Tihana Rubić published a book Unemployed in the City: Anthropology of Labor and Informal Economy (Zagreb, 2017). The publisher is hed-biblioteka, electronic publishing series of the Hrvatsko etnološko društvo (Croatian Ethnological Society)

The book was written on the basis of multi-year qualitative, ethnological and cultural anthropological research of unemployment and informal economy, conducted in one (in this case anonymised) Zagreb’s residential settlement. The focus is on the mechanisms of former workers (formerly employed in socialist enterprises, today retired) who have been long-term formally unemployed. Mechanisms imply a particular role of the informal economy and family assistance in the everyday life of the unemployed. Both aspects greatly amortized the distress of unemployment. In the research, the focus of interest is directed at the micro-levels of society, the position of the individual, social networks and relationships (family, neighborhood), as well as the influence of unemployment on an individual’s identity and self-confirmation. It is assumed that newly established economic systems, relationships and needs have strongly influenced individual and family life in the last two decades in Croatia. But do we know how the macroprocesses have reflected themselves on the lives of individuals and family everyday life? How have unemployed organized their daily life, how they were facing the crisis, how they made their own lives meaningful? The project City-making: Culture, Space and Identity, has included the research and issues of unemployment, as well as the topic of family relations and the variety of contemporary mechanisms with which individuals and communities, in a precarious and uncertain contexts, shape their everyday lives.

You can download the book here.