Gefühlte Mitte – prekäre soziale Selbstverortung von Grundsicherungsbeziehenden

Andreas Hirseland

WSI-Mitteilungen, 2016, vol. 69, issue 5, 365-372

Abstract: The implementation of the Social Code II (SGB II - Hartz IV) in 2005 represents a fundamental reform in German social and labour market policy which has remained controversial until the present time. Critics see in the reform a contribution to a splitting of society and a reinforcement of poverty, both fostering tendencies towards the marginalisation and stigmatisation of welfare recipients. Based on qualitative data the article pursues the question of how far the feared social exclusion of welfare recipients is reflected in their perceptions. Drawing on interviews and data gathered by using the method of “graphic elicitation“ welfare recipients’ views of the society they live in and the ways they locate themselves within society are reconstructed. Many welfare recipients still make a claim to be considered as members of the middle class but are aware of the precarity of this self-classification. Thus they strongly seek to delineate themselves against those who they suspect to be members of a class below them. It is shown that recipients of basic social security provision frequently find themselves in an anomic social position.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/0342-300X-2016-5-365 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nms:wsimit:10.5771/0342-300x-2016-5-365

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, Waldseestraße 3-5, 76530 Baden-Baden, Germany
https://www.nomos-sh ... w.aspx?product=30294

DOI: 10.5771/0342-300X-2016-5-365

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in WSI-Mitteilungen from Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG ().