The Aesthetics of Work-Readiness: Aesthetic Judgements and Pedagogies for Conditional Welfare and Post-Fordist Labour Markets

Marguerite van den Berg and Josien Arts
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Marguerite van den Berg: University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Josien Arts: University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Work, Employment & Society, 2019, vol. 33, issue 2, 298-313

Abstract: Recent legislation in the Netherlands takes conditional welfare to a new level. Local welfare offices can now give benefit sanctions to welfare clients that ‘obstruct employment’ by their appearance. Through a qualitative and ethnographic study of aesthetic evaluation practices in Dutch welfare offices it is argued that: (1) an everyday aesthetic labour is pivotal in post-Fordist labour markets; (2) in times of precarization, this is so for unemployed as well as formally employed populations; (3) welfare clients are expected to give an aesthetic performance of work-readiness and adaptability; and (4) case managers use aesthetics as a pedagogy to achieve this readiness and adaptability. Aesthetic labour, it is then argued, is best conceptualized as a continuous, everyday, backstage labour for labour: a daily calibration for work contexts in flux.

Keywords: aesthetic labour; conditional welfare; pedagogies; policy implementation; post-Fordism; precarization; responsibilization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:33:y:2019:i:2:p:298-313

DOI: 10.1177/0950017018758196

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