Unemployment in the Affective Economy: Exploring the Affective Governing of Young Unemployed People in the Danish Welfare State

Abstract

This case study investigates the affective governing of young unemployed people, and it concludes that getting money in the Danish welfare state comes with an “affective price”. In the quest for a job, unemployed people have been increasingly responsibilized in order to live up to the ideal of the active jobseeker. Consequently, when faced with unemployment, they are encouraged to work harder on themselves and their motivation. Based on an interview study with young unemployed people (N=39) and field observations made at employment fund agencies in Denmark (2014–15), I explore how young unemployed people are governed by and through their emotions. By supplementing governmentality studies (Foucault et al. 1988, 2010) with the concept of “affective economy” from Ahmed (2014), I discuss how young unemployed people who receive money from the Danish state are placed in a situation of debt. The paper unfolds how this debt becomes visible as the unemployed people often describe feeling under suspicion for not doing enough, for not being motivated enough. Through an abundance of (pro) activity, they have to prove the suspicion of being lazy wrong, and through managing themselves as active jobseekers, they earn the right to get money from the state. Here motivation, passion and empowerment are key currencies. I discuss the intricate interplay between monetary and affective currencies as well as political implications in the context of the Danish welfare. The article contributes by making visible the importance of taking affective matters into account when investigating the complex relationship between politics and psychology.

Planning for a Job

“…While we identify that the regime of the plan dominates the other regimes in the activation policies enacted by the PES, we also see how the regime of familiarity, and perhaps to a lesser extent the regime of exploration, is increasingly absorbed by regime of the plan and thus instrumentalized in relation to the goal of finding a job. Our results are aligned with and add to Pultz (2017) and Pultz and Sharone (2020), who have shown how social relationships are instrumentalized in the employment system by encouraging people to take advantage of social relationships (including friends and family) in their job search (known as “networking”). Perhaps COVID-19 has accentuated this dynamic, as everyday life during lockdown was narrowed down to a limited space and a limited number of relations.…”

“…Existing rules and demands aimed at unemployed people's behavior and the concrete ways of administering these rules and laws to some degree reflect how the system encourages unemployed people to conduct themselves (Pultz, 2017). Overall, the employment system can best be characterized as an excessive engagement in the regime of plans, as everything is formatted according to the quest for a job.…”

“…The COVID-19 crisis has also been an event that to a degree has put the activation policies to the test, making it visible what aspects are usually associated with stress, pressure, and surveillance and what aspects are missed such as support. In addition, the COVID-19 crisis has tweaked and turned the moral test of unemployed people, as unemployment has now been associated more with external and structural factors, thus opposing the individualizing and responsibilizing dynamics associated with the active turn dominating the last three or four decades (Hansen, 2019; Pultz, 2017). Hence, it has become slightly more acceptable to say that you are unemployed.…”

“…The empirical data were gathered based on an overall social psychological and sociological interest in the experience of unemployment. We therefore aimed to produce data not solely on issues related to the PES; we also included questions addressing the everyday life of unemployed people, seen from the individual's point of view (see also Pultz, 2017).…”

“…The active turn thus also entails that policies and instruments are increasingly concerned with how to govern the behavior of the unemployed through economic incentives, individual action plans, job search obligations, interviews, activation courses, etc., and if needed, through coercive measures of control and sanctioning (Hansen, 2019; Daguerre, 2007; Pultz, 2017). Several studies have pointed out how this institutional change has affected the experience of unemployment across the OECD (Demazière & Delpierre, 2020), from the Anglo-Saxon countries (Boland & Griffin, 2016; Dwyer, 2010; McDonald & Marston, 2005; Sharone, 2013; Whelan, 2021) to the continental countries (Demazière, 2017) and the Nordic countries (Garsten et al., 2016; Pultz, 2017). Cross-national comparative studies highlight the variation of the mix between labor markets, activation policies, and how they affect the experience of unemployment (Chen, 2015; Pultz & Sharone, 2020; Sharone, 2013); however, across variations, unemployment has been individualized, making the individual responsible for the situation and hence also prone to blaming themselves (Pultz, 2017; Sharone, 2013).…”