Solidarity and Reciprocity in the Social Investment State: What Can be Learned from the Case of Flemish School Allowances and Truancy?

Abstract

In this article, we discuss some of the new tensions that are emerging between the different foundations of the welfare state. Several developments have led to the advent of the social investment state, in which people are being activated and empowered instead of passively protected. We argue that this social policy shift has been accompanied by a normative shift towards a more stringent interpretation of social protection in which individual responsibility and quid pro quo have become the primordial focus. Using the Belgian (Flemish) disciplinary policy on truancy and school allowances as a case in point, we demonstrate that this social policy paradigm may have detrimental consequences for society's weakest: they will not always be able to meet the newly emerged standard of reciprocity. This implies an erosion of the ideal of social protection and encourages new forms of social exclusion. As these changes in the social policy framework are not confined to the Belgian case alone, our analysis bears relevance for all European welfare states.

Three Shortcomings of the Social Investment Perspective

“…Now let us turn to the profile of persistent truants in Flanders. Administrative data show that students of non-native descent, students with poorly educated parents and students from families entitled to a school allowance are overrepresented (Cantillon and Van Lancker, 2012). Moreover, the problems are relatively concentrated in urban areas.…”

The State of Social Investment as a Derivation of the Welfare State

“…In the investment approach, citizens are expected to assume full responsibility for their well-being� As a consequence, governments implement political tools to shape the responsibilities� Citizens are directed to the correct behaviour by the stick and carrot method� The incentives offered are, e�g�, remuneration for work, while the penalty may be the limit of entitlements to social benefits for taking up a job (Gilbert & Van Voorhis, 2001)� Building a development paradigm on individual responsibility has been confronted with criticism due to the fact that it is not a good basis for establishing a just social policy� In this context, particular attention is paid to the process of implementing disciplinary policies guided by the concept of individual responsibility, without the possibility of taking into account the circumstances of making the choices, which entails the risk of deepening existing inequalities� The exemplification of disciplinary policy are the restrictions in the provision of assistance to parents of children who are in a difficult financial situation� Parents lose the financial support (toll relief) when the child has got unjustified absences at school� The support from the state in return for the sole responsibility of the child completely abolishes the responsibility of the school (Cantillon & Van Lancker, 2012)� The rhetoric of the individual's responsibility is part of a popular neo-liberal discourse, in which people are responsible for their own (unsuccessful) decisions, as well as the consequences of their own actions or choices� Such a narrow vision of responsibility denies the context of these decisions, the circumstances of the action, which often boils down to an unequal distribution of choices that determine the choices� In this context, it is recognized that disciplinary policies dependent on responsible behaviour reinforce existing inequalities� Firstly, attention is paid to the need to maintain a balance between rights and obligations on the labour market� Secondly, caution is recommended when implementing policies based on a narrow concept of individual responsibility� This involves the danger of blaming the victim and strengthening existing inequalities and behavioural patterns� Although modern societies -according to neoliberal propaganda -are liberated from social classes and transformed into places where everyone has the opportunity of forging one's own destiny, studies show that well-being and opportunities are as much defined by origin as it used to be a half century ago (Erikson & Goldthorpe, 1992)� Although many supporters of an active welfare state demand both social investments and stronger incentives to encourage people to work, in fact governments supporting the so-called new social welfare agreement seem to focus more on deregulation of the labour market, reducing employment protection, limiting access to social insurance and relying more on solutions that bring measurable, easy to demonstrate benefits than pursuing policies to increase human capital and facilitate labour mobility (Taylor-Gooby, 2004)�…”

Manufacturing Responsibility: The Governmentality of Behavioural Power in Social Policies

“…The state backs up this objective by making welfare state entitlements conditional on the behaviour of recipients. This ‘quid pro quo’ logic (Cantillon and Van Lancker, 2012) implies a form of reciprocity in exchange for access to social services: mandatory job applications in exchange for social security, commitment to behavioural change in exchange for family support, strict house rules in exchange for social housing, and financial responsibility in exchange for debt relief (e.g. Peeters, 2014).…”