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Street-level Interpellation: How Government Addresses Mothers Claiming Income Support

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2013

MEGAN BLAXLAND
MEGAN BLAXLAND*
Affiliation:
Social Policy Research Centre, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Meetings between advisers and claimants are central to many welfare-to-work programmes. These ‘street-level’ exchanges between clients and staff are critical to the implementation of policy. When talking to welfare claimants, it becomes clear that contact with welfare bureaucrats is constitutive of their experience of policy and it is not until parent and adviser meet and negotiate that the policy is truly enacted. The policy comes into being through an exchange between advisers and parents, who interact, albeit unequally, to shape the proceedings. This paper examines the experience of parents claiming income support who faced compulsory employment measures. Drawing on research with claimants of teenage children, I examine the adviser meeting as an interpellative interaction. The state addresses mothers as workers and welfare claimants in an interpellation which is mediated by the adviser in dialogue with the mother. This analysis demonstrates how the notion of interpellation can inform research on street-level interactions.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 783 - 797
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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