While theorisations of workfare are many and varied, empirical analyses of workfare in practice have been relative scarce. This section therefore reviews the main studies falling into this category, plus a small number of theoretical studies of workfare that draw on empirical data.
One of the earliest sociological investigations into a modern welfare system was provided by Marie Jahoda, Hans Zeisel and Paul Lazarsfeld’s study of chronic unemployment in the German village of Marienthal in the early 1930s (Jahoda et al., 2009). At the time that the research was conducted, most of Marienthal’s 1500 inhabitants had been made unemployed following the closure of a textile factory. This left almost the entire village dependent upon on a basic welfare scheme. This scheme was structured to gradually decrease welfare payments according to how long a claimant spent out of work. The authors interviewed local welfare officials, conducted documentary analysis and spoke with claimants who were attending special activities for the unemployed, such as gymnasium training for men and sewing circles for women.
The Marienthal study identified three separate psychological states amongst the village’s unemployed: the ‘unbroken’, the ‘resigned’ and the ‘broken’. The unbroken remained optimistic about the future. The resigned had come to terms with their situation, but had also begun to have doubts about the future. The broken had given up all hope, and were likely to leave the community. Significantly, these three categories closely matched Marienthal’s three different, and decreasing, levels of benefit payment:
84 34 schillings (14% [of the population] Unbroken)
30 schillings (47% Resigned) 23 schillings (39% Broken)
This finding indicated that the amount of time spent on welfare was correlated to psychological state. The longer villagers claimed welfare, the more they exhibited signs of apathy and disengagement with village activities. An increase in physical health problems was also noted to correlate to the length of time claimants had spent on welfare.
The Marienthal study was an important forerunner of the hysteresis theory of unemployment. The view that extended periods on welfare can lead to psychological breakdown is even sometimes termed the ‘Jahoda School’ (McLaughlin, 1994). However, Jahoda, a leading expert on the psychology of work, has since argued that the relationship between psychological wellbeing and work, or alternately, welfare, is complex, and not reducible to simplistic calculations involving only the time spent claiming welfare, or time spent in work. Numerous factors could affect the psychology of individuals, including poverty, isolation, and levels of integration into wider social networks (Jahoda and Fryer, 1998).
Chad Alan Goldberg (2001) reviewed New York’s WEP (Work Experience Programme) workfare scheme. WEP was initiated in 1995 following the election of Mayor Giuliani in 1994. WEP utilised work-first programmes that deployed tens of thousands of welfare claimants as New York City municipal workers.
Utilising a dual theoretical approach drawn from Durkheim and Goffman, Goldberg argues that New York’s workers and unemployed existed in a manipulated ‘symbolic order’. Actors serving the interests of global capital sought to ‘wrap’ the unemployed in symbols of profanity. By contrast, New York’s elite, and those who conformed to the values determined by that elite, were wrapped in symbols of social legitimation.
The profanation of welfare claimants occurred via ‘symbolic pollution’. This most often entailed accusations of welfare dependency, indolence, uncleanliness, social dysfunction and sexual promiscuity. Neoliberal agents used rhetoric and imagery to contrast these alleged ‘underclass’ attributes with the ‘sacred’ neoliberal values of self- sufficiency, bourgeois family structure, law-abidingness, cleanliness, hard work and discipline. This symbolic propaganda operated on two levels. Firstly, via elite
85 discourse, including political speeches, legislation and media output. Secondly, via the day-to-day authoritarian control of welfare claimants.
Crucially, the day-to-day micro-control of welfare claimants under WEP was not simply a matter of power, domination or control; it was also an active semiotic process of creating ‘welfare claimant’ as a symbolically polluted social category. Goldberg draws the idea of symbolic pollution from Durkheim’s belief that societies tend to view ‘outsiders’, or lower ranking members, as unclean.
According to Durkheim, ascribing the status of ‘unclean’ occurred via ritual processes embedded in day-to-day social life. Similarly, as welfare claimants pass through workfare institutions, the institutional processes and staff assumptions that they are subjected to symbolically ‘mark’ them as polluted. To explain this process, Goldberg draws on Goffman’s finding that the institutional processes and staff perceptions within asylums and other ‘total institutions’ moulded individuals into ‘typical’ inmates. Goldberg finds that, similarly, WEP ‘moulded’ attendees into the status of polluted individuals. WEP programmes achieved this effect by continuously treating welfare claimants as social waste.
