Unemployment from a sociologist’s perspective

Abstract

How can we think of unemployment? This query runs throughout our text and deals with the analytical ambiguities of research on unemployment which are subject to diverse interpretations, given the fact they have responded to different questions. In this text the author engages in a discussion that takes sociological research on what it means to be unemployed as its reference, and looking at how its analytical categories are constructed. For these purposes, it takes stock of major research, giving salience to the perspective of those who seek to understand the unemployed through the use of institutional categories: victim of world capitalism, the unemployed person is one who is seeking work and has not had the chance to find it. Explanations for this phenomenon are permeated by the categorizations established by institutionalized research organs that, according to the author, are limited because they do not incorporate the experience of being unemployed. The article points out the limitations of such formulations and advocates an approach that is based on the usage of ‘non-official’ categories.