Work, participation and recognition

The concept of participation, after which the POA is named, is a key concept of welfare state policy. Its emergence can be attributed to two, partly overlapping, debates. On the one hand, participation can be understood as the opposite of exclusion,Footnote ³ which has been a focus of the European Union’s social policy since the early 1990s (Hills et al., Reference Hills, Le Grand and Piachaud2002; Silver, Reference Silver1994) in order to overcome a purely income-related definition of poverty. Instead, it should include ‘several types of deprivation and barriers, which alone or together prevent the full participation in areas such as education, health, environment, housing, culture, access to rights or family support, as well as training and job opportunities’ (COM, 2000, p. 6). On the other hand, the notion of participation gained impulses from the capabilities approach (Sen, Reference Sen1992; Nussbaum, Reference Nussbaum2000). In this context, in addition to legal and economic forms of intervention (allocation of status and resources), a participation-oriented social policy promotes an increase in the individual’s ability and opportunities to act. In Germany, the concept gained political importance, especially with the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in the Federal Participation Act. This development spread to labour market policy (Brussig, Reference Brussig2019, p. 116), to which the POA ultimately bears witness.

Since the notion of exclusion stems from political debates and is still highly politically charged, it is often viewed critically by academics (e.g. Daly, Reference Daly2006). Above all, the importance attached to the terms ‘exclusion’ and ‘participation’ in the European Union’s modernisation strategy, which is regarded as neoliberal, is seen as problematic. One point of criticism is that the European Strategy reduces participation to integration into the labour market, which corresponds with the paradigm of activation and its related principles of ‘welfare to work’ and ‘work first’ (Levitas, Reference Levitas1996).

However, as heuristic concepts, exclusion and participation are not entirely rejected by their critics (e.g. Abrahamson, Reference Abrahamson1995). In sociological definitions, participation in working life is understood as a central form of participation, alongside involvement in personal social networks and access to political and legal institutions (Berghman, Reference Berghman and Room1995; Kronauer, Reference Kronauer, Wansing, Welti and Schäfers2018). Participation in working life is emphasised here since the terms are closely associated with the resurgence of (mass) unemployment and poverty since the 1970s and 1980s and the emergence of precarity in the 1990s. The distribution of opportunities to participate in (non-precarious) employment is therefore also an indicator of social inequality and polarisation (e.g. Castel, Reference Castel2003).

A central dimension of participation in working life is recognition. This is particularly emphasised in Honneth’s (Reference Honneth1996, Reference Honneth, Fraser and Honneth2003) theory of recognition, in which the labour market is considered the central social institution for the formation of self-esteem. In the sphere of achievement, the individual can find recognition for skills and qualities with social relevance. Thus, in modern, meritocratic working societies, labour market integration is essential in order to be perceived as a socially useful subject, worthy of esteem.

Yet the relevance of employment for recognition is not unidirectional. The allocation of esteem is socially differentiated and depends on prevailing standards of achievement, the definition of which is socially contested (Honneth, Reference Honneth1996, p. 126). Moreover, with the concept of disrespect, Honneth (Reference Honneth1996, p. 131) makes it clear that recognition also includes different forms of non-recognition or even humiliation. For example, low-paid jobs can be perceived as degrading.

Unemployment even means the loss of a source of recognition. The unemployed can no longer contribute their skills to society’s value creation based on the division of labour, which is why unemployment often creates a feeling of uselessness. In addition, unemployment is socially stigmatised; the unemployed are often accused of not wanting to work. Finally, unemployment is degrading because the loss of income can lead to poverty and limited participation opportunities in many other areas of social life. Above all, unemployment highlights the fact that the achievement sphere is not only a source of esteem but also creates an unequal distribution of resources that, although justified by the merit principle, can nevertheless be perceived as unfair. According to Honneth (Reference Honneth, Fraser and Honneth2003, p. 149), it was against this background that the welfare state hedged the merit principle by making a minimum economic provision irrespective of actual achievement and transforming it into a legal claim – which is manifested, among other things, in the emergence of unemployment insurance and labour administration. In terms of recognition theory, the welfare state can be understood as an ‘institutionalised expression’ of respect because it provides services that aim to overcome degrading living conditions (Honneth, Reference Honneth, Fraser and Honneth2003; cf. also Margalit, Reference Margalit1998, p. 224).

