Being and selling yourself: Unemployment, employability and the limits of identity regulation

Are there limits on what we can reasonably be asked to become? The concept of employability teaches the construction of new models of working identity – ones that emphasise personal traits and passions. It motivates recipients to become employable by ‘working’ on the self – such that a person’s identity becomes saleable on the job market. This article examines employability through its impact on those specifically asked to become employable – members of work clubs for the unemployed. Stemming from a 12-month, primarily ethnographic, study of unemployed experience, the article describes the nature of employability in practice and specifically the tensions experienced by long-term unemployed people who are repeatedly asked to manufacture a more employable version of themselves. Employability is assessed as a form of identity regulation which prompts individuals to construct themselves as continuously employable over time. The struggles surrounding this endeavour – as experienced by the unemployed research participants – point to the parameters and limits of identities specified within relations of power and the social consequences for those unable or unwilling to become what they are expected to be.