A psychosocial approach to unemployed young men in a South Wales town

Walkerdine, V (2016). A psychosocial approach to unemployed young men in a South Wales town. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: Economic and Social Research Council. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-850210

Data description (abstract)

A project on worker identity transformation in a South Wales town, which has lost its major employer, a steel works, undertaken by the applicants, revealed that while some young men were able to shift their aspirations towards available work, others were unemployed because they refused to take 'embarrassing' shop work, which they considered as feminine. The research revealed that these young men had unemployed fathers. This led the research team to propose further research on this issue, focussing on the role of family dynamics, particularly those between father and son, in the production of this work refusal. This one year project uses a psychosocial approach which allows us to understand the role of unconscious dynamics in the issue and to work with youth and community workers to develop modes of understanding which will help them to work with 'hard to reach' young men and their families, as well as to understand the role of the transmission of unconscious aspects of masculinity across generations. This will help in understanding the importance of psychosocial issues in regeneration to the extent that it will allow us to understand what kinds of support needs to be offered to get these young men into available work.

Data creators:

Creator Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Walkerdine V	Cardiff University

Contributors:

Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Jimenez Luis

Sponsors:

Economic and Social Research Council

Grant reference:

RES-000-22-2479

Topic classification:

Labour and employment
Psychology

Date published:

24 Mar 2009 22:41

Last modified:

26 Apr 2016 14:21

Coverage and Methodology

Collection period:

Date from:	Date to:
1 October 2007	30 September 2008

Country:

Wales

Data collection method:

In depth interviews. The method for this research consists of qualitative psychosocial interviews plus psychoanalytically informed ethnography in each location, leading to a comparison of field notes and interview responses. The aim of psychosocial interviews is to explore the affective aspects of the performance of young masculinities in conscious and unconscious relational dynamics. The aim here is to utilise an in-depth approach with a more ethno-culturally diverse population. Without this it is impossible to produce the kind of complex detail needed to go beyond current explanations aimed at improving current policy and practice with young unemployed men. In order to approach the depth and complexity of the issues in these questions, the co-applicant, an experienced psychosocial researcher and a psychoanalyst, began by gaining the trust of the participants in order to be able to engage with issues. We discussed the project and method with local youth and community workers in the research location who work with young unemployed men and have developed the project with their work in mind. This is a difficult to contact group and so youth workers' advice was to liaise with them to find suitable participants largely because of their extensive local knowledge. On their advice, the co-applicant attended youth group meetings, and also stayed in the area and get to know the locality from the point of view of youth and youth provision. All potential participants were first approached by a local youth worker and asked if they might be willing to participate. The attendance at these community activities alongside the youth worker would present the researchers as both known and safe. It is in this context that the researchers will also make field notes and generate observation based data which is informed by the principles of 'clinical ethnography' (Herdt and Stoller, 1990), which also pays attention to counter-transference issues arising within the fieldwork.

Observation unit:

Individual

Kind of data:

Numeric, Text

Type of data:

Qualitative and mixed methods data

Resource language:

English

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