Abandoned by the State
Precarious Municipal Workers and their Indigent Clients in Greece
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19214232 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Martha Kapazoglou (University of Amsterdam, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-17 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-22 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ethnos (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0014-1844 • E-ISSN: 1469-588X |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00141844.2026.2655333 |
| OpenAlex | W7155209528 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 35 |
In Thessaloniki’s municipal food provision services, frontline workers were often dismissive to beneficiaries, denying them help in an openly contemptuous manner. The anthropological literature on deservingness analyses such contentious affects as the result of frontline workers’ position as gatekeepers who must arbitrate access to scarce resources. I complement these insights, showing how frontline workers’ contempt is also shaped by their complex employment relation to the Greek state. Drawing on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork, I illustrate how state promises of employment security and upward social mobility get them stuck in precarious jobs. Exploring how they navigate material impoverishment and taxing working conditions, I draw attention to their socioeconomic proximity to beneficiaries. Considering this disconcerting closeness, frontline workers’ contemptuous attitudes can be interpreted as a mechanism to assuage the anxieties elicited by proximity. Reframing frontline workers as precarious state employees, this article contributes to a better understanding of state-citizen relations
Ethnography · Government (linguistics) · Metropolitan area · Poverty · Contemporary and Historical Greek Studies · Employment and Welfare Studies · Social Policy and Reform Studies
Reclaiming the Discarded
Precarity, Precariousness, and Vulnerability
Surplus Citizens
The Greek Crisis Ends here Tonight”
Is social protection in Greece at a crossroads
It’s difficult to be a social worker these days’
The economic crisis seen from the everyday
The welfare state and the crisis
Seen by the state
The Europeanization of Greece
State Agent or Citizen Agent
Governmentality
Granting 'Human Dignity
Class and Clientelistic Politics
A State of Relief
Please Sign Here
How We Struggle
Bureaucratic Anxiety
Life of the mind
An anthropology of the social contract
Political Economy Comes Home
The Guardians of the Welfare State
Searching for the 'ideal face of the state' in a Lebanese border town
Contagious' solidarity
Iphigenia's sacrifice
Intimate States
Max Weber and the Moral Economy of Office
The State of the Welfare State
Eviction, Gatekeeping and Militant Care
The Moral Economy of Charity
Introduction
Hope For/Against the State
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |