It’s Terrible Having No Job, People Look Down on You and You’ve Never Enough Money: Lowestoft Case Study

Abstract

This chapter considers young people’s experiences of inequality as being unemployed in a small seaside town in the United Kingdom which has high levels of deprivation. It draws upon qualitative data from a study undertaken with 52 young people aged between 16 and 24, undertaken in 2015, to examine the impact of the economic recession on their lived experiences of seeking work and poverty. All the young people who participated in the study stated that they wanted to work but that there simply were not jobs available for them to do. What work they could find was often poorly paid, temporary and involved travel which they could not afford. The financial sanctions imposed on them by the Job Centre resulted in extreme hardship, hunger and homelessness. Often the young people talked about various forms of crime including drug-dealing and drug-taking as a way of dealing with the consequences of unemployment.

Citation

Bond, E. (2017), "It’s Terrible Having No Job, People Look Down on You and You’ve Never Enough Money: Lowestoft Case Study", Fée, D. and Kober-Smith, A. (Ed.) Inequalities in the UK, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 271-284. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78714-479-820171013