Self-placement of the Unemployed in the Social Hierarchy. Evidence from European Countries

Abstract

Unemployment has risen during the recent recession. However, the experience of unemployment varies considerably across European countries (Gallie 2013b). To study the unemployment experience in different European countries, a social exclusion approach was combined with a social stratification approach utilizing a measure of subjective social position which indicates how people perceive their relative position in the social hierarchy. In evaluating their social position people make comparisons within societal contexts. We hypothesize that the country-level economic and institutional context impacts the experience of unemployment, the way people interpret it, and thus affects the subjective social position of the unemployed. Our main goal was to study the impact of different macro-level economic and social characteristics on the subjective social position of the unemployed. We focused on a comparison of the subjective social position of unemployed persons against the remaining populations of 18 European countries using data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2009 Social Inequality module.