Based on participant observation, document analysis, and narrative interviews, this thesis explores how long-term unemployed asses and interpret their self and relevant others within a structuring framework and how these assessments are related to identity, agency, and social exclusion. The Structuration Theory of Anthnoy Giddens (1979, 1984, 1993) and the refined structuration model of Rob Stones (2005) provide the theoretical approach of this research project. The long-term unemployed are explored as agents, who are interpreting their self and their social surrounding in an ongoing process of interaction and negotiation with others. Based on these constructions of meaning within a specific structuring framework, shared social knowledge and individual variations among the long-term unemployed, as well as the relations with social exclusion can be examined in a new light.