Here, law as a second sphere of recognition is relevant, in which the individual, as an autonomous and capable bearer of legally secured rights, receives recognition in the form of respect, thereby acquiring self-respect (Honneth Reference Honneth, Fraser and Honneth2003, p. 138). This form of recognition manifests itself in the rule of law and the principle of legal equality, which is supposed to be guaranteed in particular by access to civil rights (liberal liberties, political participation rights and social welfare rights).

However, in particular, the situation of unemployed people illustrates the fact that the welfare state can also cause an institutionalised degradation. Humiliating effects of the welfare state are discussed especially by Margalit (Reference Margalit1998). When unemployed, the need to live on benefits can be associated with a feeling of unwanted dependency and shame. Unemployed people also often have degrading experiences as clients of the social services, e.g. due to being needy and thus stigmatised (Baumberg, Reference Baumberg2016). Thus, in recent debates about a ‘post-work society’ (e.g. Deranty, Reference Deranty2022) or ‘post-productivism’ (Fitzpatrick, Reference Fitzpatrick2004), the degradations caused by the welfare state are one of the reasons why a new welfare state model is being called for, which breaks with the focus on waged labour. An appreciation of unpaid work that is not directly economically profitable, such as volunteer work, care or eco-social work (e.g. Dukelow and Murphy, Reference Dukelow and Murphy2022; Laruffa, Reference Laruffa2022), could result in new opportunities for inclusion and recognition, which, combined with a universal basic income, previously marginalised groups could benefit (e.g. McGann and Murphy, Reference McGann and Murphy2023). However, these are mainly academic debates and most welfare states are far from such a paradigm shift.

Especially the neoliberal reforms implemented in Western countries since the 1990s have led to claims that the welfare state is degrading rather than guaranteeing recognition (Brodkin, Reference Brodkin2015; Crouch, Reference Crouch2004; McGann et al., Reference McGann, Nguyen and Considine2020). In Germany, such reforms were initiated with the Hartz legislation in the early 2000s. With Social Code II ‘Basic Security for Jobseekers’ and Social Code III ‘Employment Promotion’, they implemented an activating labour market policy aimed at strengthening individual responsibility to end unemployment (e.g. Dingeldey, Reference Dingeldey2007). Conditionality and a rather low level of benefits are central means to achieve this goal.

The degrading consequences of this policy are manifold: first, the Hartz reforms reinforced the discourse on the ‘lazy unemployed’ living at the expense of others (Oschmiansky, Reference Oschmiansky2003) by declaring unemployment to be a self-inflicted motivational problem. Second, the reduction in the duration of contribution-based unemployment benefits (Social Code III), the possible fall into means-tested basic social security (Social Code II) and the expectation to accept any ‘reasonable’ job potentially mean a loss of status and a devaluation of skills and life achievements. And finally, the threat of sanctions designed to ensure cooperation in the search for work constitutes undignified treatment. So overall, the Hartz reforms are often regarded as a profound change in the moral economy or, in Honneth’s words (Reference Honneth, Fraser and Honneth2003, p. 137), the ‘institutionalised recognition order’ (e.g. Lessenich, Reference Lessenich2012); a change manifested in the recognition sphere of law as a weakening of universal social rights.

