Abstract
AbstractThis article looks at how welfare conditionality is delivered at the street level. It argues that the street‐level delivery of welfare conditionality is structured by policies, the governance context in which workers deliver welfare conditionality, the organization in which they work, and the occupation they are part of. Characteristics of these contexts present street‐level workers with a variety of signals and incentives that direct their decision making. The article elaborates on this proposition on the basis of a review of academic studies analysing the street‐level delivery of various aspects of welfare conditionality: the use of sanctions, service personalization, and the treatment of vulnerable clients. The review shows that context characteristics together have a significant impact on the street‐level transformation of welfare conditionality policies into practices. Street‐level decision making concerning the use of sanctions is far more complex than can be captured by a perspective on street‐level workers as merely policy implementers. Sanctioning practices are sometimes harsher, sometimes more lenient than policies lead us to expect. The “soft” side of welfare conditionality—represented by service personalization—is often under pressure at the street level, potentially strengthening welfare conditionality's tough side. This affects vulnerable jobseekers most: Street‐level studies show that the balance between disciplining and enabling aspects of welfare‐to‐work is most at risk for more vulnerable groups. The article concludes that the contextual pressures street‐level workers have to deal with in their daily work hardly reflect the “delicate equilibrium” that they need to deliver welfare conditionality in a professional, responsive, and responsible way.
Highlights
This article analyses the core theme of this special issue, welfare conditionality, from a street-level perspective
This is because welfare conditionality policies and how they relate to welfare-to-work are themselves ambiguous and sometimes contradictory
Sanctioning practices at the street level will look different when the focus is on punishing rule violations by clients or when sanctions are one of the instruments that can be used to integrate jobseekers into the labour market—welfare conditionality policies often use both types of arguments for sanctioning
Summary
This article analyses the core theme of this special issue, welfare conditionality, from a street-level perspective. It looks at how core aspects of welfare conditionality policies are implemented and transformed into welfare conditionality practices. The lack of street-level studies is characteristic for welfare conditionality research as well This can be considered problematic given the role of discretionary decision making at the street level which, as Watts and Fitzpatrick (2018) argue, the introduction of behavioural conditionality is likely to increase. It could be argued that the increase of discretionary decision making results from the need to police clients in the context of behavioural conditionality. The personalization of the process of setting the behavioural standards clients have to meet is another important source of street-level discretion
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