Search

This chapter explores how the human social right to a minimum means of subsistence is being deployed as an instrument for governing the work behaviour of welfare recipients and whether deployment of this right creates an active self-responsible worker mentality, as presupposed by EU social policies. For this purpose, the chapter draws on two empirical case studies on labour activation programmes for benefit recipients conducted in the Netherlands. Using Foucauldian power analytics, it is concluded that, depending on the nature of the sanctioning system, the technology of human social rights produced either subjects who primarily played the role of an active worker, or subjects who primarily acted as an active worker in the labour activation programmes, instead of behaving as an active, forward-looking worker, seeking to transfer to a regular job.

This chapter draws together the book’s main conclusions by connecting the findings of its various chapters. It first analyses the relationship between the human rights perspective presented in the book’s legal section and the republican theory of non-domination. Subsequently, it assesses the cross-national variations found in the legal and sociological chapters. Based on this analysis, it proposes institutional, organisational and legal improvements to WTW policies that seek to minimise relations of domination.

In Switzerland, the participation in certain work programmes is an eligibility criterion to social assistance benefits and the constitutionally granted right to the financial means required for a decent standard of living. This chapter examines whether the implementation of these programmes is in accordance with fundamental rights and more precisely, whether they respect the normative framework elaborated in Chapter 4. As will be shown, the right to financial assistance when in need has close links to human dignity. Therefore, the evaluation of the mentioned work programmes against the human rights background leads to some critical conclusions on their compatibility with international human rights law in general and human dignity in particular. Especially, the authors argue that the Swiss Federal Supreme Court’s case law lacks a comprehensive approach for the evaluation of human rights infringements in this context.

This chapter uses the six legal safeguards, identified in chapter 4, that concretise the proportionality test under the prohibition of forced labour and the right to freely chosen work to evaluate the national social assistance legislation in Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK. The analysis shows that none of the national legislation complies with all six safeguards. The Dutch legislation stands out for its lack of legal regulation with respect to the duty to participate in work programmes. In addition, a comparison between the Danish and the British WTW law shows that, while the Danish legal provisions aim at a collaboration between the recipient of social assistance benefits and the authorities, the British provisions reflect the aim of the national authorities to control the recipient.

This chapter explores how Danish WTW policies have recently been radically extended while still largely avoiding the hazards of public justification. Thus, we explore different routes WTW policies can travel in order to avoid traditional forms of policy-justification. In doing so, we are inspired by the recent proliferation of so-called ‘management and governance studies’ within the tradition of Street Level Bureaucracy, that analyzes how organizational changes and management reforms affect policies.We claim that such reforms only represent one within a plurality of ‘silent’ ways to implement WTW policies. Specifically, we investigate three cases, which exemplify three different ways to expanding the scope of WTW polices, without them having to be publicly justified. The first case digs into classification processes where the work capability of Danish social assistance claimants is assessed and shows how incremental changes of such processes has formed a system, where more and more claimants are deemed capable of working – and therefore legitimate targets of harsher demands and sanctions. The second case explores how the political quest for evidence-based employment policies comes with an inherent bias: ‘Evidence’ is constructed in ways that clearly favor work first policies. Our third and final case investigates how the municipal welfare offices’ autonomy to try out new and innovative activation programs, is currently being restructured by subtle changes that increase the incentives to take up activations programs that support the WTW strategies of the Ministry of Employment.Theoretically, our analysis is informed by concepts from the foucauldian literature, particularly emphasizing the connection between the production of certain forms of knowledge on the one hand and the functioning of power on the other. Empirically, the chapter primarily draws on a mixture of large archives of policy documents and a total of 15 interviews with civil servants and public-sector leaders.

This chapter examines how the republican theory of non-domination can be used for a normative analysis of WTW relationships. It is argued that Lovett’s conception of non-domination captures some of the defining elements of these relationships. However, his conception of rules is (too) strongly rooted in the ideas of reasonability and impartiality, as a result of which vulnerable people in particular are at risk of being excluded from its (potentially protective) scope. Therefore, a republican normative analysis of WTW practices should also take account of Pettit’s more inclusive, democratic account of the republican theory of non-domination that is more attentive to the need for democratic oversight over discretionary spaces of welfare officers and work supervisors.