A phenomenological investigation into the role of a university degree in the reintegration of ex-offenders into the labour market

Literature on social reintegration underscores that persistent societal attitudes contribute to the exclusion of job seekers who have a criminal record. In South Africa, this topic is still comparatively understudied as opposed to the developed world which has an abundance of literature addressing an extensive range of perspectives on it. This qualitative interpretive phenomenological study rooted in a social constructivist paradigm explored university-educated ex-offenders’ lived experiences of reintegration into the professional clusters of the South African labour market. Goffman’s social stigma theory (SST) was used as a theoretical framework. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were applied to select six participants. The thematically arranged findings of the participants’ sense-making of the labour market reintegration experiences revealed that prospective employers perceived job seekers with a criminal record as “suspicious, untrustworthy and risky to employ.” The findings also showed that stigmatization and marginalization engendered feelings of rejection, worthlessness and frustration. Desperation also contributed to the participants accepting employment opportunities that are not commensurate with their qualifications concealing their criminal record from prospective employers or venturing into small-scale entrepreneurship (albeit with limited prospects for growth due to business registration and funding red tape).The study also found that when participants assessed the magnitude of the obstacles that affected their previous job-seeking attempts, they recognised that even their university degrees were insufficient to fully utilise their chances of reintegrating into the professional clusters of the South African labour market. The study proposed several recommendations in response to these findings.