Bringing the client back in: A comparison between political rationality and the experiences of the unemployed

Abstract

Categorizing the job readiness of unemployed clients is a task of the utmost importance for active labor market policies. Scholarly attention on the topic has mostly focused either on questions of political legitimacy or on how categories are practically negotiated in meetings between the welfare system and the client. This article proposes a comparative methodology, in which the political rationality of job readiness is contrasted with findings from a qualitative longitudinal study into the lived experience of recent welfare reforms. A group of 25 vulnerable Danish unemployed welfare claimants were interviewed repeatedly from 2013 to 2015 in the qualitative longitudinal study, and their accounts were compared to the political rationality on job readiness. Our analysis presents four striking areas of discrepancy between political rationality, on the one hand, and the logic of job readiness found in the vast amount of qualitative material, on the other hand. It is concluded that the specific comparative perspective is fruitful because: (i) it critically addresses the gap between the experiences of some unemployed people and the political rationality; and (ii) it adds the perspective of the targeted individuals themselves to the analysis of political categorization, thereby avoiding the well-known risk of reducing welfare clients to mere manipulable objects. KEYWORDS active labor market policies, job readiness, political rationality, qualitative longitudinal research, unemployment, welfare reforms

“It’s not even the leaders out here who have any say at all in how long they’re gonna have to wait”: A study of waiting time, power, and acceptance

“…Second, if we look at the particular organizational and occupational context of the activation site, the study is, however, also a case of face-to-face encounters between frontline workers with large discretion and little social work education, and social assistance claimants who often feel that their individual concerns are rarely heard (Caswell et al, 2011; Danneris and Nielsen, 2018). Studies of welfare frontline encounters with similar conditions in the US (Maynard-Moody and Musheno, 2003) and France (Dubois, 2010) have shown that such conditions cause frontline workers to change their discretionary decisions on a case-to-case basis and that both clients and frontline workers attempt to establish a trustful relationship.…”

“…7.They are officially termed either “job ready” or “education ready,” while the more disadvantaged groups are officially called “activity ready.” On the meaning of these categories see Danneris and Nielsen (2018).…”

“…21.For studies of cash assistance beneficiaries’ experiences of these obligations, see Caswell et al (2011) and Danneris and Nielsen (2018).…”

Reconsidering ‘What Works’ in Welfare-to-Work with the Vulnerable Unemployed: The Potential of Relational Causality as an Alternative Approach

“…For one, substantial reforms of employment policies have resulted in the development of welfare-to-work 1 (WtW) approaches that bring forward the primacy of work as a goal for welfare services, currently including individualisation as a tool for servicing individual's needs (which can have both promising and less promising implications) and limiting the provision of welfare, even for the vulnerable unemployed (Brodkin, 2013;Brodkin and Larsen, 2013;Considine et al, 2015;Caswell et al, 2017). Clients that were formerly exempt from work and activation obligations, either due to physical, mental and/or social challenges, are now treated as part of the wider group of unemployed individuals (Lindsay and Houston, 2013;Nielsen, 2015;Caswell et al, 2017;Danneris and Nielsen, 2018). This may have positive implications as these groups have previously been overlooked when including people in the labour market.…”

“…. A small sub-strand of studies has examined how employment policies are experienced from the perspective of the unemployed individuals they aim to reach (e.g Marston and McDonald, 2008;Danneris, 2016;Danneris and Nielsen, 2018;McIntosh and Wright, 2018)…”