This weakening of social rights is particularly evident among the long-term unemployed, who fall under Social Code II and are considered to be very distant from the labour market. Since Social Code II and III aim primarily at getting the unemployed into regular employment as quickly as possible, this group of the unemployed is often neglected: the dominance of the ‘work first’ principle leads to job centres having neither the instruments nor the resources to serve this group adequately, apart from paying basic benefits. This situation is potentially degrading for the unemployed affected not only because they lose their social rights but also because they may feel doubly excluded and ‘written off’ – from both the labour market and the welfare state. That is the problem to which the POA responds: subsidised employment should enable these people to participate again, thereby regaining their dignity (Deutscher Bundestag, 2018, p. 13).

The Participation Opportunities Act as a ‘Policy of Dignity’

With the notion of a ‘policy of dignity’, we refer to Margalit’s (Reference Margalit1998) plea for a ‘decent society’. According to Margalit, a ‘policy of dignity’ must ensure that social institutions do not humiliate or degrade people and should instead protect them from such experiences. The neoliberally reformed German welfare state constitutes a recognition order that hardly does justice to this postulate. On the contrary, the threat of institutional degradation seems to be used deliberately as a commodification incentive (Boland et al., Reference Boland, Doyle and Griffin2022, p. 657). The POA does not fundamentally change this but addresses only a sub-problem caused by the reforms, which affects only a minority of the unemployed. It concerns long-term unemployed who are classified as employableFootnote ⁴ according to Social Code II, but whose chances of regular employment are extremely poor due to various placement obstacles (e.g. physical and mental illnesses, age etc.). According to a 2007 estimate, this affected only two to four per cent of all basic social security recipients, or 100,000 to 200,000 people (Koch and Kupka, Reference Koch and Kupka2007). For this group, however, the POA has great potential to function as a ‘policy of dignity’: by providing subsidised employment, it promises to eliminate the degrading situation of double exclusion. The welfare state not only gives the unemployed the opportunity to participate in a central sphere of recognition (achievement sphere) but it also seems to (re-)strengthen their social rights (law sphere). However, to assess the real potential of the POA as a ‘policy of dignity’, a closer look at its design is required.

The access granted to the sphere of achievement by the POA is very generous: it provides for a five-year total funding period (which is unusually long for this programme type), comprising a 100 per cent wage-cost reimbursement in the first two years for employers who hire an unemployed person, and 90, 80 and 70 per cent in subsequent years. Moreover, the POA is designed to create the appearance of labour market normality by concluding regular employment contracts with the participants, involving private employers and paying minimum or even collectively agreed wages. In previous programmes, private employers were often excluded in order to avoid windfall effects and competition distortions. The POA thus offers a ‘simulated normality’ (Bauer et al., Reference Bauer, Franzmann, Fuchs, Jung, Garstenauer, Hübel and Löffler2016), the opportunity for the participants to be integrated into the ‘real’ market and value-added processes and to be paid decently for this. According to recognition theory, this attempt to create quasi-normal employment relationships seems likely to create a sense of participation. It makes the POA a ‘policy of dignity’ by giving the participants the opportunity to experience being socially useful. Moreover, the appearance of regular employment can free participants from being stigmatised as a ‘lazy’ benefit recipient.

However, there are contradictions in the laws content that leave room for interpretation and implementation variants (Gottwald et al., Reference Gottwald, Globisch, Kupka and Ramos Lobato2020). The officially formulated goal, ‘to enable participation’, can be read as an attenuation of the ‘work first’ principle. This is important for the question as to whether the POA can be a real ‘policy of dignity’ since the ‘work first’ principle is a basic objective of the Hartz legislation: the commodification expectation, which is imposed on the unemployed and enforced by means of controls and sanctions. Accordingly, this would mitigate the mechanisms of humiliation and degradation institutionally built into the Hartz legislation. At the same time, however, the goal of ‘labour market integration’ is not abandoned; it remains a subordinate goal of the POA itself, and since the POA, as paragraph 16i, is a component of Social Code II, it is also, at least in principle, committed to the goals of that Code. So, there is some ambivalence in the objective of the POA. What this ambivalence means for the POA as a ‘policy of dignity’ is decided in its practical implementation by the job centres. Finally, the POA provides for mandatory job coaching for at least one year. Apart from that, participation in the POA is voluntary and can be declined without consequences. Long-term unemployed people who have received transfer payments for at least six of the previous seven years are eligible for the scheme.

