Publication details
Framing Welfare Recipients in Political Discourse : Political Farming through Material Need Assistance
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Monograph |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | This book shows that the categories policy-makers bring up in debates about workfare are primarily interlinked with negative images and perceptions. Social assistance, workfare, and beneficiaries are associated with crime, the need for behavioural adjustments, social system abuse, irresponsibility, speculation, and the need for protection of public order and interests. I argue that governing societies through security, biologisation, the normalisation of self-responsibility, and through moral claims, redefines relationships among members of different groups, potentially leading to legitimation and institutionalisation of restrictions and control-oriented measures. Moreover, in Central Europe, boundary-making through material need assistance regulation assumes an ethnic dimension. Via stories, anecdotes, and collocations, hidden ethnicisation occurs, resulting in various forms of symbolic and social exclusion and in the deprivation of fundamental rights of beneficiaries, especially those with a Romani background. |