'Limited Employment Areas': Striating the Spaces of Unemployment in New Zealand.

BSTRACT This paper examines the recent policy announced by the Minister of Social Development that identifies a series of 'Limited Employment Areas' within which access to the unemployment benefit would be restricted. Drawing on Deleuze's ideas of striation and modulation the paper explores the intersection of governance, space, and risk that seems to be combined in the policy. The paper concludes by reflecting on the deployment of risk based on ontological claims about the spatiality of unemployment. In seeking to shape the decisions of benefit seekers, there seems to be an emerging mosaic of welfare provision as a direct consequence of governmental intent, rather than as a failure of governmental ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]