Implementation of the Participation Opportunities Act

On paper, the POA can be understood as a ‘policy of dignity’ but whether it actually has such an effect in practice is decided by its everyday implementation. Below, we concentrate on two aspects: first, we look at how job centre managers and the staff responsible for implementing the POA describe its objectives. In this respect, we are particularly interested in how they understand participation and recognition. Second, we examine whether these interpretations are also associated with certain implementation practices, in particular, how different practices promote or hinder a ‘policy of dignity’.

For our analysis, we draw exclusively on interviews with staff who perform a project-coordinating function in the implementation of the POA. Of course, it would be important to consider the direct interaction between frontline workers and the unemployed in order to assess conclusively whether the POA is implemented as a ‘policy of dignity’.Footnote ⁵ Nevertheless, following current research on street-level bureaucracy (Brodkin, Reference Brodkin2015; Evans, Reference Evans2016; Gassner and Gofen, Reference Gassner and Gofen2018), we assume that ‘management matters’ and thus deserves separate attention. Our database consists of 46 expert interviews (Bogner et al., Reference Bogner, Littig and Menz2009) with managers and professionals from 23 job centres located throughout Germany. Participation was voluntary. The interviews were conducted via video between April 2020 and June 2021,Footnote ⁶ transcribed and immediately anonymised. The interview series is part of a larger evaluation of the POA, which was conducted by the Institute for Employment Research on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

The job centres were selected by a combination of random selection and theoretical sampling (Glaser and Strauss, Reference Glaser and Strauss1967). In the first step, a random sample of 15 out of 400 job centres was drawn, which was subsequently checked for variance with respect to urban and rural areas, east-west-north-south regions and several labour market features. Further job centres were selected according to the theoretical sampling based on the insights gained from the first interviews. The interviews were analysed with a combination of content and sequence analysis methods (Glaser and Strauss, Reference Glaser and Strauss1967; Oevermann et al., Reference Oevermann, Allert, Konau and Krambeck1987). First, selected interviews were analysed word by word to explore categories and develop concepts, which in turn structured the content analysis. The coded interviews were compared according to their congruence (intercoder reliability) and adapted to each other, in order to code the whole interview material using a content analysis programme.

Conclusion: challenging the neoliberal recognition order?

Against the background of the neoliberal labour market policy implemented in Germany since the early 2000s with its exclusionary and institutionally degrading effects, we have reconstructed the POA – at least on paper – as a ‘policy of dignity’ (Margalit, Reference Margalit1998). Based on this, we addressed two questions in our empirical analysis: First, whether the POA represents a ‘policy of dignity’ in practice. And second, whether there are indications of the POA challenging the neoliberal ‘recognition order’ (Honneth, Reference Honneth, Fraser and Honneth2003)?

Regarding the first question, our job centre sample shows four distinct patterns of the law’s interpretation. In three of them, the POA is interpreted as a ‘policy of dignity’, but in one, surprisingly, as a ‘policy of disrespect’. On the one hand, the POA is regarded as a ‘policy of dignity’ because it enables the supported individuals to resume some kind of regular working life, even if it is in sheltered spaces. The law thus finally recognises that not everyone who wants to work can actually find a job in capitalist labour markets (patterns I and II). Alternatively, the POA is considered a ‘policy of dignity’ because it offers participants the prospect of regular employment again (pattern III). Here, the POA represents an instrument for labour market integration that takes into account the special situation of the long-term unemployed. It grants time and provides structures that make it appear possible to (re)gain employability even for this group.

