Navigating indifference: Irish jobseekers’ experiences of welfare conditionality

Finn Philip
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Finn Philip: Department of Sociology, Maynooth University, Ireland

Administration, 2021, vol. 69, issue 2, 67-86

Abstract: This paper analyses the impact of the intensification of work-related conditionality on the lived experience of jobseekers in Ireland. Post-crisis Ireland has witnessed the emergence of a definitive policy trajectory which seeks to enable a lifelong attachment to the labour force through work-related conditionality buttressed by sanctions. This mode of governing unemployment attempts a restructuring of the caseworker–claimant relationship through increased engagement, claimant adherence to mandatory conditions, and surveillance underpinned by potential reduction, suspension or loss of benefit. The paper provides a qualitative investigation of the lived experience of this impact through a thematic analysis of forty-two interviews with jobseekers in a county in the east of Ireland. The focus on the agency of jobseekers illustrates a system based on superficial engagement in which conditionality primarily operates as bureaucratic formality. This is reflective of a systemic indifference to claimants’ needs and circumstances, producing a performance of feigned compliance in response.

Keywords: Welfare conditionality; sanctions; lived experience; welfare; dramaturgy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:admini:v:69:y:2021:i:2:p:67-86:n:3

DOI: 10.2478/admin-2021-0014

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