Introduction

Over the last decade the provision of social security in the Netherlands has undergone a paradigmatic shift. The emphasis has moved from protection, through the provision of income and/or services to those who find themselves out of the labour market, to promoting participation through incentives to encourage people to provide for themselves by means of paid work (WRR, 1996; Teulings et al, 1997; van Berkel et al, 1999). The introduction of the Youth Employment Act (YEA), a workfare policy that became operative in 1992, can be seen as a key consequence of this shift. From the time of its introduction, people aged 18-22 who had been unemployed for six months were no longer entitled to a minimum income (a benefit), but rather to minimum job rights. In 1998 the YEA was merged with previously non-compulsory training and employment programmes for older long-term unemployed people through the Jobseeker's Employment Act (JEA). The results of this development are twofold. On the one hand, a workfare policy has been broadened out to include a wider range of recipients. On the other hand, the form of the policy has changed from ‘workfare’ to a broader form of ‘activity fare’. That is, elements that fall under the umbrella of the JEA include subsidised work and training, but also unpaid work activities (notably voluntary work). While the JEA has two main target groups: unemployed people aged under 23, and long-term unemployed people aged over 23, young people remain the major focus. The JEA does not apply to physically and/or mentally disabled people, for whom a separate employment programme exists. Mothers with children under five are not required to be available for work or to participate in the JEA. However, mothers are increasingly being stimulated to enter JEA, with part-time work and nursery placements being made available.

The policy's stated aims are:

For young unemployed people the JEA is a generic policy measure. Participation is compulsory for all. The government has committed itself to supplying sufficient subsidised employment and training opportunities. As applied to long-term unemployed people, however, workfare is discretionary and, currently, participation is enforced less rigorously.

Introduction

Denmark is a small country (population 5.25 million) with an active population. Labour force participation is high (78% in the age group 16-66) – mainly due to the fact that Danish women have nearly as high a participation rate as men (73% compared to 82%, Danmarks Statistik, 1997). Nonetheless, a very large number of people of working age are provided for through public income transfer, via unemployment benefit, social assistance, early retirement pension and sickness benefit. In the period from the beginning of the 1960s to the mid 1990s the number of people receiving these benefits consistently increased alongside high and increasing unemployment (reaching more than 12% in 1994) before decreasing again (to about 6% in 1999).

The main cause of high levels of cash transfer was the long period of high and increasing unemployment between 1974 and 1994. Developments in technology, new organisational forms and competitive working practices have led to a long-term trend towards increased demand for general and vocational qualifications as well as interpersonal skills. A consequence is that more and more people have found themselves judged unable to perform to required standards. In addition, increased labour market participation among women has led to an increased number claiming benefits related to lack of work.

In response to the increasing numbers of working age people receiving out-of-work state transfers, successive Danish governments have developed an ‘Active Line’ which links social and labour market policy. The underlying principle behind the Active Line is that ‘workless’ people in receipt of public income transfers should be participating in activities which bring them closer to the labour market, and which are beneficial to society as a whole. This line was increasingly emphasised throughout the 1990s.

In the past, ‘active measures’ (for example, training and publicly supported work) were offers or options that unemployed people and social assistance clients could take up if they chose to do so. However, increasingly, active measures have become both a right and an obligation for recipients. This is the essence of one form of compulsory active measure – here termed ‘activation’. Currently, all clients must receive an activation measure after a standard period in receipt of unemployment benefit or social assistance. If such a measure is refused outright, public economic assistance is, in principle, suspended. Measures often, but do not always, include a workbased component.

Introduction

The introductory chapter to this book defined workfare programmes or schemes as those which ‘require people to work in return for social assistance ‘benefits’. Contributors who, in Chapters Two through Eight, have sought to describe the most ‘workfare-like’ programmes in operation in each of the seven countries have used this definition as a starting point. This chapter considers differences and similarities in these programmes.

In order to simplify comparison, the focus in this chapter is on just one example of a workfare programme from each country. The programmes chosen represent the purest current form of workfare in that country – the programmes which exhibit the strongest ‘compulsory element’, the greatest ‘work-relatedness’, and which are most clearly targeted at social assistance clients. A more representative picture of the range of related policies in operation in each national setting is obtained through reading Chapters Two through Eight.

Programmes chosen to represent the six European countries are: RMIbased insertion (France); Help Towards Work (Germany); the Jobseeker's Employment Act (JEA) for young people (the Netherlands); local authority schemes resulting from the 1991 Norwegian Social Services Act (Norway); activation (Denmark); and, the New Deal for Young People (the UK).

