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The decade of the  s witnessed an unprecedented erosion of the postwar welfare state, with massive restructuring of the labour market away from full-time, sustaining employment. This article examines the experiences of restructured Canadian full-time workers who lost a job because of a company shutdown, relocation, or non-seasonal business slowdown. Using data from Statistics Canada's Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics for the period  - , we present longitudinal data examining labour market outcomes at  ,  ,  and  months following the initial job loss. Outcome data allow us to examine the extent to which job displacement in the  s resulted in transitional dislocation followed by stable full-time employment, or whether new pathways to social exclusion and marginalization were created. Given that only half of workers who lost their full-time jobs during this period were in stable and full-time employment two years later, we find support for the latter. The article further identifies policy alternatives that could lessen the social costs of neo-liberal labour market restructuring in Canada and beyond.

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In this qualitative study, we examine the pathways to vulnerability created by structural unemployment. We focus on a sample of workers often neglected in unemployment studies, namely full-time workers who have held steady employment before job loss. Our sample consists of 29 Canadian workers, restructured from full-time employment and followed for two years. By investigating what happens to these workers we are able to gain valuable insight into the “lived experience” of structural job loss. Their stories describe pathways that lead to re-integration, but also expose pathways that result in heightened states of vulnerability and exclusion from the labour market. The paper concludes with a number of policy suggestions aimed at redressing some of the most negative effects of neoliberal labour market restructuring.

Understanding the neoliberal restructuring of social services cannot be outside the implications of these processes for field education in social work. The neoliberal agenda creates contradictions in field education as the site where the service sector and the academy come together, where critical synergies can be realized or jeopardized. From the critical activist stance of ourselves, and our school, we recognize and seek to resist the neoliberal control of social work settings and the practices therein. Recognizing that many schools of social work practice an agency based model of field education, we examine the limits of this approach, suggesting a shift towards a community issue based model is necessary to maintaining a commitment to preparing and supporting critical activist practitioners.