“The Offspring of Drunkards”: Gender, Welfare, and the Eugenic Politics of Birth Control and Alcohol Reform in the United States

Thompson, Lauren MacIvor

doi:10.1017/jme.2021.54

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 14 publications

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“…Clients who fail, or resist living up to this norm for reasons well-known from moral hazard research, have historically been accused of feigning or exaggerating symptoms to obtain financial benefits or avoid work (Goldberg, 2021). Thompson (2021) even argues that a key theme in the history of anxieties about malingering is that women, People of Color, and disabled people are more likely to be accused of feigning illness. Despite little agreement on its definition, The American Psychiatric Association defines malingering as ‘the intentional production of false or grossly exaggerated physical or psychological symptoms, motivated by external incentives, such as avoiding military duty, avoiding work, obtaining financial compensation, avoiding criminal prosecution, or obtaining drugs’ (Bass and Halligan, 2014: 1427).…”

Section: Frontline Workers As Policy and Moral Mediatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing sick-listed clients’ work ability: A moral mission?

Stray

Thomassen

Vike

2022

Critical Social Policy

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Judging the extent to which sick-listed clients’ disabilities qualify them for sickness benefits is increasingly part of frontline work. However, we lack knowledge about the discretional process of assessing work ability. Institutional ethnographic research of caseworkers in the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration revealed that they emphasised clients’ residual work ability – meaning what clients could perform despite their medical diagnoses – as well as their inner motivations and work ethic. We argue that frontline praxis is influenced by efforts to fit clients into a category of the deserving ‘sick-listed yet work-capable client’. Because caseworkers lack guidelines to combine health and work, they increasingly apply their ‘moral selves’ in the assessment process resulting in scepticism towards clients’ feigning, or exaggerating symptoms to obtain financial benefits or avoid work. We question whether our findings represent a shift of the Norwegian universalistic welfare model to a more liberal and incentive-strengthening type.

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Section: Frontline Workers As Policy and Moral Mediatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%