What are some of your key findings?
Work continues to be a central moral category for people. The way that people understand what they deserve and what they don't deserve, and how they're valuable to the world, is still really tied to work. Because when you're working and you get a wage, you know exactly how much you're worth in the world. It's your wage, right?
I’ve spoken a lot about this with poor, unemployed people in South Africa and Namibia. These are countries with really high unemployment rates, almost 40% in the case of South Africa. What’s interesting is that even the long-term unemployed who have almost no prospect of getting a formal sector job say similar things. ‘You can't get money for nothing’. Work stands in the centre of people's political imagination and people's moral imagination. It penetrates so deeply that, even if you have almost no prospect of getting a job, you still cling to the idea that work is how I'm valued in society.