In Germany, France and Norway national legislation is reinterpreted locally to such a degree that a different programme might be considered to exist in each locality. To accommodate this, an ‘overall’ picture of the programme (or set of schemes) is given from a national viewpoint and the extent of intra-national variation is indicated. Three programmes for claimants of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families represent the US (New York City, Wisconsin and California); these are described in Chapter Eight. The programmes compared here are not representative of the totality of programmes in each country – the three US programmes represent three of the most developed forms of workfare in the US.

This list does not include any of the ‘opt in’ programmes for young people who are not otherwise entitled to state support, such ‘opt-in’ programmes have been described in chapters on French and British workfare (Chapters Two and Seven). While there is a sense in which these can be understood provide a very stark choice for potential participants, as there is no benefit alternative, they are difficult to compare to programmes which have a stronger relationship to social assistance.

Introduction

This book seeks to describe, compare and analyse a fundamental change in the way social assistance is provided. The requirement that people who are judged able to work and available for work must seek and accept work in the regular labour market is an inherent part of the contract within social assistance programmes. This contract is changed through introducing a requirement for recipients to work as a condition of receiving benefits. While developments of this kind in some parts of the United States (US) have received considerable attention, the introduction of work requirements within European countries has generally been less comprehensively observed outside of their respective national spheres.

This book describes the new work requirements within social assistance programmes on both sides of the Atlantic and presents a systematic comparison of policies in six European countries, two US states and New York City. This chapter defines the subject of comparison, ‘workfare’, and identifies the factors that are likely to determine whether the new contracts result in governments providing more or doing less to help people who are presently excluded from self-reliance through regular work.

Within the countries considered here, welfare provision underwent incremental growth over most of the third quarter of the 20th century. During this time policy debates relating to welfare were mainly over spending priorities, either with regard to the needs of different groups within the welfare population or with regard to levels of expenditure on welfare provision as opposed to other functions of the state. In line with this, the proclaimed ‘crisis of the welfare state’ in the 1980s sparked debate that was also primarily about spending priorities.

The last decade of the 20th century witnessed the development of a more fundamental challenge to welfare as a modern project. Attention shifted from debates about the level of welfare expenditure to questions about the desirability and usefulness of welfare payments (although the former contributed to the latter). This new orientation was applied to a range of welfare programmes, but was particularly focused on social assistance provision for able-bodied people who were judged to be available for work. While until recently the policy ambitions of most Western governments have been towards a reduction in overall levels of social assistance payments, selectivity and targeting within social assistance are now being restored as desirable features of welfare provision (Lødemel, 1997b).

The interviews were analysed using the principles of the socio-biographical method.

The techniques developed for the analysis are based on an understanding of life stories as having a ‘Gestalt’. Within this approach, the telling of a life story is an act of narrative composition, in which the life experiences are selected and related to each other to create a construction of biography (Fischer-Rosenthal, 2000). When people tell their life story, it can be seen as a re-evaluation of the past life experiences, based on the context of the present experience and reaching out into the future. People present a theory of their own lives: out of the infinite details of one's past, only those are included which present a ‘picture’ of a life course from a present perspective. As such, life-story accounts present a theory and history of the self, based on the selective recall of the past (Rosenthal, 1993; Wengraf, 2000).

The aim of the analysis is the reconstruction of the underlying ‘rules’ which govern the life-history account. The guiding principle is the comparison of the lived and told life story (see chapter one, Introduction). Both aspects of the life story are analysed separately, with no references between the two. It is through this analytic step that the inter-relationships between structural determinants and personal experiences can be brought into relief. Reconstruction of the life story thereby does not imply the subjective meaning of the individual, but it has an objective quality which exists outside the intentions of the narrator.

The analysis of lived and told life story

Abduction

The principle of analysis used in this method is that of ‘abduction’. Developed by Charles Sanders Peirce, it involves generating hypotheses contained in a given unit of empirical data, progressing to hypotheses as to the further developments and then testing these with the empirical outcome (Peirce, 1979). By formulating hypotheses about the other options available to a person within a particular historical and social context, the procedure reconstructs the range of possibilities open to the subject in a certain situation.

This analytical procedure is applied to each individual step of analysis, and the hypotheses that have been generated are tested in their plausibility at subsequent points of the process of analysis.

