Using narrative futuring as a means to facing liminal employment status and space

Description

Unemployment and precarious employment have been treated as liminal states where people's everyday lives are rendered into an ‘in-between' position, a place where the uncertainty of meaning and decision-making prevail. Liminality has also been applied as a way of understanding a changing social world, implying a transformation in consciousness emanating from prolonged indeterminism. To develop a clearer understanding of coping with liminal status, we used a narrative futuring approach (i.e., a reflexive practice to elicit narratives from the viewpoint of a desired future). Twenty "letters from the future" were written by unemployed and precariously employed young adults with higher education degrees living in Crete. The letters engaged the participants in the process of critical reflection, where they imagined eutopian lifeworlds by attempting to place the prevalent ‘crisis story’ in the background, embracing or confronting liminal status. Implications focus on how the narrative future-making approach can be applied to disentangle the complexities involved in understanding liminal states and their inherent transformative potential where both personal, interpersonal, and the broader social and societal context come into awareness.

Period	4 Feb 2020
Event title	Constructing hope: culture, art and creativity in times of crisis 2020
Event type	Conference
Location	Nijmegen, Netherlands
Degree of Recognition	International