Emotional Compliance and Emotion as Resistance: Shame and Anger among the Long-Term Unemployed

Abstract

Contemporary governments employ a range of policy tools to ‘activate’ the unemployed to look for work. Framing unemployment as a consequence of personal shortcoming, these policies incentivise the unemployed to become ‘productive’ members of society. While Foucault’s governmentality framework has been used to foreground the operation of power within these policies, ‘job-seeker’ resistance has received less attention. In particular, forms of emotional resistance have rarely been studied. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 80 unemployed welfare recipients in Australia, this article shows that many unemployed people internalise activation’s discourses of personal failure, experiencing shame and worthlessness as a result. It also reveals, however, that a significant minority reject this framing and the ‘feeling rules’ it implies, expressing not shame but anger regarding their circumstances. Bringing together insights from resistance studies and the sociology of emotions, this article argues that ‘job-seeker’ anger should be recognised as an important form of ‘everyday resistance’.

Navigating indifference: Irish jobseekers’ experiences of welfare conditionality

“…Much of the literature on conditionality paints claimants as passive recipients of brutal regimes, overlooking how agency can operate within tightly constrained spaces as policy filters to the welfare interactions. Resistance, in particular, is marginalised (although see Peterie et al, 2019;Wright et al, 2020) but, as evidence presented here suggests, jobseekers in Ireland do perform hidden refusals of power to pursue their own interests. The superficiality of the system permits this space for subversion.…”

“…Where agency is identified, it is usually limited to coping mechanisms to 'get by' or employment and educational pursuits to 'get out' of welfare (Lister, 2004;Patrick, 2017). In exploring Irish jobseekers' experiences, this paper identifies a constrained form of agency related to the individualised tactics against welfare agencies often absent from the literature (although see Peterie et al, 2019;Wright et al, 2020).…”

Compulsory income management: Combatting or compounding the underlying causes of homelessness?

“…Despite this reality, conditional welfare approaches have seen the circulation and valorisation of pervasive stereotypes, which represent benefit recipients as lazy, morally deficient and ultimately responsible for their own disadvantage (Marston et al. ; Peterie et al ; Immervoll & Scarpetta ).…”

“…; Peterie et al. ), feelings of “stigma, shame and embarrassment” are thus unsurprising (Mavromaras et al. :74).…”

“…This has been reported with respect to the BasicsCard (ERA (Equality Rights Alliance) 2011) as well as the CDC (Mavromaras et al 2019), with individuals on both cards concerned that the cards publicly identify them as welfare recipients. Given the stigma that surrounds so-called "welfare dependency" in Australia Peterie et al 2019aPeterie et al , 2019b, feelings of "stigma, shame and embarrassment" are thus unsurprising (Mavromaras et al 2019:74). Equally, reports of "direct discrimination" as a result of CIM (Mavromaras et al 2019:7) accord with previous research regarding the stigma of welfare receipt (Batterham 2019).…”