Abstract:

Unemployment is one of the biggest problems of today's Turkey. When looking at the "Labor Force Status of University Graduates", published by TUIK in 2018, it is seen that social service graduates (unemployment rate 24.3%) are the most affected by this problem. The purpose of this study is to examine the metaphors of recently graduated social workers regarding the concept of unemployment. Phenomenology, one of the qualitative research models, was used in the research. The working group of the research consists of 80 social workers who graduated from the social work departments of different universities in 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 academic years. Research data was obtained by completing this sentence: “Unemployment is like/as ……. because ……”. The research data were analyzed using the content analysis method. At the end of the study, it was seen that recently graduated social workers stated 58 metaphors about the concept of unemployment. They produced metaphors that can be grouped into 7 different categories as “Reflection of Emotional” (f=16), "Natural Disaster/Occurrence" (f=16), "Disadvantage Situation" (f=15), "Description of Space" (f=13), " Dysfunction Causing Situation” (f=12) and “Object” (f=8). According to determine the results, recently graduated social workers have very negative and hopeless views about unemployment. In this context, it is recommended to increase the employment opportunities in our country for the social work profession and to develop practices especially for new graduates who are in the process of unemployment.

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