A ‘Road to Work’? The reworking of deservedness, social citizenship and public work programmes in rural Hungary

Abstract

The paper discusses the effects of the ‘public work programme’ on social citizenship in remote rural localities in Hungary, where it has developed into an extreme form of workfare in lack of other employment options. Drawing on extensive empirical material from two rural localities, the paper shows that, due to decentralisation, large variations exist in the ways the programme is implemented locally. The practices and approach of local officials, who as key welfare workers in a highly decentralised state primarily determine its local implementation, are strongly linked to local social relations, as well as dominant notions of deservingness/undeservingness on which local claims and negotiations of belonging are based. The study concludes that, whilst the programme fails to address, and even upholds, structural inequalities, the ways in which the programme is organised can, nevertheless, fundamentally affect both the material welfare and the locally constituted social citizenship of its participants.