Different Modes of Risk-Taking? – How Unemployment Benefit Recipients Claim Agency in Conflict

Unemployment benefit recipients are in a difficult social position navigating stigmatization (e.g. Jürss 2024) and trying to exercise agency thus act autonomously. Living with benefits comes with several restriction to their action as the framework of activation characterizes certain action as desirable and sanctions others (Löwe & Unger 2022: 2). This framework is applied by street level bureaucrats, who need to interpret sometimes abstract rules. Here, social conflict arises and concerning the recipients the role of risk-taking (Zinn 2024) comes into play when interacting with institutional counterparts as there is a overall well-known imbalance of power in place. Drawing upon interview data from a research project around unemployment benefit recipients[1], my presentation will focus on reconstructing how the interviewees try to maintain or exercise agency (e.g. Lister 2023) in situations of conflict (thus taking risks) with welfare institutions especially street level bureaucrats. The goal is to explore different paths of action and reconstruct how the recipients risk-taking is rooted in their biographical experiences. They tend to either engage in confrontation (1), withdraw themselves out of the welfare relationship (2) or try to adapt thus maintaining agency (3). With Zinns distinction of dimension of risk taking, in most cases these pathways fall under risk-taking as a means to an end (Zinn 2024: 371f) and are used to claim or at least maintain agency as other choices to act are rather limited. Finally, taking this theoretical lens might help understand how unemployment benefits limit personal agency and to what degree welfare subjects (Wright 2016) tend to take risks to counter their perceived powerlessness.

[1] GEVOAB „Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungenvon erwerbstätigen Arbeitslosengeld II-Beziehern“ lead by Tanja Pritzlaff-Scheele and funded by FIS and the BMAS.