Sabina Pultz forsvarer sin ph.d.-afhandling ved Institut for Psykologi

Kandidat
Sabina Pultz

Titel
“It’s not you, it’s me: Governing the unemployed self in the Danish welfare state“. Afhandlingen fremlægges til gennemsyn på Det Samfundsvidenskabelige Fakultetsbibliotek, Gothersgade 140, 1353 København K.

Tid og sted
Mandag den 8. maj 2017 kl. 13:00. Københavns Universitet, Institut for Psykologi, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 København K, lokale 7.0.34. Af hensyn til kandidaten lukkes dørene præcis.

Bedømmelsesudvalg

• Associate Professor Torben Bechmann-Jensen, Institut for Psykologi, Københavns Universitet (formand)
• Professor Ole Steen Kristensen, Psykologisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet
• Universitetslektor Roger Persson, Institutionen för psykologi, Lunds Universitet, Sverige

Resumé
The dissertation explores how young unemployed people are governed and govern themselves in the Danish welfare state. On the basis of a social psychological analysis of interviews, field observation and a national survey I document how unemployment is increasingly psychologized and privatized. Through analysis of existing technologies applied in the system I show how the ways young unemployed people are governed affect their subjective experiences. They have to deal with partly constricting demands; on the one hand they are not allowed to be occupied very much because they must available for the labour market, but on the other hand they have to do a lot (perhaps even too much); they have to be pro-active, outgoing and extroverted in order to become competent players in the so-called ‘hidden labour market’ organized through networking. In networking, professional and objective competencies fall to the background and personality and social skills have increasingly come to the fore. That exposes a number of vulnerabilities when rejections are not only founded on professional grounds, but also, to some extent, on personal ones. The dissertation identifies a group of formally unemployed people who perceive themselves as freelancers and it examines how this practice is conditioned and made possible in the Danish welfare state.