure workrunchaptit in the context of the post-2008 economic downturn and fiscal austerity measures. The aftermath of the economic crisis exacerbated the structural violence endured by young people resulting from the overall rise of youth un(der)employment over the past 30 years. The stories of the youth in this chapter illustrate key themes emerging from a larger study involving semi-structured interviews with 38 un(der)employed young men aged 18-25 of different ethnicities and migration histories. The young men discussed here did not experience linear transitions out of education and into work. Instead, they cycled in and out of short-term, precarious contracts and periods of unemployment over the course of the 1-year study. This chapter uses Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence to capture the cruelty of the judgment placed on those who fail to succeed in what are extremely difficult conditions. In addition to the widespread tendency to blame those who are unemployed for their predicament, a number of contradictory stereotypes associated with different minority ethnicities and nationalities shape the labor market experience of young men, positioning them in different ways. This chapter examines how three young men negotiate their sense of selves and their economic livelihoods in the face of a difficult labor market and in light of these contradictory stereotypes.