According to Goldberg, this process of symbolic pollution occurred via an ongoing cycle of interaction between macro and micro social levels. At the macro level, politicians, legislation, media reports and documentaries demonised welfare claimants. This output was then inculcated by workfare staff, who adjusted their practices to ‘treat welfare claimants accordingly’. Prejudices and assumptions regarding welfare claimants, which were drawn from elite discourse, thus became explicitly embedded within the structures and content of WEP workfare provision. This included ‘training’ session curricula, the language, attitudes and behaviour of workfare centre staff, and the rules and regulations of WEP programmes. For example, where welfare claimants were demonised as ‘idle’, workfare staff might adopt ‘training’ methods designed to instil a superior work ethic. As the welfare claimant now appeared to be precisely that which elite discourse accused them of being, the original macro level vilification was confirmed. Reports and feedback from workfare centre staff then informed the views of elite actors. The result was a mutually reinforcing system of ritual degradation operating on and between micro and macro levels. Moreover, this ‘cycle’ had an increasingly punitive momentum, leading to intensified public support for crackdowns
86 on welfare claimants. This served local elite interests by justifying both the cutting of welfare cheques, and also the forcing of welfare claimants into forced work schemes. This also helped to lower New York City’s municipal costs, as workfare labour replaced traditionally employed workers. Opposition to using welfare claimants as cheap workfare labour was muted due to a concocted sense that forced work was necessary in order to morally ‘cleanse’ New York’s unemployed.
Espen Dahl (2003) conducted a review of Norwegian workfare centres. Dahl’s research objective was to assess contemporary political and scholarly claims that modern Norwegian workfare programmes increased a welfare claimant’s self- sufficiency. Self-sufficiency meant the ability to engage in the labour market, find work and stay off welfare. Prior to the research phase, Dahl reviewed relevant literature and identified three standard approaches to welfare. Dahl calls these the ‘rational’, ‘expectancy’ and ‘cultural’ models. The rational model proposes that claimants draw welfare because they are attempting to maximise leisure time rather than the more ‘usual’ social desire of maximising income. The expectancy model proposes that an individual’s previous experiences of work and welfare influence their desire to find work. The cultural model suggests that deviant norms develop in underprivileged areas. Each of these models emphasises individual behaviour over structural unemployment, and all three became increasingly articulated in Norwegian political, academic and media output during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Dahl thus characterises Norway’s shift towards workfare in this period as an abandonment of social democratic active labour market policies. These had emphasised structural economic failures as the causes of unemployment, and government intervention in industry as the solution. The new ‘workfare’ model emphasised personal failures. Hence, workfare advocates recommended a stricter, and individualised, ‘work activation’ approach. This meant pressurising individuals to find work, no matter how low-paid or menial. Work activation was claimed to trigger positive ‘psycho-social mechanisms’ in welfare recipients; chiefly, self-sufficiency, work ethic and self-esteem. This was alleged to lead to more active efforts to escape unemployment and poverty, and moreover, to impart this work seeking ethic to claimants’ children.
Dahl’s study utilised survey data. In total, 300 workfare scheme attendees were interviewed, drawn from 40 workfare centres. A control group of 155 welfare claimants, who did not attend workfare schemes, was also surveyed. Each participant
87 was claiming benefits in 1995. Dahl (2003: 278) states that fifteen ‘characteristics’ of workfare programmes were investigated, including:
type of sanction, whether training was a part of the programme, collaboration with the labour market department, number of weeks required to work, etc. as well as characteristics of the municipality such as population size, unemployment rates and urban/rural area.
