Join Carleton Connects as Professor Annette Nierobisz presents her current research titled “American Idle: Job Loss Among Aging Americans”. “American Idle” investigates the contemporary experiences of Minnesota workers age 50+, who have lost employment in a period marked by a severe economic recession, a subsequent long-term jobless recovery, decline of longstanding institutional protections for workers, and a dramatic inversion of the population age demographic. Thirty-one in-depth interviews reveal the insurmountable struggle older workers face from this unprecedented and volatile confluence of socio-economic conditions. The interviewees share their experiences of ageism in the job market, neglected medical needs, evaporating retirement funds, a decline from middle class into poverty, and a damaged sense of self.
This program took place on Tuesday, January 14, 2014
About the Speaker
With interests broadly situated in the sociology of work and occupations as well as the sociology of law, Annette’s research explores the social impact of macro-economic forces. Her dissertation, completed at the University of Toronto in 2001, examined how judges decided employment dismissals submitted to Canadian courts over a time span that captured the emergence of downsizing practices and two periods of severe economic recession. A current project examines job loss among aging Americans in a period of economic instability.
In 2006 Annette was invited to be the Senior Researcher at the Canadian Human Rights Commission. In this two year appointment she completed projects that examined a number of human rights issues including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, discrimination on the basis of disability, and the discriminatory impact of national security policies.
At Carleton, Annette’s courses include Working Across our Lives; Myths of Crime; Girls Gone Bad: Women, Crime and Criminal Justice; Methods of Social Research; and Introduction to Sociology.