Introduction

We begin the comparison of informal care in the three welfare societies, the two Germanies and Britain, with the West German case studies. We have chosen a similar structure for the first three chapters: a first section describes the context of the respective welfare society, through a discussion of salient themes of social policy and welfare praxis. A second section discusses the case studies, and in the final section of the chapter the cases are compared.

In this chapter on Western Germany, we argue that informal care is a contradictory arena, which bridges traditional and post-modern life courses. At the heart of the West German culture of care lies the social state tradition, in which gendered notions of private and public worlds continue to be perpetuated through conservative family legislation and welfare policies. Among the West German cases, most informal care was undertaken by women, with limited outside assistance and contact. This could be entrapping and restrictive, cutting carers off from outside contact and social interaction to the point of virtual isolation. For carers who managed to retain the connections to outside social spheres, acting against the grain of accepted social values, the experience of being a carer could become an arena for self-fulfilment, of experimentation in lifeworlds and a basis to reach out into new and unknown territory.

The social state tradition

In the corporatist model of the West German welfare state, social policy and social policy intervention are intrinsically linked with the tradition of the ‘Sozialstaat’ (Rosenhaft and Lee, 1997). Behind this lies the idea that the state can act as a mediator between changes and continuities of social life, between tradition and innovation in institutions and systems, and as a force for social cohesion (Peukert, 1990, p 345). Written into the Constitution, the aspiration of the social state is that of creating and maintaining a socially ‘responsible’ and progressive welfare society in which welfare functions are taken on by different sectors of society as a matter of social obligation and civil participation. Historically, the tradition of the social state continues the pluralist approach to welfare provision begun in the 19th century, in which welfare was developed as a civil endeavour, involving institutions such as unions, employers, churches and voluntary associations. These voluntary and civil institutions developed welfare services in the emerging industrial German state of the Wilhelmine Empire (Leibfried and Tennstedt, 1985).

The 76 interviewees are listed alphabetically, according to country. The case studies discussed in the main body of the text are highlighted in italics.

In their interviews our research subjects reconstructed their past and present understandings of how their caring situation had unfolded and been supported. Our interpretation of their account and their selfpresentation, together with contextual knowledge, allowed us to characterise their ‘caring strategy’, and the ‘biographical resources’ available to them. In sociological terms, this involved exploring both actions and meanings.

The strategies adopted by carers made a great difference to the scope and prospect of their lives, and to the lives of those they cared for. Mrs Bally and Mrs Buckley, despite their earlier activism, local connections and supportive husbands, both took the decisions concerning their adult children on themselves, and seemed blocked in finding a way forward. Defeated rather than passive by nature, they made few demands on the welfare system, but also contributed little in terms of energetic initiatives or the enhancing of Peter's and Melanie's future prospects. Their demoralisation may well have affected their own health and ability to cope. And, the more they retreated into the private sphere, the less they knew of the outside options and the less confidence they had in outside solutions. Carers who were outwardly-connected brought a wider range of information to biographical work and decision making. They became flexible, energetic and independent agents, able to make long-term plans and manage crises. The Meissners, through their proactive approach and myriad of social contacts, were widely acquainted with opportunities concerning disabled young people, which they avidly pursued. Frau Arndt's circle of friends – parents of disabled children – were similarly connected with Lebenshilfe's active role in the city, its new facilities and its rights work. The social sphere of the Meissners and of Frau Arndt was more than an extension and support for the private sphere of caring. it linked them with a wider social world. Outwardly-oriented carers were continually extending their own skills and knowledge, and greatly improving the life chances of their children. They were mobilising and adding to social capital, with two kinds of pay-off. They were extending their own capacities and skills, while their critical demands and ways of operating were also improving and shaping the welfare system.

Introduction

As we have seen, carers respond very differently to the challenges and demands of caring. Structural factors and external contingencies influence the way caring is experienced and responded to, but the personal dimension has an equally important impact on the way informal care develops over time. It is this dimension that we explore here, drawing out the personal meanings of caring and highlighting their relationship with social dimensions of welfare. We return to the different case studies, considering cases across the three societies and expanding the themes raised in the previous chapters.

The literature of caregiving has not as yet produced a ‘holistic’ model of caring which could satisfactorily theorise its dynamic and multidimensional nature (Nolan et al, 1996, p 2). Rather, research has centred on specific dimensions, such as carers’ experiences, coping, and the emotional and physical consequences of caring (Lewis and Meredith, 1988; Opie, 1994; Twigg and Atkin, 1994; Nolan and Grant, 1993; Willoughby and Keating, 1991).

