TY - JOUR
T1 - Lacking social skills
T2 - A social investment state’s concern for marginalized citizens’ ways of being
AU - Prieur, Annick
AU - Jensen, Sune Qvotrup
AU - Nielsen, Vibeke Bak
PY - 2020/11/2
Y1 - 2020/11/2
N2 - The Danish state is preoccupied with its citizens’ social skills, which are seen as important for the nations’ competitiveness. Such skills regard self-presentation, communication, emotional control etc. This article relies primarily on interviews with Danish social workers who are involved either in assessing young marginalized welfare clients’ personal readiness for schooling or employment or in preparing them for this through social skills training. Secondarily, it relies on fieldwork data from young Danes at the margins of the educational system and/or the labour market, who are frequently confronted with a devaluation of their personal ways of being. As personal resources related to ways of being, communicating, handling emotions etc. are ascribed social value, especially at the labour market they may work as a form of capital, while the lack of them may be a source of marginalization. These findings are discussed as signs of more general social normative demands, theoretically grasped in the meeting point of Bourdieu’s understanding of embodied cultural capital, of Skeggs’ analysis of how subjects are attributed value or not, and of Illouz’s investigation of the emotional demands contemporary capitalism puts on employees. Understanding the experiences of those who fail to comply with implicit social requirements for personal resources thus shed light on contemporary requirements regarding how to behave and communicate with other people as well as on the state’s investments in the most personal spheres of its citizens.
AB - The Danish state is preoccupied with its citizens’ social skills, which are seen as important for the nations’ competitiveness. Such skills regard self-presentation, communication, emotional control etc. This article relies primarily on interviews with Danish social workers who are involved either in assessing young marginalized welfare clients’ personal readiness for schooling or employment or in preparing them for this through social skills training. Secondarily, it relies on fieldwork data from young Danes at the margins of the educational system and/or the labour market, who are frequently confronted with a devaluation of their personal ways of being. As personal resources related to ways of being, communicating, handling emotions etc. are ascribed social value, especially at the labour market they may work as a form of capital, while the lack of them may be a source of marginalization. These findings are discussed as signs of more general social normative demands, theoretically grasped in the meeting point of Bourdieu’s understanding of embodied cultural capital, of Skeggs’ analysis of how subjects are attributed value or not, and of Illouz’s investigation of the emotional demands contemporary capitalism puts on employees. Understanding the experiences of those who fail to comply with implicit social requirements for personal resources thus shed light on contemporary requirements regarding how to behave and communicate with other people as well as on the state’s investments in the most personal spheres of its citizens.
KW - cultural capital
KW - emotional capital
KW - investment state
KW - social skills
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074046341&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0261018319878130
DO - 10.1177/0261018319878130
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0261-0183
VL - 40
SP - 608
EP - 626
JO - Critical Social Policy
JF - Critical Social Policy
IS - 4
ER -