Die subjektive Seite der Arbeitslosigkeit: Individuelle Strategien und familiäre Verarbeitungsmuster

(Repeated unemployment often depends not only on the labour market situation but also on personal properties which range from sex to job committment. The analysis of autobiographical reports from a group of long term unemployed being heterogenical in age, sex and professional status, aimed — among others — at the effects of a stronger or weaker job orientation on unemployment and the strategies to find a new job. Roughly, the research discerned the following four clusters: • people who are strongly job oriented and sense unemployment as a serious crisis; • beginners who fail to find an apprenticeship or a job; • repeated unemployed who have come to fear the stress of work more than the stress of unemployment; • (terminated) job leavers. This last group shows the conditions under which life without a job could be managed: financial security and social acceptance, ability to structure everyday life and a chance of vocational re-integration.