These characteristics were then subjected to a statistical analysis. Dahl found that workfare centres had rapidly developed institutional practices that favoured the centre, and its need to fulfil bureaucratic rules and quotas, over the needs of welfare claimants. This occurred because of undue pressures placed on centres by government rules and contract expectations. The most important ‘institutional practice’ was ‘creaming’, i.e. prioritising the most ‘work ready’ claimants for available vacancies. Those claimants requiring more serious help were largely ignored. Some ‘parked’ vulnerable claimants subsequently exhibited signs of institutionalisation. It was therefore possible that workfare made finding work less likely, as the centre regime undermined the confidence and independence of claimants. Rather than increasing ‘self-efficacy’, this appeared to be reinforcing a sense of personal failure in some cases. Moreover, the attitudes of staff towards ‘parked’ claimants might also have been reinforcing this psychological state. For example, by subtly treating claimants as hard to reach, or as unemployable individuals, claimants might internalise this perspective. This could occur through face-to-face interactions, or else through in-centre prejudices that developed around particular claimants.
Public reporting of the ‘successes’ of workfare centres was skewed. Successful work placements were emphasised, giving an artificial sense that government policy was actively aiding difficult to employ social categories. Closer inspection revealed that for claimants who were work ready, the centre probably did little more than introduce them to potential employers. Meanwhile, pressures to appear successful meant that claimants requiring more significant help were considered too time consuming and parked. This in turn fed public and media perceptions that a certain category of welfare claimant was pathologically resistant to work, even when provided with expensive and intensive intervention.
88 Dean Herd, Andrew Mitchell and Ernie Lightman (2005) researched the experiences of workfare attendees in Canada. Their study focused on the Ontario Works programme, established in 1995 following the election of a new, Right-leaning state government intent on implementing ‘active’ welfare policies. The authors emphasise the need for empirical, qualitative study in order to explore the day-to-day experiences of workfare attendees. Their research method therefore followed a panel interview formula, with 90 workfare centre attendees questioned over two sessions in 2002 and 2003.
Drawing on a detailed analysis of the panel data, the authors argue that ‘active welfare policy’ was a euphemism for the micro-regulation of claimant behaviour. While the official rationale of Ontario Works was to make claimants more work focused and work ready, nevertheless, micro-regulation had become an administrative end in itself. This began with a deliberately difficult and confusing application process. This included an almost unnavigable telephone call-centre application procedure, followed by the need to complete forms filled with multiple clauses and confusing jargon. Where claims were refused, appealing the decision entailed a further layer of intensively complex bureaucracy. Hostile staff would then demand unreasonable or difficult to provide documentary proof of welfare eligibility, and would also refuse to offer advice during the applications process. This was intended to screen out and put off as many potential claimants as possible. This indicated a sea change in welfare services, with the old social democratic service mentality being replaced by a neoliberal agenda of making welfare claims as difficult and onerous as possible.
Successful claimants then faced what the authors describe as “rituals of degradation” (2005: 74). This began with face-to-face interrogations in which claimants were continually asked to justify their eligibility for welfare. The information required was often intrusive. For example, cheque stubs, evidence of domestic living arrangements or divorce settlements, insurance documents and bank statements. The authors note that individuals who were fleeing domestic abuse, or who had experienced some other catastrophic life event, often did not have all of the documents demanded by the workfare centre. This led to a dismissal of their claim.
Helping people to find work took second place to obedience and onerous administrative protocols. This permitted claimants to be intensively micro-managed
89 and pushed through the system in a timely manner. The micro regulation of claimants was enforced through interrogations, humiliating and unachievable case-plans, and patronising training and orientation sessions.
High staff turnovers due to the stress of working in Ontario Works centres served this administrative agenda. Claimants were unable to build alliances with staff members and were forced to repeatedly explain the same problems, and provide the same supporting documentation, multiple times, to multiple different and unknown officials. This added an extra layer of disorientation, intrusion and humiliation. Failure to follow Ontario Works’ petty administrative rules and requirements were disproportionately punished with serious economic sanctions. This led to ‘destabilised’ claimants, who, the authors argue, were easier to persuade to exit welfare. Ontario Works is described by Herd et al. as an administrative extension of the policing system. This transition indicated that the priority of government was no longer to establish the eligibility of vulnerable individuals, but rather, to subject them to invasive systems of micro-surveillance.
