2008
A01=Annette Marie Nierobisz
A01=Annette Nierobisz
A01=Dana Sawchuck
A01=Dana Sawchuk
aging
American Idle
Annette Nierobisz
Author_Annette Marie Nierobisz
Author_Annette Nierobisz
Author_Dana Sawchuck
Author_Dana Sawchuk
bottom lines
business priorities
capitalism
Category=JBSA
Category=JHBL
Category=KCF
Dana Sawchuk
downsizing
economic insecurity
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
foreclosure
great recession
housing market crash
job loss
job searches
late-career job loss
lay-off
life course sociology
millennials
Neo-liberalism
neoliberal capitalism
neoliberalism
positive mindset
precarious employment
recession
resistance to capitalism
retirement
sociologists
sociology
structural obstacles
unemployment
white-collar workers
Product details
- ISBN 9781978835863
- Weight: 286g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 13 May 2025
- Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In American Idle, sociologists Annette Nierobisz and Dana Sawchuk report their findings from interviews with sixty-two mostly white-collar workers who experienced late-career job loss in the wake of the Great Recession. Without the benefits of planned retirement or time horizons favorable to recouping their losses, these employees experience an array of outcomes, from hard falls to soft landings. Notably, the authors find that when reflecting on the effects of job loss, fruitless job searches, and the overall experience of unemployment, participants regularly called on the frameworks instilled by neoliberalism. Invoking neoliberal rhetoric, these older Americans deferred to businesses’ need to prioritize bottom lines, accepted the shift toward precarious employment, or highlighted the importance of taking initiative and maintaining a positive mindset in the face of structural obstacles. Even so, participants also recognized the incompatibility between neoliberalism’s “one-size-fits-all” solutions and their own situations; this disconnect led them to consider their experiences through competing frameworks and to voice resistance to aspects of neoliberal capitalism. Employing a life course sociology perspective to explore older workers’ precarity in an age of rising economic insecurity, Nierobisz and Sawchuk shed light on a new wrinkle in American aging.
ANNETTE NIEROBISZ is a professor of sociology and the Ada M. Harrison Distinguished Teaching Professor of the Social Sciences at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. This is her first book.
DANA SAWCHUK is a professor of sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. She is the author of The Costa Rican Catholic Church, Social Justice, and the Rights of Workers, 1979–1996.
DANA SAWCHUK is a professor of sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. She is the author of The Costa Rican Catholic Church, Social Justice, and the Rights of Workers, 1979–1996.
