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Work has become ‘a normatively charged concept, one in which normative expectations and the current form of a society’s relation to work have become sedimented’ (Jaeggi, 2016 :70). Critical theorists have observed how work is linked to recognition and self-realization. Consequently, they see how unemployment can lead to a sense of alienation. Exploring the social practices among young entrepreneurial creative people receiving unemployment benefits in Denmark, we pose the following research question: how do young people in the unemployment benefit system work within and against the system? Based on interviews with young unemployed people conducted as part of a PhD (Pultz, 2017 ), we aim to unfold how the young people challenge the ‘work first paradigm’, including resisting the neoliberal understanding that human worth is determined by employment status. We combine insight from critical theory in order to understand the current work pathologies and apply the critical psychological concepts of restricted and expansive agency to shed light on how our sample engages in recognition struggles. They do so by seeking to gain influence over conditions and simultaneously resisting structures that restrict subjective agency in the spheres of love, achievement and rights. We will use this combined macro- and micro-level theoretical framework to analyse subjective reasoning for expansive agency embedded in an institutional and political context that reflects the work pathology diagnosis and produces its own dilemmas that need further understanding. Combining critical theory, more specifically Axel Honneth’s work on recognition with critical psychology, allows us to move beyond deterministic holds and to improve our understanding of agentic potential in society. Improving our understanding of how young unemployed people work within and against the system helps us better understand how individuals navigate the complex relations between societal structures and the self.

The article argues that closer attention to how solidarity is understood and expressed in different European contexts can shed light on the conditions for establishing a social and solidarity economy. Drawing on data collected within the H2020 SOLIDUS project, which explores current expressions of European solidarity, the comparative analysis covers three social economy initiatives, each representing a country with different political and economic context. The analysis focuses on solidarity as reciprocity and, in particular, how it is affected by such factors as actor motivations, internal participatory functioning, resource mix and political legitimacy. While further empirical work is needed, the findings suggest that solidarity as reciprocity produced by social and solidarity economy organisations thrives where political institutions are both supportive and trusted, where public funding is accessible, and where partnerships with relatively autonomous social and solidarity economy organisations are genuinely collaborative.

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