Pedagogies of optimism: Teaching to ‘look forward’ in activating welfare programmes in the Netherlands

Abstract

In the context of the Dutch welfare state, precarisation entails particular pedagogies: citizens are taught how to feel about being insecure through the techniques of (1) accepting; (2) controlling; and (3) imagining. Welfare activation thus focuses on teaching citizens to accept their precarious position, to embrace it and to prepare for its continuation while remaining optimistic about its discontinuation. Perhaps cruelly, then, the state teaches citizens to develop optimism towards certain imagined futures while at the same time acknowledging the unattainability of these futures. Importantly, case managers in Dutch welfare offices are often precarious themselves too, making the affective labour they perform both difficult and essential for themselves. Contemporary activation and workfare programmes are therefore best understood as characterised by insecurity and precarisation on both the receiving and the providing end of state–citizen encounters.

Both sides of the Paycheck: Recommending Thrift to the Poor in Job Readiness Programs

“…This focus on mindsets is reflected in the title of the program itself-Choosing Success-reproducing the hegemonic and deeply racialized culture of poverty thesis, which frames poverty as the result of poor choices, faulty thinking, and bad behavior (Kane, 2019). All course lessons, then, embrace a "pedagogy of optimism," steeped as they are within the discourse of self-help and the power of positive thinking toward "imagined futures" (Arts and Van Den Berg, 2019;Purser and Hennigan, 2018). There were 15 students in the class which we observed, 13 of whom would go on to graduate.…”

Development Of Academic Optimism In The Style Of A Modern School

“…So, the term academic optimism, formulated in the zero years in the USA, was quite widespread due to its high performance in world pedagogical practice (Arts, 2019) as a set of measures designed to reduce the negative impact of SES of a student, his family, school as a whole on the educational result of the first.…”

Human capitalisation in activation: Investing in the bodies, selves and skills of unemployed youth in Finland

“…The governmentality approach has illustrated how job-seeking agencies turn unemployed citizens into active job-seekers and enterprising selves (Rose, 1999) with new moral identities (McDonald & Marston, 2005;van Oort, 2015), invited to re-invent their selves through self-improvement, control of negative emotions related to unemployment (Arts & van den Berg, 2018;Boland, 2016;Smith, 2010) and even re-creation of their characters (Hughes, 2005). The activation measures reflect a wider contemporary ethos concerning work: the individual is constructed through work, which is assumed to play a role in the production, discovery and experience of the self (Rose, 1999).…”

“…In our field, this consisted of the feeling of motivation. Happiness and positivity, which have been detected in research as a new form of human capital in labour markets (De La Fabián & Stecher, 2017; see also Arts & van den Berg, 2018;Boland, 2016;Smith, 2010), do not figure, however, in the goals for self-cultivation of young people in the Finnish activation context. The aim for self-cultivation is somewhat paradoxical: the young people are expected to know who they are and what they want to do, but this might or might not be taken into account in advice that is given to them with the intention of guiding them on their paths.…”