This book describes the experience of joblessness and unemployment in contemporary Poland. It does so by combining qualitative and quantitative data from a special project conducted in Poland after the Great Recession and the long-term Polish Panel Survey (POLPAN) to describe the lives of the jobless: women and men currently out of work, the recently re-employed, and housewives. The book uses a class and inequality perspective to investigate how these women and men became jobless, how they look for and find employment, their household and social activities, and their political participation. It contextualizes these experiences with a description of Polands economy, labor market and employment policies after the fall of Communism and builds on the active interviewing and social constructionist approaches to explore the complex interviewer-respondent relationship.

Irina Tomescu-Dubrow received her PhD from The Ohio State University and is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She is also the program manager for the Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program of The Ohio State University and the Polish Academy of Sciences. Irina is co-Principal Investigator of a (US) National Science Foundation grant on cross-national survey data harmonization, and of a (Polish) National Science Centre grant on POLPAN. She is the lead author of the bookDynamics of Class and Stratification in Poland(CEU Press, 2018).

Joshua Kjerulf Dubrow received his PhD from The Ohio State University and is a Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is also program coordinator for the Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program of The Ohio State University and the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is co-author ofDynamics of Class and Stratification in Poland (CEU Press, 2018). His research on inequality has appeared inSocial Forces,Party Politics, andCurrent Sociology, among others.

Katarzyna Andrejuk is a sociologist and a lawyer, and is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. She also worked as a visiting scholar at the European University Institute in Florence and Herder Institut in Marburg. Academic focus: qualitative research, migration studies, foreigners in the labour market and educational institutions, and Europeanisation. Her PhD dissertation concerned educational migrations from Poland to the UK after 2004, and her habilitation examined Ukrainian migrant entrepreneurs in Poland. She published two monographs and multiple journal articles, i.a. in theJournal of Ethnic and Migration Studies andAsian and Pacific Migration Journal.

Anna Kiersztyn is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw. Her current research concerns the distribution, dynamics and social consequences of non-standard employment, and the relationship between alternative work arrangements and the quality of jobs. She is the author of several research articles analyzing the incidence and correlates of overeducation, low paid and unstable employment in the Polish economy. Her more recent work analyses the consequences of labor market precariousness with respect to economic and social security and political participation, with a focus on conditional relationships. Since 2005, Kiersztyn has also collaborated with the Team for Comparative Analysis of Social Inequalities (CASIN) at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. She has been involved in the Polish Panel Survey POLPAN project, analyzing long-term changes in the social and occupational structure of the Polish Society,as well as individual labor market trajectories.

Marta Koczyska is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from The Ohio State University in 2017. Her research interests include comparative analyses of political attitudes and behavior across nations and over time, as well as the methodology of comparative research, in particular cross-national surveys. Email: kolczynska.1@osu.edu

Kazimierz M. Slomczynski is professor emeritus of the Departments of Sociology and Political Science at The Ohio State University (OSU), and professor of sociology at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN). He is director of the Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program of OSU and PAN, and co-PI of a (US) National Science Foundation grant on cross-national survey data harmonization. Maciek is co-author ofDynamics of Class andStratification in Poland (CEU Press, 2018). He serves as director of the Polish Panel Survey (POLPAN) since 1988, and is co-PI of the 2017-2020 (Polish) National Science Centre grant on POLPAN.

Preface.- Introduction.- Part I. Background of the Study.- Chapter 1. The Experience of Joblessness: A Review of the Literature.- Chapter 2. Joblessness in Poland since 1989: Policies and Economic Situation.- Chapter 3. The Respondents, The Interviewers and the Interview Situation.- Part II. Routes into Joblessness.- Chapter 4. How I Became Unemployed.- Chapter 5. How I Became a Housewife.- Part III. Routes Out of Joblessness.- Chapter 6. Future Jobs.- Chapter 4. Looking for, and Finding a Job.- Part IV. Daily Life of the Jobless.- Chapter 8. Informal Jobs and Life at Home.- Chapter 9. Social and Political Activities of the Jobless.- Chapter 10. Conclusion.- Appendix A. Details about the Data and the Fieldwork Methodology.- Appendix B. The Survey Instrument.