A Capability Approach to Understand the Scarring Effects of Unemployment and Job Insecurity: Developing the Research Agenda

Abstract

Having a poor start in the labour market has a ‘scarring’ effect on future employment and well-being. Indeed, unemployment at any point of the life-course can scar. While there is extensive quantitative research examining scarring effects at the macro- and meso-levels, evidence regarding scarring from the micro-level that provides insights into individual perceptions, values, attitudes and capabilities, and how they shape employment trajectories is lacking. A qualitative approach which avoids the imposition of values and choices onto individuals’ employment trajectories, and accounts more fully for the contextual constraints which shape available options and choices, is argued for. In emphasising people’s substantive freedom of choice, which may be enabled or constrained by contextual conditions, the Capability Approach is proposed as providing a valuable lens to examine complex and insecure labour market transitions. Such an approach stands in contrast to the supply-side focused active labour market policies characteristic of neo-liberal welfare states.

“If I won the lottery…”: work orientations of low-qualified young adults in Albania and Switzerland

“…The school-to-work transition (STWT) is a significant moment of people's career paths (Masdonati et al, 2021;Vuolo et al, 2014), given that the first occupational experiences influence careers in the long-term (Egdell & Beck, 2020;Yeung, & Yang, 2020). For example, early employment instability negatively impacts later earnings, occupational status, and career satisfaction (Krahn et al 2015).…”

Dementia, Work and Employability: Using the Capability Approach to Understand the Employability Potential for People Living with Dementia

“…While the CA originates in welfare economics, it is increasingly applied to complex and insecure labour market transitions in sociological research ( Beck, 2018 ; Egdell and Beck, 2020 ). The CA focuses ‘directly on freedom as such rather than on the means to achieve freedom, and it identifies the real alternatives we have’ ( Sen, 2003 : 49).…”

“…The CA is critiqued for not addressing injustice inherent in capitalism ( Dean, 2009 ) – links can be made here to arguments that the exclusion of disabled people is rooted in capitalism ( Oliver and Barnes, 2012 ). Nevertheless, the CA offers a distinctive approach, with the focus on capability-sets setting it apart in framings of welfare and well-being ( Egdell and Beck, 2020 ) and some (e.g. Carpenter, 2009 ) argue that a radical CA could be developed through connections with fuller political economic/social analysis.…”

“…While some argue that the CA overemphasises rational cognitive action and does not substantively discuss processes through which decisions are made ( Dean, 2009 ; Gasper, 1997 ; Zimmerman, 2006 ), Sen (2009) does suggest public deliberation in the development of capabilities ‘lists’. Equally, while the impact of deprivation on choice reasoning processes is not well developed in the CA, it does highlight that individuals who are persistent victims of discrimination may be constrained in their choices because of internalised conceptions of their own unequal self-worth ( Egdell and Beck, 2020 ; Nussbaum, 1997 ). Thus, it provides a lens to understand the complex relationship between economic activity, employability and disability at the individual and labour market level ( Anyadike-Danes, 2010 ; McQuaid and Lindsay, 2005 ).…”

‘You Can’t Eat Soap’: Reimagining COVID-19, Work, Family and Employment from the Global South

“…The guidelines prescribing sanitisation, social distancing and self-isolation, for example, assume Northern-centred nuclear families and skilled jobs in the formal economy as universal notions (Jaga, 2020). Implicitly, they posit that individuals have power over their social and employment realities (Egdell and Beck, 2020) without accounting for unique challenges in Global South contexts such as high informality (Salamanca and Vargas, 2020). About one billion people live in informal urban settlements (Mitlin, 2020), such as townships in South Africa, slums in India and favelas in Brazil.…”