Rituali neoliberali. Uno sguardo antropologico sui servizi per la ricerca attiva del lavoro

Grounded on an ethnographic study among unemployed people in Turin and, in particular, on a period of participant observation in one of the municipal centres offering courses for active job search, the paper aims to analyse some important dimensions of contemporary neoliberal policies concerning unem- ployment. Drawing on the insight that unemployed people are in a particular state of liminality, the ethnographic analysis suggests that active job search courses are a particular kind of rite of passage and also part of a neoliberal ideological apparatus. As such, they aim at transforming the subjectivities of the unemployed while supporting an individualized conception of the lack of work. Moreover, the research shows that a large part of the strength of the courses rests in the hidden ritual and symbolic qualities of this apparatus, which offers to the liminal unemployed – deprived of social status as well as of work – a new, illusory identity.