Drug Taking and Employment: Exploring the Employable Citizen in UK Policy

Charlotte Smith,Kathleen Riach

doi:10.1177/0038038514554330

Abstract

This article extends contemporary debates surrounding drug taking and employment through exploring the importance of economic participation in UK anti-drug policy. Specifically, we undertake a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of recent drug-taking policy documents to demonstrate how key ideological repertoires position drug consumption as the antithesis of economic potential and the productive subject. Engaging with recent critiques of neoliberalism, we develop the concept of the ‘employable citizen’ to (i) capture the increasing regulation of working identities deemed viable or appropriate, and (ii) foreground the connections between the spaces of drug taking and employment. After analysing the taxonomies that connect drug taking and the employable citizen, we discuss how our findings inform the broader regulation of drug-taking policy. We then conclude by examining the implications of the employable citizen as an ideological position and its consequences in terms of influencing policy and organizational discussions surrounding drug taking and employment.

Highlights

This article advances recent debates surrounding drug taking through exploring the role of economic life as a key construct informing UK drug policy
We introduce the concept of the employable citizen as a means of connecting drug taking with the recent debates surrounding contemporary employment, subsequently focussing on the regulation of employees
While neoliberal projections of a ‘productive’ subject are increasingly influential in all social and political spheres, we argue that a more nuanced concept of the employable citizen illuminates the intimate connections between drug taking and employment

Summary

Introduction

This article advances recent debates surrounding drug taking through exploring the role of economic life as a key construct informing UK drug policy. Through an analysis of UK drug-taking policy and practice, we identify key ideological repertoires that restrict the possibility of being both a drug taker and an economically productive citizen In connecting these repertoires to recent organisational employee governance practices, we suggest that such discursive strategies legitimise organisational intervention surrounding employee monitoring. This was achieved through isolating the drug taker as miscreant but simultaneously connected to concepts surrounding labour participation, economic value through paid employment, and the importance of intervention through the creation of the ‘employable citizen’: an individual who wanted to participate in employment To detangle this relationship between economic participation and drug prohibition further, we focus on three strategies that called on and reproduced the employable citizen as a key actor in the production of drugs policy. In fore fronting the social function of work, economic participation was presented as having a capacity to transform an individual’s well-being, as well as aid a recovery from drug use

Discussion and Conclusions

Stated objective

Findings

Employers on Alcohol at for employers for tackling