Recent legislation in the Netherlands takes conditional welfare to a new level. Local welfare offices can now give benefit sanctions to welfare clients that 'obstruct employment' by their appearance. Through a qualitative and ethnographic study of aesthetic evaluation practices in Dutch welfare offices it is argued that: (1) an everyday aesthetic labour is pivotal in post-Fordist labour markets; (2) in times of precarization, this is so for unemployed as well as formally employed populations; (3) welfare clients are expected to give an aesthetic performance of work-readiness and adaptability; and (4) case managers use aesthetics as a pedagogy to achieve this readiness and adaptability. Aesthetic labour, it is then argued, is best conceptualized as a continuous, everyday, backstage labour for labour: a daily calibration for work contexts in flux.

In the context of the Dutch welfare state, precarisation entails particular pedagogies: citizens are taught how to feel about being insecure through the techniques of (1) accepting; (2) controlling; and (3) imagining. Welfare activation thus focuses on teaching citizens to accept their precarious position, to embrace it and to prepare for its continuation while remaining optimistic about its discontinuation. Perhaps cruelly, then, the state teaches citizens to develop optimism towards certain imagined futures while at the same time acknowledging the unattainability of these futures. Importantly, case managers in Dutch welfare offices are often precarious themselves too, making the affective labour they perform both difficult and essential for themselves. Contemporary activation and workfare programmes are therefore best understood as characterised by insecurity and precarisation on both the receiving and the providing end of state–citizen encounters.

A central aspect of post-Fordist labour, many claim, is that the personal and the professional are increasingly intertwined. Especially in precarious urban sectors such as the interactive services, the aesthetic presentation of self is part of the product or service offered. Indeed, the separation between consumption and production, between private and work is no longer so strict for many, especially, in terms of aesthetics. Steering clear from sweeping statements about post-Fordism, however, this article offers an empirical examination based on ethnographic vignettes of one particular object that, perhaps surprisingly, appears in self-presentations for labour: the Adidas flip-flop. The Adidas flip-flop became salient in two studies in the Netherlands, in particular, one on the implementation of the Participation Act, which organizes welfare since 2015 and stipulates that it is forbidden for welfare recipients to ‘obstruct employment by dress or personal hygiene’. Case managers in Dutch welfare offices, it turned out, often cited the Adidas flip-flop as the ultimate example of an object that would obstruct employment and by consequence is cause for a welfare penalty. At the same time, the Adidas flip-flop is the preferred footwear of tech entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, a surprising fashion item on runways and the highly valued item of Mario, a respondent in one of the ethnographic vignettes. Across several locations, therefore, we ask what aesthetic and moral interpretations of the Adidas flip-flop are offered, by whom and in what context. This allows for (1) an innovative view of aesthetics for labour, (2) an assessment of what that tells us about post-Fordist labour markets and (3) an understanding of how post-Fordist aesthetic norms can be especially opaque though important for those in precarious positions.

The gradual retreat of many governments from actively supporting secure labour relations and social security through welfare arrangements, and the related normalisation of precarious conditions, goes hand-in-hand with a promise of the attainability of 'the good life' through work. Workfare programmes are at the centre of this, as they are aimed at 'improving' welfare clients and their position in society through performing precarious work. Based on an ethnographic study of group workshops in three Dutch workfare programmes, this article shows how welfare clients are taught the promise of upward mobility through waged labour and are required to give 'the right' performances that might (in principle if, often, not in practice) potentially enable them to be successful on the post-Fordist labour market. I argue that these workshops function as temporal spaces of imagination in which adherence to the promise of upward mobility through paid work can best be understood as a form of post-Fordist affect, one that enacts, albeit temporarily, a resolution that is frequently lacking in real life.

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