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

REDMAN, Jamie (2021). ‘Chatting Shit’ in the Jobcentre: Navigating Workfare Policy at the Street-Level. Work, Employment and Society, 095001702110241-095001702110241.

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	1402 Applied Economics; 1503 Business and Management; 1608 Sociology; Industrial Relations
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170211024138
Page Range:	095001702110241-095001702110241
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Elements
Depositing User:	Symplectic Elements
Date Deposited:	27 Jul 2021 10:17
Last Modified:	30 Jul 2021 15:36
URI:	https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/28879

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