This paper examines how older unemployed people cope with unemployment through temporal identity work. By temporal identity work, we refer to identity work that takes place at junctions between past, present, and future working lives and which relates to these tenses as a part of identity construction.The paper is based on 30 semi-structured interviews with jobseekers aged 50+ living in a region that has undergone deindustrialization and suffers from high unemployment rates. In the interview material, we identified three main types of identity work: Relying on the past, renewing oneself, and tweaking one’s working identity. This article identifies ‘respectably unemployed’ as the cultural construction in relation to which identity work is done in a society that values paid work highly. The paper contributes to the literature on age and unemployment by enhancing the understanding of older jobseekers’ identity work as a contextually embedded temporal process.

中文翻译：

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老求职者的时间身份工作：与过去，现在和未来有关

本文研究了老年人失业者如何通过临时身份工作来应对失业问题。通过时间身份工作，我们指的是发生在过去，现在和将来的工作生活之间的交汇处的身份工作，并将其与这些时态联系起来作为身份构建的一部分。本文基于对30岁的求职者的半结构化访谈50多岁的人生活在经历了去工业化并且失业率高的地区。在访谈材料中，我们确定了身份工作的三种主要类型：依靠过去，自我更新和调整工作身份。本文将“显着失业”确定为一种文化构造，在高度重视有偿工作的社会中，与此相关的是身份工作。