Soziologie

In a new article in the international journal Work, Employment and Society, Kerstin Ostermann (Bielefeld University & Institute for Employment Research) and Sebastian Lang (LIfBi Bamberg) ask why some unemployed people feel judged for their unemployment while others do not. Combining survey data from the German Panel Study Labour Market and Social Security (PASS) with administrative 1×1 km grid-cell data for all of Germany, the article shows that the composition of the immediate residential context shapes how a local employment norm correlates with individuals' feelings of stigmatization. The association is U-shaped: up to a local unemployment share of about 10 percent, having more unemployed neighbors lowers individuals' stigma consciousness, whereas above a share of 30 percent it raises it again. Stigma consciousness is highest among unemployed residents of economically unequal neighborhoods and of high-unemployment neighborhoods embedded in otherwise low-unemployment counties – that is, wherever a visibly norm-deviant group and a sufficient number of potential norm enforcers coexist. Beyond the German case, the findings show that employment norms are set and enforced on different spatial levels.

The (English-language) article is available here.