Labelled unemployed: Neighbourhood composition and the enforcement of employment norms

This article illuminates the contexts in which neighbourhood unemployment serves as a mechanism to explain the unemployed’s perception of being negatively stereotyped, also known as stigma consciousness. The article relies on the labelling approach and social contagion models to derive hypotheses about the effect of informal societal control and the scope of the employment norm. After combining survey data with administrative 1×1km grid cell data from Germany, multilevel models reveal a U-shaped association: the neighbourhood’s unemployment negatively affects the individuals’ stigma consciousness up to an unemployment share of 10% and positively affects the individual’s stigma consciousness when the neighbourhood share exceeds 30%. Especially the unemployed in high-inequality neighbourhoods and low-unemployment counties show the highest associations between neighbourhood unemployment and stigma consciousness. Beyond highlighting the importance of local norms and how they shape individuals’ perceptions in general, the article sheds light on how employment norms operate on different spatial levels.