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Publikation Unemployment insurance and the family: heterogeneous effects of benefit generosity on reemployment and economic precarity(Society for Sociological Science, 08/2024) Kuhn, Ursina; Hevenstone, Debra; Vandecasteele, Leen; Sepahniya, Samin; Kessler, DorianWe investigate how unemployment insurance generosity impacts reemployment and economic precarity by family type. With Swiss longitudinal administrative data and a regression discontinuity design using potential benefit duration, we examine differences between single households and primary and secondary or equal earners, as well as differences by gender and presence of children. Less generous unemployment insurance (shorter potential benefit duration) speeds up reemployment for all family types during the period with benefit cuts whereas longer-term effects are stronger for single households, secondary and equal earners, and those without children. Economic precarity increases for singles, single-parents, and primary earners during the period with lower benefits though there are no long-term effects. We argue that those with higher financial responsibility (i.e., primary earners or those with children) face pressure to find jobs irrespective of benefit generosity whereas those with lower financial responsibility (i.e., secondary or equal earners and those without children) have more capacity to react.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher ZeitschriftPublikation In search of a decent living. Poor households' strategies of welfare production between agency and survival(10.09.2024) Nadai, Eva; Gonon, AnnaMultidimensional poverty concepts combine the lack of material means to meet socially defined minimum needs with the equally important lack of participation and self-determination. Insufficient financial means restrict choices regarding consumer goods and services and limit weighty life choices regarding education, jobs, family. Poverty research therefore tends to describe coping with financial hardship as basically reactive and guided by sheer necessity. In this view, the vulnerability of the poor to external forces is overwhelming. Hence, their choices are inevitably detrimental in that any decision implies negative effects. The question therefore is how we can distinguish genuine agency in non-trivial matters from merely reactive survival. Agency as the freedom of leading a life according to one’s own reflected values is at the heart of the capability approach (CA). The CA foregrounds real opportunities (capabilities) as opposed to achieved states (functionings) while factoring in the preconditions for agency, namely the personal set of conversion factors that are needed to turn resources into actual welfare. However, critics argue that capabilities cannot be distinguished clearly from functionings and that providing “(genuine) opportunities for (secure) functionings” is the appropriate political target of poverty alleviation (Wolff/de-Shalit 2007; 2013). Being able to sustain functioning over time is important because heightened vulnerability to risk is a salient characteristic of being poor. Moreover, Wolff and de-Shalit posit that “being able to take control over the way in which the function is achieved” (2013, 164) is a crucial dimension of choice. To assess genuine agency, we therefore need to analyze secure functionings, personal sets of conversion factors, and the value-based preferences and goals of poor people – not least whether they can achieve things their own way. Based on an ongoing long-term qualitative study of the welfare production strategies of 40 poor households in Switzerland, we discuss degrees of agency over time from a capabilities perspective. By definition, these households are deprived of some basic capabilities in that they live below the poverty line. In this study we use the strict poverty line of eligibility for social assistance or supplemental benefits. In addition, indicators of material deprivation serve as thresholds to assess secure functionings. To what extent are the study participants still able to partially realize a life according to their own values? Preliminary results reveal a range of agency from mere adaption through cutting consumption to partial realization of personal life goals or overcoming poverty through one’s own efforts.06 - PräsentationPublikation Editorial: Governing The Poor - Migration and Poverty(De Gruyter, 12/2020) Bochsler, YannIn contrast to the nexus between welfare and migration control, the link between migration and poverty (or rather the perception of poverty), has not received the same amount of political interest, but also public and scholarly attention. Yet, there are multiple ways in which migrants are rendered or perceived as poor in receiving states after having migrated. Hence, this special issue addresses the intersection of migration and poverty. The contributions cover various socio-legal, political and discursive aspects of how state institutions and non-state agencies address, and how poor citizens and migrant individuals in the broadest sense deal with, precariousness and discrimination in the states where they have settled or within which they have moved. In public and political discourse, migrant individuals are often portrayed as underserving, needy and dependent on the ‘receiving states’. Yet, what is often overlooked is how this assumed dependency is constructed by policies and laws, encouraged by media practices and everyday street-level implementation, to the degree that it demonises the foreign ‘other’, accused of misusing welfare assistance. At the same time, we find similar framings regarding marginalised citizens, such as welfare recipients, which discloses the moral character of social policies and a hierarchy of deservingness-recognition. Within the special issue, we critically discuss how such representations and policy mechanisms allow for the discriminatory circumscription of rights and services of the ‘poor’ and migrants that are deeply embedded in welfare chauvinist attitudes, causing significant control and surveillance by the state.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher ZeitschriftPublikation Governing Young Poor in Switzerland and Reinforcing Their Work Ethics(De Gruyter, 12/2020) Bochsler, YannThe present research deals with the policies directed at young adults in social welfare without vocational training (YAS) and the way their implementation is perceived by implementers themselves as well as by the YAS. In Switzerland, there is currently an ongoing strategical shift in the policy field of youth policies with a renewed emphasis on educational integration as a first and primary integration step. This policy shift has implications for the strategical scope of the cantonal administration. The renewed emphasis on “education first” as a guideline dictates an approach which follows an economic logic. Building on collected data within cantonal administrations (Basel-City and Geneva) and encounters with YAS, this paper discusses the narratives of these policies and their moral justifications.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift
