'You had to be the Detective': Implementing Workfare in British Employment Services
Dados Bibliográficos
AUTOR(ES) | |
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ANO | 2024 |
TIPO | Artigo |
PERIÓDICO | Journal of Social Policy |
ISSN | 0047-2794 |
E-ISSN | 1469-7823 |
EDITORA | Elsevier (Netherlands) |
DOI | 10.1017/s0047279422000733 |
ADICIONADO EM | 2025-08-18 |
Resumo
British employment service delivery has shifted towards a model primed on core 'workfare' objectives – that is, enforcing behavioural compliance to work-related duties and expanding participation in work. Nevertheless, significant gaps remain in current knowledge about how workfare is implemented daily by frontline staff. The existing international street-level research on employment service delivery reveals how workers use a range of discretionary practices to achieve workfare objectives. Yet this research largely ignores how, in practice, a key aspect of enforcing behavioural compliance and encouraging work participation is through contending with its opposite – behavioural non-compliance. Analysing 13 interviews with frontline staff, this article contributes to street-level knowledge by revealing the ways managers and workers in British employment services are encouraged to detect and correct variations of claimant non-compliance.