IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v37y2023i3p588-605.html

‘Chatting Shit’ in the Jobcentre: Navigating Workfare Policy at the Street-Level

Author

Listed:
  • Jamie Redman

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s, out-of-work benefit receipt in the UK has been increasingly governed by a ‘workfarist’ mesh of conditionality and activation policies. A wealth of research has found that conditionality and activation policies trigger a range of harmful outcomes for benefit claimants. However, this research largely ignores how claimants may struggle against these policies to eschew harmful outcomes. Drawing on longitudinal interviews with 15 young men, this article demonstrates how claimants can subvert policy implementation to prioritise their own needs and interests. It is concluded that claimant struggles against policy implementation most accurately reflect survival strategies and are predominantly rooted in the ‘material nexus’ of class-based inequalities in capitalist societies.

Suggested Citation

  • Jamie Redman, 2023. "‘Chatting Shit’ in the Jobcentre: Navigating Workfare Policy at the Street-Level," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 37(3), pages 588-605, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:37:y:2023:i:3:p:588-605
    DOI: 10.1177/09500170211024138
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170211024138
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/09500170211024138?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maarten Goos & Alan Manning, 2007. "Lousy and Lovely Jobs: The Rising Polarization of Work in Britain," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(1), pages 118-133, February.
    2. Michelle Peterie & Gaby Ramia & Greg Marston & Roger Patulny, 2019. "Emotional Compliance and Emotion as Resistance: Shame and Anger among the Long-Term Unemployed," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 33(5), pages 794-811, October.
    3. Agell, Jonas, 1996. "Why Sweden's Welfare State Needed Reform," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(439), pages 1760-1771, November.
    4. Matthew Cooper, 2021. "‘21st Century Welfare’ in Historical Perspective: Disciplinary Welfare in the Depression of the 1930s and Its Implications for Today," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 26(2), pages 326-342, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baird, Matthew D. & Engberg, John & Gutierrez, Italo A., 2022. "RCT evidence on differential impact of US job training programmes by pre-training employment status," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    2. Loebbing, Jonas, 2018. "An Elementary Theory of Endogenous Technical Change and Wage Inequality," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181603, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    3. Keller, Wolfgang & Utar, Hale, 2023. "International trade and job polarization: Evidence at the worker level," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    4. Rabensteiner, Thomas & Guschanski, Alexander, 2022. "Autonomy and wage divergence: evidence from European survey data," Greenwich Papers in Political Economy 37925, University of Greenwich, Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre.
    5. Iftekhairul Islam & Fahad Shaon, 2020. "If the Prospect of Some Occupations Are Stagnating With Technological Advancement? A Task Attribute Approach to Detect Employment Vulnerability," Papers 2001.02783, arXiv.org.
    6. Bhorat, Haroon & Goga, Sumayya & Stanwix, Benjamin, 2014. "Skills-biased labour demand and the pursuit of inclusive growth in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series 130, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Franzini, Maurizio & Raitano, Michele, 2019. "Earnings inequality and workers’ skills in Italy," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 215-224.
    8. David Hémous & Morten Olsen, 2022. "The Rise of the Machines: Automation, Horizontal Innovation, and Income Inequality," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 179-223, January.
    9. Battisti, Michele & Gatto, Massimo Del & Parmeter, Christopher F., 2022. "Skill-biased technical change and labor market inefficiency," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    10. Holmes, Craig & Mayhew, Ken, 2015. "Have UK Earnings Distributions Polarised?," INET Oxford Working Papers 2015-02, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    11. Carlos Medina & Christian Posso, 2010. "Technical Change and Polarization of the Labor Market: Evidence for Brazil, Colombia and Mexico," Borradores de Economia 614, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    12. Leone Leonida & Marianna Marra & Sergio Scicchitano & Antonio Giangreco & Marco Biagetti, 2020. "Estimating the Wage Premium to Supervision for Middle Managers in Different Contexts: Evidence from Germany and the UK," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(6), pages 1004-1026, December.
    13. Qihang Li & Yituan Liu & Wenjie Li & Linman Zheng, 2025. "Will Industrial Robots Terminate Enterprise Innovation?—An Empirical Evidence from China’s Enterprise Robot Penetration," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 16(2), pages 10074-10103, June.
    14. Jamie Redman, 2020. "The Benefit Sanction: A Correctional Device or a Weapon of Disgust?," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 25(1), pages 84-100, March.
    15. Jonathan Payne, 2017. "Towards a broad-based innovation policy in the UK: Can design help?," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 38(3), pages 535-555, August.
    16. Lane Kenworthy, 2004. "Welfare States, Real Income and Poverty," LIS Working papers 370, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    17. Bijnens, Gert & Hutchinson, John & Saint Guilhem, Arthur, 2026. "Navigating the carbon price shock: Electricity costs and employment reallocation in Europe," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    18. Dennis J. Snower & Alessio J. G. Brown & Christian Merkl, 2009. "Globalization and the Welfare State: A Review of Hans-Werner Sinn's Can Germany Be Saved?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 136-158, March.
    19. Ronald Bachmann & Peggy Bechara & Sandra Schaffner, 2016. "Wage Inequality and Wage Mobility in Europe," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 62(1), pages 181-197, March.
    20. James Spletzer & Elizabeth Weber Handwerker, 2015. "The Role of Establishments and the Concentration of Occupations in Wage Inequality," Working Papers id:7427, eSocialSciences.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:37:y:2023:i:3:p:588-605. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.