How Public Labour Offices Implanted Vocational Concepts (Austria, 1918–1938)

Abstract

This article examines how public labour offices in Austria contributed to the normalisation and/or formalising of vocations. It asks how meanings and functions of vocation varied within the area of public labour administration. In examining how both the unemployed and job seekers found work, the author aims to reconstruct the hierarchical relations between vocation and other ways of making a living as these were established by public labour offices. It is argued that such labour offices helped to develop vocational long-term employment while at the same time stimulating new practices of casual labour.