Dignity in space: the psycho-spatial politics of everyday life in unemployment

This article explores how unemployed individuals engage with space and how this engagement shapes their experience of dignity. Drawing on pragmatic sociology and a longitudinal ethnographic study in a post-industrial city in New England, USA, the article is based on data collected through a combination of participant observation, go-along interviews, and participatory photo-elicitation to examine spatial engagements. Intimate, community, public, and forgotten spaces emerged as mportant to how dignity is experienced in unemployment. These engagements are shaped by regimes of familiarity and exploration, revealing how unemployed individuals adapt to and critique socio-spatial transformations in deindustrialised urban environments. The article contributes to emerging literature on the spatial politics of dignity by advancing the concept of an everyday psycho-spatial politics, offering a nuanced understanding of how dignity is lived and contested at the margins of the labour market.