Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T10:45:21.655Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reclaiming Responsibility: The Case of Welfare-to-Work Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2018

ANDREAS ERIKSEN
ANDREAS ERIKSEN*
Affiliation:
Centre for the Study of Professions, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Welfare-to-work programmes have a contested normative foundation. Critics argue that ‘citizen responsibility’ is being promoted to the sacrifice of more important social values, such as solidarity and fairness. This paper seeks to recapture what is valuable in citizen responsibility and to challenge the idea that the concept is intrinsically bound up with detrimental policy strategies. The paper develops a view of the responsible citizen as an appropriate addressee of moral expectations. This view highlights how addressing someone as responsible involves a presumption of reasonableness. Thereafter, the view is applied to conditions of street-level interaction, the design of policy instruments, and political discourse.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 529 - 546
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adler, M. (2003), ‘A socio-legal approach to administrative justice’, Law & Policy, 25: 4, 323–352.Google Scholar
Adler, M. (2006), ‘Fairness in context’, Journal of Law and Society, 33: 4, 615–638.Google Scholar
Adler, M. (2013), ‘Conditionality, sanctions, and the weakness of redress mechanisms in the British “new deal”’, in Brodkin, E. Z. and Marston, G. (Eds.), Work and the welfare state, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Andersen, N. A., Caswell, D. and Larsen, F. (2016), ‘Innovation of employment services for vulnerable groups: the case of Denmark’, conference paper for ‘Changing Labour Markets: Challenges for Welfare and Labour Market Policy’, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden, December 7–9.Google Scholar
Anderson, E. (1999), ‘What is the point of equality?’ Ethics, 109: 2, 287–337.Google Scholar
Blair, T. and Schröder, G. (1998), Europe: the Third Way/die Neue Mitte. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, working documents, 2.Google Scholar
Bonvin, J.-M. and Farvaque, N. (2007), ‘A capability approach to individualised and tailor-made activation’, in van Berkel, R. and Valkenburg, B. (Eds.), Making it personal: individualising activation services in the EU, Bristol: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Bradshaw, P. (2016), ‘Ken Loach's welfare state polemic is blunt, dignified and brutally moving’, The Guardian, 12 May.Google Scholar
Cantillon, B. and Van Lancker, W. (2012), ‘Solidarity and reciprocity in the social investment state: what can be learned from the case of Flemish school allowances and truancy?’ Journal of Social Policy, 41: 4, 657–675.Google Scholar
Caswell, D. and Høybye-Mortensen, M. (2015), Responses from the frontline: how organisations and street-level bureaucrats deal with economic sanctions. European Journal of Social Security, 17: 1, 31–51.Google Scholar
Dean, H. (2003), ‘The Third Way and social welfare: the myth of post-emotionalism’, Social Policy & Administration, 37: 7, 695–708.Google Scholar
Dermine, E. and Dumont, D. (2014), Activation policies for the unemployed: the right to work and the duty to work, Brussels: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Darwall, S. (2006), The second-person standpoint, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dworkin, R. (2000), Sovereign virtue, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Engbersen, G., Schuyt, K., Timmer, J. and van Waarden, F. (1993), Cultures of unemployment: a comparative look at long-term unemployment and urban poverty, Oxford: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Ervik, R., Kildal, N. and Nilssen, E. (Eds.) (2015), New contractualism in European welfare state policies, Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Friedli, L. and Stearn, R. (2015), ‘Positive affect as coercive strategy: conditionality, activation and the role of psychology in UK government workfare programmes’, Critical Medical Humanities, 41: 1, 40–47.Google Scholar
Garthwaite, K. (2014), ‘Fear of the brown envelope: exploring welfare reform with long-term sickness benefit recipients’, Social Policy & Administration, 48: 7, 782–798.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1994), Beyond left and right, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1998), The Third Way, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Gjersøe, H. M. (2016), ‘Regulating inflow or outflow: a comparison of the work capability assessments in the UK and Norway,’ Journal of Social Policy, 45: 1, 141–158.Google Scholar
Griggs, J. and Evans, M. (2010), ‘Sanctions within conditional benefit systems: a review of evidence’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, M. (2013), Kein Recht auf Faulheit [No right to be lazy], Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien.Google Scholar
Lødemel, I. and Moreira, A. (Eds.) (2014), Activation or workfare: governance and the neo-liberal convergence, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lødemel, I. and Trickey, H. (Eds.) (2000), ‘An offer you can't refuse’: workfare in international perspective. Bristol: Policy PressGoogle Scholar
Mashaw, J. L. (1983), Bureaucratic justice: managing social security disability claims, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Mead, L. (1986), Beyond entitlement: the social obligations of citizenship, New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Molander, A. and Torsvik, G. (2015), ‘Getting people into work: what (if anything) can justify mandatory activation of welfare recipients?’ Journal of Applied Philosophy, 32: 4, 373–392.Google Scholar
Newman, I. (2011), ‘Work as a route out of poverty: a critical evaluation of the UK welfare to work policy’, Policy Studies, 32: 2, 91–108.Google Scholar
Nilssen, E. (2015), ‘Contractualism and street-level discretion in Norwegian activation policy’, in Ervik, R., Kildal, N. and Nilssen, E. (Eds.), New contractualism in European welfare state policies (pp. 73–92), Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Patrick, R. (2016), Living with and responding to the ‘scrounger’ narrative in the UK: exploring everyday strategies of acceptance, resistance and deflection. Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 24: 3, 245–249.Google Scholar
Paz-Fuchs, A. (2008), Welfare to work: conditional rights in social policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rafass, T. (2017), ‘Demanding activation’, Journal of Social Policy, 46: 2, 349–365.Google Scholar
Reeves, A. and Loopstra, R. (2017), ‘Set up to fail?’ How welfare conditionality undermines citizenship for vulnerable groups, Social Policy and Society, 16: 2, 327–338.Google Scholar
Røed, K. (2012), ‘Active social insurance’, IZA Journal of Labor Policy, 1: 8, 1–22.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. (1998), What we owe to each other, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schmidt, V. A. (2002), ‘Does discourse matter in the politics of welfare state adjustment?’ Comparative Political Studies, 35: 2, 168–193.Google Scholar
Spies, H. and van Berkel, R. (2001), ‘Workfare in the Netherlands’: young unemployed people and the Jobseeker's Allowance Act’ in Lødemel, I. and Trickey, H. (Eds.), ‘An offer you can't refuse: workfare in international perspective (pp. 105–132), Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Strawson, P. F. (2008[1962]), Freedom and resentment and other essays, Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Terum, L. I., Torsvik, G. and Øverbye, G. (2017), ‘Når vilkår og aktivitetskrav brytes: frontlinjearbeideres tilnærming til sanksjoner’ [When conditions and mandatory activation are breached: frontline workers attitudes to sanctions], Søkelys på arbeidslivet, 34: 3, 147–166.Google Scholar
Watson, G. (2004), Agency and answerability, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wolff, J. (2015), ‘Political philosophy and the real world of the welfare state’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 32: 4, 360–372.Google Scholar
Wright, S. (2016), ‘Conceptualising the active welfare subject: welfare reform in discourse, policy and lived experience’, Policy & Politics, 44: 2, 235–252.Google Scholar