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Support or Exploitation? Workfare Implementation and Migrants’ Resistance within the Swiss Reception System

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  • Agnès Aubry

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research, this article explores the daily implementation and lived experiences of workfare-inspired programmes designed for migrants seeking protection, who are living in Swiss reception centres. It examines how they are compelled to perform a wide range of unpaid work in exchange for their support and how they negotiate that work. Using a situated intersectional approach, the article shows how workfare-inspired programmes become a tool for channelling the behaviours of racialised migrant men and underlines the everyday resistance practices and survival strategies migrant claimants use to face exploitation. This case study takes a critical stance towards mainstream accounts of migrant workfare that frame it as a pathway to integration and empowerment. It brings new empirical insights to critical welfare studies and contributes to research on contemporary social security reform by showing how migrant claimants routinely resist the implementation of workfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Agnès Aubry, 2025. "Support or Exploitation? Workfare Implementation and Migrants’ Resistance within the Swiss Reception System," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 39(6), pages 1394-1414, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:39:y:2025:i:6:p:1394-1414
    DOI: 10.1177/09500170251344717
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Kirsten Stam & Inge Sieben & Ellen Verbakel & Paul M de Graaf, 2016. "Employment status and subjective well-being: the role of the social norm to work," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 30(2), pages 309-333, April.
    2. Alessandro Maculan, 2022. "Asylum Seekers, Power Relations, and Everyday Resistance Practices: an Ethnographic Study," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 431-447, June.
    3. Martin Ruhs, 2013. "The Price of Rights: Regulating International Labor Migration," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10140, December.
    4. Kaufmann, David & Bernhard, Laurent, 2023. "The use of the abuse policy narrative in asylum debates and its effects on citizens’ opinion formation," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 43(2), pages 307-325, June.
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