Introduction

The development of many ‘welfare’ programmes (focused on citizens’ right to income support) to ‘welfare to work’ (WTW) programmes (focused on the duty to provide for oneself through paid employment) in Europe (and beyond) has been extensively studied and analysed (see for example Dwyer, 2004; Schram et al, 2010; Van Berkel, 2017). This chapter relates to the studies that have examined the concrete and particular ways in which social assistance recipients have been ‘invited, cajoled and sometimes coerced’ (Newman and Tonkens, 2011, p 9) to become the desired citizen that is independent from social assistance and productive in the labour market. In these WTW programmes, paternalism is considered ‘the legitimate role of the state’ (Pykett, 2012, p 217). More particularly, in the context of social assistance, this role has been grasped by the term ‘neoliberal paternalism’ (Schram et al, 2010, Soss et al, 2011): the state determines what is good for its citizens (earning money in the labour market) as well as what social assistance recipients ought to do to achieve that (change their aesthetics, behaviour and affect) and enforces their cooperation by means of obligatory participation in WTW programmes that ‘operate according to market logics’ (Schram et al, 2010, p 741), in which noncompliance is sanctioned. This policy has been and, as this chapter argues, continues to be legitimized on stigmatization of the need for income support (Fraser and Gordon, 1994), that constructs recipients of social assistance as ‘revolting subjects’ (Tyler, 2013).

The Dutch WTW programmes studied here are discursively centred around increasing social assistance recipients’ autonomy (‘self-reliance’ or ‘zelfredzaamheid’ – as it is called) while its practical organization is based on an authoritarian system that enforces compliance (see Dean, 2002; Schram et al, 2010). According to the Dutch Participation Act, effective as of January 2015, social assistance recipients are obliged to do something in return for receiving benefits, which can range from searching for jobs and participating in group workshops to performing (un)paid labour. Moreover, they are to obtain, accept and retain ‘generally acceptable employment’ and are not allowed to ‘obstruct’ this ‘by clothing, a lack of personal grooming or behaviour’ (Article 18, paragraph 4g).