As stated by Bourdieu (1986:125), every family consciously or unconsciously wishes to maintain or improve its position in the society. Seeking for a job can be regarded as an effort to maintain or improve a person’s social class through the achievement of a better occupation or income. Since seeking for an appropriate job involves cost and resources, those who have better capital or resources are more likely to be able to achieve their intention. Those with better resources are more likely to experience a quicker and smoother transition into employment than those who lack resources. In contrast to this theory is the luxury hypothesis, which suggests a positive relationship between search intensity and parental socio-economic status because those with better economic support, or with parents having high socio-economic status, can afford unemployment or can continue searching for a job. This luxury hypothesis is also indirectly assumed in several studies on Java’s labour force since unemployment or intensive searching is higher among those with high educational qualifications, and the educated youth were disproportionately drawn from parents with high socio-economic status (Jones, 1981:250; Hugo, et al., 1987:286; Fergus, 1992). So middle-class children were indirectly ‘blamed’ for the high unemployment among educated people in Indonesia.
In contrast to the luxury hypothesis, the present study shows that children of parents with low educational qualification have a higher though insignificant, probability of searching for a job while employed (Figure 5.13). This study also shows a high probability of seeking a job while employed or unemployed among children with fathers in lower occupations, particularly in production occupation (Figure 5.14). Limited resources and social networks among children of parents with low occupation (production) may give them limited access to ‘decent’ employment.
This negative relationship between parental resource and the probability of being openly seeking a job while unemployed, or ‘under-employed’, seeking an alternative job supports the reproduction theory.
Similarly, the pattern based on the 1992 National Labour Force Survey, (Manning, 1998 -Table 8.4), contradicts the luxury hypothesis: the unemployment rate of young people aged 15 to 29 years was negatively correlated with the levels of education and income of the household head.
Figure 5.1 3
Search probability by parents' education, school leavers 15 to 29 years, three
cities of Java, 1994. lO L F BENS □ ES □ US 3 Univ. years Figure 5.14
Search probability by father’s occupation, school leavers 15
to 29 years, three cities of Java, 1994. □ us □ ES BENS bOLF Figure 5 .1 5 Probability of finding matched job by parents' education, employees 15 to 29 years, three cities of Java,
1994 (°/4 50 40 30 20 10 0
Source: Data ‘The Dynamics o f Youth Education and Employment’, 1994.
OLF=Out o f the labour force.ENS=Employed not searching for a job.ES=Employed searching for a job. US= Unemployed searching for a job
The findings that cast doubt on the luxury hypothesis raise questions about the importance of other factors such as the different effectiveness of job acquisition, thus different ‘job satisfaction’, among children with different parental backgrounds. Indeed, there was a significant difference in the occupational attainment among children with parents having different levels of education and occupation. As shown in Chapter 8 (Tables 8.1, 8.3 and 8.5), parents’ education has a significant direct effect, independent of the effect of children’s education, on children’s occupational attainment. With the same characteristics, level of education for example, children of parents with high educational qualification obtained a higher status occupation. Assuming everything else to be equal, an increase of one year in the education of their parents increases the probability of obtaining an occupation that was 50 percentage points higher in the Ganzeboom index. As a result, children of parents with high educational qualification were probably more likely to find ‘matched’ jobs than children of parents with low education. This is also the case (see Figure 5.15): increase in education of parents significantly increases the children’s probability of finding jobs that were matched to their levels of education. Children of well- educated parents tend to obtain a high status occupation and a ‘matched’ job. If such children have obtained higher and matched occupations as compared with children of parents with low education, they need not continue searching for an alternative job. Therefore, as shown in Figure 5.13, employees whose parents had university educational qualifications were more likely to be in the ‘not searching for an alternative job’ category.
Similarly, a lower search intensity of employees whose parents held a high occupation was probable, since as shown in Chapter 8 (Tables 8.3 and 8.5), with the same level of education, they achieved a higher occupation than those with parents with a low occupation. All else being equal, compared to the children of farmers,
children of parents with professional and managerial occupations attained occupations that were around 5 points higher in the Ganzeboom Index. As a result, children of fathers with higher occupations were less likely to search for a job while employed (Figure 5.14) since they obtained relatively high occupations.
The negative relationship between parental socio-economic status and search intensity undoubtedly supports the assumption that those with better family resources can move smoothly into employment, while those whose parents lacked resources cannot link their job aspiration shaped by their education and the limited job opportunity in the market (Bourdieu, 1986:143-144).
The negative relationship between parental socio-economic status and search intensity also raises questions on the relevance of other hypotheses such as the socialization process hypothesis (Furlong, 1987) and the segmentation hypothesis (Ashton, Maguire and Spilsbury, 1990). These hypotheses are similar to the reproduction hypothesis. The socialization process hypothesis assumes that transition problems arise from the discrepancy between experience in the family and school and job opportunity or occupational culture in the labour market. The issue, therefore, is social and cultural distance rather than merely economic support for job search from parents. It is possible that as a result of structural-occupational change in the economy, job seekers with different parental backgrounds have different social proximity to the desired jobs. Children of parents with low or traditional sector jobs may face a wider cultural distance or ‘social proximity’ to the job opportunities that are available resulting from structural economic change than children of parents with a high occupation. Job seekers with parents of low socio-economic status lacked understanding of the recruitment mechanism, or their social networks were cutoff from new developments in employment, so they were less likely to find the desired job. If they could find a job, they might find themselves ‘unmatched with the job’
simply because they were unfamiliar with the job, since they were bom to a farmer for example. However, this does not necessarily mean they would easily abandon their initial job aspirations. An ineffective socialization process resulting from irrelevant schooling (Furlong, 1987) may also create the ‘unsmoothness’ of their adaptability toward their jobs.
Another hypothesis, the segmentation hypothesis (Ashton, Maguire and Spilsbury, 1990) suggests that the nature of the job (careerless - short-term - long term career job) could have a different effect on search behaviour. Possibly, children of educated parents have better access to a job that provides longer-term career prospects, such as in the public sector. So the job promises a high reward and this prevents job turnover among the employees. On the other hand, children of uneducated parents tend to obtain short-term jobs that create pressure to search for another job.
Short-term career or careerless or casual and less secure jobs, rather than lack of parental support force the employed to continue the search for more secure jobs. In this case, the family support or luxury hypothesis is simply irrelevant. In this theory, the fact that children of parents with low socio-economic status remain unemployed is not a result of their efforts to intensively seek a job (Barron and Melow, 1981), or a maximum strategy taken by job seekers (Black, 1981:30); it is because they have only obtained temporary or casual jobs. This arrangement is more likely to be taken by employers in a labour-surplus situation.
Considering this argument, therefore, a negative relationship between parental socio-economic status and search intensity is not only possible but also probable. The higher probability of searching for another job is also one of the signals of resistance in which children of working-class parents try to escape from the unwanted ‘social class trajectory'.
This sort of argument, nevertheless, could explain the perpetuation of socio economic status inheritance and social reproduction (Bourdieu, 1986), when children of parents with high socio-economic status have achieved a stable occupation, and lower likelihood of searching for alternative job is a signal of the effectiveness^ of their occupational placement.