ABSTRACT

Research on youth unemployment in South Africa has largely been dominated by quantitative accounts that highlight skills’ mismatches, educational levels and industrial transformations. Missing from these is a sense of how youth navigate labour markets and why they might choose to abandon the job search. Based on qualitative interviews with youth from an urban township, this article examines the obstacles they face searching for stable employment and their experiences of the labour market itself. It calls attention to two significant, and largely unexplored, issues affecting young people’s relationship to labour markets. First is the role of place-based identities and the stigmatisation associated with representations of place. Second is how low-wage, insecure work acts as a disincentive for remaining in the labour market. For many young people, wage work is rarely experienced as dignified or fulfiling, nor does it provide the resources required for transitions to adulthood. Building on Kathi Weeks’s concept of “anti-work politics,” it proposes improvements to the quality of existing work and the need to expand social protections to young people. It contributes to a broader geographical literature on labour market segmentation, by highlighting how cultural representations of place affect young people’s employment prospects and work identities.

摘要

对南非青年失业的研究主要是通过强调技能不匹配、教育水平和工业转型的量化账户。其中缺少的是关于青年如何在劳动力市场中导航以及他们为什么可能选择放弃求职的感觉。本文基于对城镇青年的定性访谈，考察了他们在寻找稳定就业方面面临的障碍以及他们对劳动力市场本身的体验。它提请注意影响年轻人与劳动力市场关系的两个重要且大部分尚未探索的问题。首先是基于地点的身份和与地点表征相关的污名化的作用。其次是低工资、不安全的工作是如何阻碍留在劳动力市场的。对于很多年轻人来说，带薪工作很少被认为是有尊严的或有成就感的，它也不能提供过渡到成年所需的资源。以 Kathi Weeks 的“反工作政治”概念为基础，它建议提高现有工作的质量，并需要扩大对年轻人的社会保护。它通过强调地方的文化表征如何影响年轻人的就业前景和工作身份，为关于劳动力市场细分的更广泛的地理文献做出了贡献。