The Aesthetics of Work-Readiness: Aesthetic Judgements and Pedagogies for Conditional Welfare and Post-Fordist Labour Markets

Abstract

Recent legislation in the Netherlands takes conditional welfare to a new level. Local welfare offices can now give benefit sanctions to welfare clients that 'obstruct employment' by their appearance. Through a qualitative and ethnographic study of aesthetic evaluation practices in Dutch welfare offices it is argued that: (1) an everyday aesthetic labour is pivotal in post-Fordist labour markets; (2) in times of precarization, this is so for unemployed as well as formally employed populations; (3) welfare clients are expected to give an aesthetic performance of work-readiness and adaptability; and (4) case managers use aesthetics as a pedagogy to achieve this readiness and adaptability. Aesthetic labour, it is then argued, is best conceptualized as a continuous, everyday, backstage labour for labour: a daily calibration for work contexts in flux.

Managing the Menopause through ‘Abjection Work’: When Boobs Can Become Embarrassingly Useful, Again

“…At work, being ‘old’ can have ‘material consequences’ (Beck and Williams, 2015; Calasanti, 2005: 8): the fetishisation of youth (Farrugia, 2018) and increased aestheticisation of work (Van den Berg and Arts, 2019) have assigned a premium to young-looking-fit-looking bodies, which has resulted in many workplaces suggesting not just exercise classes for workers, but exercise regimes (Johansson et al, 2017) – often couched in the discourse of employee well-being (Budd and Spencer, 2015). However framed, these management approaches seek ‘regularization’ towards preferential bodies (Foucault, 2004: 247), which through politicisation are constituting of ideals and of valued subjects (Foucault, 1988).…”

“…The gendered nature of embodied capital sees bodies of differing gender presentations evaluated differently (Huppatz and Goodwin, 2013). This assessment process establishes those people who are regarded as valuable subjects at work (van den Berg and Arts, 2019); here, older women are hit with a double-whammy of ageism plus sexism (Duncan and Loretto, 2004). It is against this backdrop that women workers have a heightened felt need to hide the signs of ageing (Jyrkinen and McKie, 2012); and an ideal menopausal woman is one who has taken control of her symptoms (Ferguson and Parry, 1998), maintaining an appropriate bodily display (Guillemin, 2000).…”

“…At work, women’s abjectness has been associated with their marginalisation when occupying managerial (Mavin and Grandy, 2016) or academic (Fotaki, 2013) roles; or if working while breastfeeding (Gatrell, 2019), being mothers (Haynes, 2008) or menstruating (Shildrick, 1997). Yet, the menopausal woman might lead the way here because as Komesaroff et al (1997: 10) note, ‘the menopausal woman is the personification of the abject’: degenerating and diminishing, losing vigour and ageing in full sight, which in an increasingly aesthetic, youth-obsessed workplace (Farrugia, 2018; van den Berg and Arts, 2019) is embarrassingly misaligned (Shildrick, 1997).…”

The new discomforts of precarious workers: Wardrobe matter, insecurity and the temporality of calibration in dress work

“…In addition, many had middle class backgrounds. This limits our study in terms of what we can say about precarious workers’ navigations of the whiteness of work spaces, particular class dynamics, particular racialised aesthetics and the workings of racism in precarisation (but see previous studies on dress advice and welfare: Van den Berg, 2019; Van den Berg & Arts, 2019a, 2019b). However, based on our sample and our respondents’ narratives, we are able to analyse how workers that enjoy many privileges (whiteness, class background) and are usually not regarded as precarious do, in fact, have to navigate new kinds of insecurities in times of precarisation.…”

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

“…In principle, the right to welfare benefits lasts until an alternative source of income is found (preferably through employment). It has, however, become increasingly conditional in the sense that both access and maintenance of eligibility to welfare benefits depend on claimants’ patterns of behaviour and additional responsibilities like aesthetic performances (Dwyer, 2000; Van den Berg and Arts, forthcoming). This conditionality is apparent in the Act’s statement that it is prohibited for welfare recipients to ‘obstruct obtaining, accepting or retaining generally acceptable employment by dress, lack of personal care or behaviour’ (Article 18, section 4).…”