Abstract
Welfare recipients are continuously subjected to media debates and governmental campaigns drawing on images and symbols encouraging improved work ethic and individual responsibility. Only few studies, however, have analysed how welfare recipients as ‘othered’ citizens react to these often stereotypical symbols and images targeting them. In this study we have investigated how welfare recipients in Norway and Denmark, and caseworkers in Denmark, understand and account for images which, through the use of stereotypes, directly or indirectly may question welfare recipients’ work ethic and deservedness. Analysing photo-elicitation interview data, we have uncovered a variety of reactions characterized by ‘problematization’. The interviewees problematize the image and depicted stereotypes, which they link both with motif and symbols and with surrounding public debates on the work ethic and deservedness of welfare recipients. Furthermore, as photo-elicitation is a rarely used tool in welfare research, we address methodological aspects of using photo-elicitation in a study of ‘othered’ welfare recipients.
Highlights
Welfare, work ethic, and individual responsibility are hot topics of public debate in Nordic welfare states (Hedegaard, 2014; Larsen & Dejgaard, 2012; Lundberg, 2012)
We asked welfare recipients to react to images which relate to discourses of individual responsibility and which potentially contribute to ‘othering’ of welfare recipients through stereotypes (Lister, 2004)
We emphasize that the commonalities found in the analysis, despite the use of dissimilar images and seeing ample variation in responses, are interesting to discuss further in light of reactions to stereotypical portrayals of welfare recipients’ work ethic and deservedness, and integrating PE and other visual methods into empirical investigations of ‘othered’ citizens
Summary
Work ethic, and individual responsibility are hot topics of public debate in Nordic welfare states (Hedegaard, 2014; Larsen & Dejgaard, 2012; Lundberg, 2012). During the interviews we presented the interviewees with images containing potential stereotypes of welfare recipients and individual-responsibility discourse, and asked them to comment on them. The interviewer presenting the advertisement to Mona evoked a strong emotional response from her (crying) and an account relating to her family values, as well as her coping strategies at work. She discussed the work ethic in her family and how her parents expected her to help them paint their house when they were told she was on sick leave, which they apparently viewed as spare time. We interpret this difference as related to the activation of a professional perspective (Jonas) and not having encountered the specific media portrayal of RN (Christian)
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