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Fitting in and being unique

How online aesthetic advice from temporary work agencies legitimises exclusions


Beschrijving

This article investigates the aesthetic advice posted by temporary employment agencies on their websites. These agencies organise a substantial part of the Dutch labour market and they are known to apply exclusionary practices in their strategies of recruitment and selection in order to meet employers’ preferences. This article sheds light on (1) the content of the advice; (2) how it legitimises the importance of aesthetics for finding work; and (3) in what ways the advice serves the purposes of the agencies. An in-depth content analysis illustrates how the advice has the potential to reproduce exclusions, thus helping employment agencies adhere to employers’ exclusionary requests. Creating online content that generates traffic to the websites in this case causes a circular logic in which the importance of aesthetics is self-reinforcing. The study illustrates that the seemingly neutral and empty advice posted on websites may enforce exclusions in the temporary work labour market.



Publicatiedatum
Materiaalsoort
Artikel
Type
Document
Gebruiksrecht
CC BY NC NDCC BY NC NDCC BY NC NDCC BY NC ND
Toegangsrecht
OpenAccess
Gepubliceerd in

European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 124-144

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