Fallings. Economic expulsion and social devaluation among the unemployed in Turin

Abstract

In this essay, based on an ethnographic research conducted between 2014 and 2016 among adult unemployed people from the peripheries of Turin, I put into dialogue the stories collected during fieldwork with the insights offered by Josh Kline’s artistic work and the main concepts of the anthropology of unemployment. My research confirms the hypotheses advanced by Katherine Newman and Serge Paugam: for my interlocutors in Turin, the loss and the lack of work mean, besides economic difficulties, a social de-valorisation as well. Therefore, their subsistence strategies can only partially solve their problems, entailing instead the risk of jeopardizing even further their status and identity.

Keywords

• disoccupazione
• squalificazione sociale
• antropologia della disoccupazione
• torino