Katrin Hohmeyer and Joachim Wolff (2012) reviewed Germany’s ‘Help Towards Work’ (HTW) welfare scheme. HTW was introduced by the federal government in 2005, following a decade of rising German unemployment. HTW is sometimes described as the ‘one-euro’ scheme because it provided nominal payments of around one euro per hour for workfare labour. HTW was designed to diminish the ‘utility’ of welfare by limiting the excess free time enjoyed by welfare claimants. To achieve this aim, participants were sent on temporary work placements, primarily in the non-profit sector. It was hoped by the German government that these placements would boost participants’ basic skills, self-confidence and work ethic. This was expected to lead to more active job seeking and a greater likelihood of accepting lower waged work. By 2012, HTW was processing around 600,000 new participants into work placements annually.
To assess the efficacy of HTW, Hohmeyer and Wolff analysed statistical data pertaining to nearly 31,000 workfare participants. All participants were in the 18-65 age group, and all were unemployed and attending HTW in 2005. The authors further subdivided the sample into East and West Germans, men and women and different age categories.
90 Before commencing their analysis, the authors note that it is extremely difficult to assess how much ‘utility value’ an unemployed person attaches to their ‘leisure’ time. Such a person might make the most of their free time, but still want work. This makes any empirical assessment of the power of workfare schemes to diminish free time utility extremely problematic, with the fundamental assumptions of this position existing more in the ideological than the factual realm.
Following a comprehensive data analysis, the authors found that by six months, on average, HTW made finding work less likely for all major categories of participants. The authors hypothesise that, in some cases, participants experienced a ‘lock in’ effect. Lock in involved participants coming to view their one-euro job as sufficient employment. Work placements provided social contact and an increased sense of purpose. Moreover, these benefits were achieved in low stress roles. This gave participants little incentive to seek work in the competitive and often highly stressful normal labour market. The likelihood of the lock in effect occurring increased in direct proportion to the number of temporary jobs completed by participants.
Both East and West German women were more likely than East and West German men to find work after twelve months, and West German women were more likely to find work than East German women. The authors hypothesise that this was due to a higher demand for low paid women in the West German domestic services industry. After 20 months, HTW’s success rate was 0%, as opposed to 16.9% for a non- HTW control group. Over the very long term (i.e. over two years) the numbers of males who successfully exited HTW rose slightly to 1.5% (2012: 183).
Overall, the one-euro scheme diminished a claimant’s chances of finding work. However, for those with exceptionally poor work histories the scheme provided a slightly positive effect. Age, gender and local employment markets played important roles in determining who was more likely to be employed.
Craig Brett (2005) conducted a fiscal review of European workfare schemes. Brett argues that workfare schemes need to save more in welfare non-expenditure than they cost in operating expenses in order to be fiscally viable. Brett found that this economic payoff rarely, if ever, occurred in European workfare. Moreover, claims Brett, there needed to be widely available real employment, and a high percentage of individuals refusing to work because benefits were too attractive, in order for
91 governments to achieve any overall fiscal gains from workfare programmes. As most European economies did not exhibit these features, workfare programmes usually transpired to be far more expensive to run than the welfare regimes that they replaced. This was due to the enormous costs involved, including monitoring and training customers, and also keeping up with complex systems of administration. Rising costs were also aggravated by the limited successes that workfare schemes achieved in terms of exiting their clients from welfare. Brett concluded that whatever workfare’s justification might be, it could not be financial savings.
Jamie Peck (1998) assessed the strict workfare system introduced into Massachusetts by Governor William Weld in 1991. This scheme came to be known as ‘Weldfare’. Weldfare heralded a clampdown on welfare claiming. This included a ‘family cap’ (no aid for any children born on welfare) and the refusal of welfare to teenage parents living independently. Teenage parents were also required to have, or to be working towards, a high school diploma. For adult claimants, Weldfare introduced a strict system of conditionality and enforced low-wage work. Peck’s analysis of Weldfare drew on “just over 100 interviews with federal, state and local level policymakers, administrators, welfare advocates, recipients, community representatives, and employers” (1998: 68).
According to Peck, Weldfare was based on a spurious supply side economics principle: that jobs would ‘appear’ if enough cheap labour was pushed onto the employment market. This “reckless social experiment” (1998: 78) ignored that the availability of jobs is always closely linked to fluctuations in the business cycle. Because of a widespread failure to realise or accept this link, welfare systems that are in place when the business cycle is in downturn become perceived as failing, and as generating ‘dependency’. Proponents of workfare thus argued that dependency could be ended by forcing claimants to take work. Even low-paid work would, according to