Issues of process and change in caring relationships have tended to be centred on stages of transition, while temporal and longitudinal aspects remain under-theorised (see for example Wilson, 1989; Nolan et al, 1996). An exception to this is the work by Keady and Nolan (1994); they explored the biographical dimension of caring and identified six distinct phases in the care of long-term dementia patients from a nursing perspective.

Our own approach emphasises the biographical dimension, relating caring to a longitudinal life-course perspective. In this approach, care is a biographical project, in which past life events and experiences, expectations and aspirations for the future, as well as the present circumstances, are formatively involved in the development of informal care. As the case studies presented in the previous three chapters indicate, caring and being a carer is actively negotiated and constantly renegotiated, and carers are active participants in creating their own situations and circumstances.

Three ideas inform our understanding and subsequent analysis of the biographical accounts of carers: biography, trajectory and strategy. Through these concepts we explore caring as a process that is structured both by internal dynamics and by external circumstances.

Our study demonstrates that carers’ orientations and dispositions towards the public, social and private spheres and their ways of negotiating among them cannot be read off from formal welfare systems (Chamberlayne, 1993). Carers’ practices in everyday situations are to a large extent structurally determined, yet they are often considerably at odds with institutionalised policies. In this chapter we explore this paradox. We ask what energises creative responses in carers, what features of informal social structures which are contiguous with carers’ lives enable them to negotiate and access outside support, and what cultural dynamics leave them torn between home and non-home identities and resources, or even cause them to retreat into a strategy of isolation.

A key concern is to distinguish the ingredients of social infrastructures which propel carers into greater outer-connectedness and prevent them from becoming enclosed in a narrow world of domesticity. We are also interested in the extent to which these ingredients are in fact the focus of social interventions in Germany and Britain, and whether they figure in contemporary debates concerning social practice and the future of social policy. In our view, carers who negotiate wider connections and for whom caring becomes a process of personal and social development, model the ‘active welfare subject’ which social policy purports to be in search of. It would be all too easy to attribute the outward propulsion of some carers to their individual personalities and so blame others who remain more rooted in the home. Our purpose, however, is to focus on and distinguish key elements of the structural dynamics which give rise to proactive and outwardly oriented strategies in caring, and to discuss what kinds of social policy interventions might support such social engagement. In doing so we are aided by the comparative method, which brings these structural features into view.

In order to intervene at the level of the informal sphere, social policy needs a language and understanding of socio-cultural processes. One of the sources of our own rather tentative terminology is Riley's (1988) notion of the social, which she defines as a fluid sphere of communal interaction and public health reform adjacent to the home, which has often provided avenues to wider public involvement, but which political science has continually fenced off as not ‘political’.

Introduction

Our characterisation of British informal caring as ‘sitting on the doorstep’ indicates a pattern of care in which the private, public and social spheres of welfare interact to produce highly individualised and precarious caring strategies.

Common to the experiences of carers in Britain is that their caring strategies shift around within the support triangle of family, the social sphere and formal services, depending on changing circumstances and needs. While the home and family remain central to their experiences, the private, social and public spheres of care appear less separate and mutually exclusive to the lives of carers than in the German societies. Carers in Britain typically combine care, employment and wider voluntary and social activity, and care is shared with partners.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the welfare context of informal care in Britain, drawing on social policy debates around informal welfare, and discussing the impact of the recent community care legislation at national and local levels. The case studies are presented in the second section, introducing the three British categories of carer strategies. In the third section, we discuss the cases in the light of salient themes in the British welfare context and consider comparisons with the two German contexts.

Formal and informal welfare in Britain

The cultural basis of welfare

The British welfare state is embedded in a long and influential tradition of liberalism, which espouses a notion of freedom through individual responsibility and the limitation of state provision (Esping-Anderson, 1990; Chamberlayne, 1999). This philosophy, returned to under Margaret Thatcher, has formed an ideological counterpoint to the postwar welfare state ideals of equality and citizenship, which informed many of the developments in welfare between 1945 and 1979 (Douglas and Philpott, 1998).

Freeman and Rustin (1999) argue that these two traditions in welfare form the dual anchoring of the British welfare system. They are expressed in the coexistence of collectivist values of equality of opportunity and provision through the welfare state, and the liberal individualist values of private education and home ownership, for example, as well as in the personal enhancement of life chances through market mechanisms (p 9). As a result, British social policy developments are characterised by contradictory policies, which shift between universalist aspirations (as realised, for example, in child benefit payments) and selective, meanstested provision according to need (many of the social security policies) (Hartley, 1994).