This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Holmqvist, M. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Medicalization of unemployment: individualizing social issues as personal problems in the Swedish welfare state

Stockholm University, Sweden, mih{at}fek.su.se

This article reports qualitative data on how the Swedish Public Employment Service classifies unemployed individuals as ‘occupationally disabled’ in order to transfer them to various labour market programmes.The article draws on a framework of medicalization, arguing that the individualization of the social issue of unemployment into a personal trouble of disability is a neglected yet important phenomenon that has interesting implications for theory and policy. By classifying some people as disabled in order to explain their unemployment, medicalization can be seen as an important yet so far neglected mechanism in understanding how this individualizing enterprise comes about. It is concluded that by medicalizing unemployment, the target for society’s intervention to fight the spectre of unemployment is primarily individuals’ personal troubles rather than any social issues.

Key Words: individualization • labour market programmes • medicalization • unemployment

Work, Employment & Society, Vol. 23, No. 3, 405-421 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0950017009337063


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?