The Construction and Mobilization of Unemployed In

Authors: Annulla Linders Marina Kalander

Publish Date: 2007/07/28

Volume: 30, Issue: 4, Pages: 417-437

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Abstract

In this paper using a case of unemployed mobilization in Sweden in the 1990s we examine the interpretive process by which unemployment interests emerge and evolve in public interactions with other political actors especially unions and argue that unemployed mobilization episodes cannot be fully understood without attention to interpretive processes More specifically we show how unemployed interests during the unemployment crisis in the 1990s initially were aligned with the labor movement at large later became aligned with unions against the Social Democrats and eventually gave rise to an independent federation of unemployed groups which subsequently collapsedPrevious versions of this paper were presented at the 2nd ECPR Conference Marburg Germany 2003 and the American Sociological Association 2004 The project is part of a larger comparative project “The Contentious Politics of Unemployment in Europe” sponsored by the European Commission through the 5th framework program project number HPSECT200100053 UNEMPOL An outline of the project can be found in Giugni and Statham 2002 This part of the project was made possible by grants from the University Research Council University of Cincinnati and the Charles P Taft Memorial Fund University of Cincinnati The paper has benefited from comments by Marco Giugni and Andrew Richards as well as by John Krinsky the editor of this special issue and two anonymous reviewers

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