On the other hand, the pattern in which the POA is seen as a ‘policy of disrespect’ (pattern IV) is based on the assumption that genuine participation and recognition necessarily require regular employment. Therefore, the POA can only be a suboptimal surrogate that deprives the unemployed of their right to ‘genuine’ labour market participation and social esteem. The POA is even interpreted as stigmatising. What is decisive, however, are the organisational arrangements that correspond to these patterns of interpretation: the patterns emphasising the objective of labour market integration encourage a tightening of the implementation processes, e.g. by selecting the best and focusing on disciplining and educating them. Both tend to run counter to a ‘policy of dignity’. Turning away from the objective of labour market integration in the case of patterns I and II opens up more freedom for job centres to treat the long-term unemployed as subjects and to respect their autonomy, which is more in line with a ‘policy of dignity’.

Concerning the second question, the first two patterns can certainly be understood as a challenge to the neoliberal recognition order, because the concept of participation is seen as an alternative to the ‘work first’ principle. Participation is not linked to regular employment but is positioned as a social right. These job centres thus challenge the basic neoliberal assumption that anyone who wants to work can work. The underlying challenge is evident in the fact that these job centres see themselves in need of legitimisation. They feel compelled to assert themselves against a hitherto hegemonic order of recognition, for instance, by discussing participation and its positive effects as a question of economic reason.

In patterns III and IV, we found different assessments of the law either as a ‘policy of dignity’ or a ‘policy of disrespect’. In both patterns, however, social participation is coupled with the ‘work first’ principle so the neoliberal recognition order remains intact. While this is clearly the case in pattern IV with a strongly normative reference to the neoliberal recognition order, in pattern III, the connection is softer and based more on practical requirements, e.g. what happens to the participants after the funding ends. Here, however, the POA leads to a strengthening of the neoliberal recognition order via a detour: job centres in this pattern state that the POA enables the activating welfare state to serve the group of very hard-to-place clients. This new ability to act improves the image of the job centres and boosts employee motivation. Obviously, the latter had not been happy about their helplessness vis-à-vis this target group. In a sense, the POA alleviates the everyday experience of the job centres that the ‘work first’ principle has reached its limits. In this situation, the POA acts as a repair kit for the faith in the approaches of a neoliberal labour market policy that has become fragile in practice.

Even if the POA challenges the neoliberal recognition order with its ‘work first’ principle, it is also evident that it maintains the focus on gainful employment as a central source of recognition. The POA thus points neither towards a ‘post-work society’ nor towards ‘post-productivism’. What the POA shares with these debates, however, is the criticism of a welfare state regime that seeks salvation almost exclusively in commodification, since such a regime inevitably produces degrading exclusion, at least for those who cannot comply with this imperative for a variety of reasons. In this regard, the POA shows that emphasising participation can be a step away from a labour market policy that is primarily based on commodification and might therefore be a starting point for a ‘policy of dignity’.

When looking at programmes of subsidised employment in two neighbouring countries that belong to the same regime type as Germany, according to Esping-Andersen’s (Reference Esping-Andersen1989) welfare-state typology, observations vary. In the Netherlands, a so-called Participation Act was introduced in 2015, which also provides for subsidised employment, including coaching, but, pursuing an austerity goal, declares labour market participation to be mandatory (cf. Knijn and Hiah, Reference Knijn and Hiah2019; van Waveren, Reference van Waveren2020; Betkó et al., Reference Betkó, Spierings, Gesthuizen and Scheepers2023). In Austria, the concept of participation plays hardly any role, although there is a programme very similar to the German POA, known as the ‘Job Guarantee’ (cf. Quinz and Flecker, Reference Quinz and Flecker2022). The debate surrounding the consequences of neoliberalism is in full swing, a central diagnosis being that of a crisis of recognition (e.g. Sandel, Reference Sandel2020), which encompasses growing socio-economic inequalities. Not least in light of the rise in populism and nationalism, it would be worthwhile for comparative welfare state research to take a closer look at whether this crisis of recognition is reflected in a path- and/or regime-dependent trend towards policies of dignity that question the neoliberal order of recognition.