Injustice, Uselessness, and Illness: A Qualitative Study of Unemployed Graduates’ Lives in Iran

Abstract

Formal education in Iran, especially higher education, has been a means to smoothen the road to social mobility, provide good jobs, and boost people’s earnings. Now, being a university graduate and remaining unemployed is regarded as a challenge. In addition, governments consider this new unemployment a threat to their legitimacy. It seems that young unemployed graduates experience different problems in their social lives. This study aims to investigate the problems encountered by young unemployed graduates and to identify which aspects of situation provide a threatening condition for the society and government. This study has adopted a qualitative approach to answer these questions. It has been conducted in a Kurdish-Iranian context. The authors used a sample of 22 unemployed graduates and conducted semi-structured interviews with each of the sample members. The data gathered from the interviews were analyzed using the qualitative content analysis method. There emerged several themes that described the unemployed graduates’ lives. Findings show that the definition of job is gender based. Unemployment is interpreted as “illness,” “uselessness,” and “social injustice.” To cope with the unemployment issue, the unemployed graduates have to follow different strategies, including “seclusion,” “continuing education,” or “restarting education.” They experience in such a context different psychological, interactive, and behavioral challenges that sometimes make them adopt an anti-social position. The findings of this research contribute to a clearer understanding of the pathological aspects of unemployed graduates’ lives, which is considered a threat from their own viewpoints.

A “Participatory School” in Iran: A Bottom-Up Learning Approach in a Top-Down Education System

“…All interviews were transcribed verbatim and then translated from Farsi to English. Content analysis was used to analyze the collected written documents, materials, and participants’ responses (Bhattacherjee, 2012; Khezri et al, 2020; Mohajan, 2018). We identified patterns and key ideas behind the creation of participatory schools, as well as obstacles and reasons to oppose the philosophy of such schools.…”

Analysis of the employment status of Iranian public universities graduates and the governmental policy using system dynamics approach

“…Regarding the unemployed graduate group, many studies have tried to canalize this issue based on statistics and recognize its major economic and social determinants. 3,4…”

“…Regarding the unemployed graduate group, many studies have tried to canalize this issue based on statistics and recognize its major economic and social determinants. 3,4 They have mostly explored graduate unemployment and work quantitatively at the macrolevel. At the microlevel, various studies have dealt with the live experiences of unemployed people in general as well as those of some specific groups such as unemployed people, 5,6 veterans, 7 youths, 8 women, 9 and the elderly.…”

Factors Affecting Unemployment Duration of the Science and Arts Stream University Graduates in Sri Lanka

“…The loss of expectation and disorientation, a sense of waste and failure because of unemployment, stigma and shame were major issues that affected the mentality of unemployed graduates in this study and Cockshott et al (2021) suggested to have counselling services in universities that can better manage the transition to the employment of graduates. In addition to this, Khezri et al (2020) claimed that, unemployed graduates' became anti-social due to the influence of unemployment and it is considered a threat to social and political development.…”