Individual Agency and the Experience of New Deal

This paper examines the experience of a small number of unemployed youngsters taking part in the government's New Deal for Young People programme and discusses in the light of their responses the ways in which New Deal represents an individualisation of unemployment, to the neglect of structural factors. The ways in which different individuals are able to utilise different elements of the programme are considered and the paper draws on Bourdieu's notion of habitus as a way of understanding the links between agency and structure and the importance of the young person's own horizon for action.