Introduction
Power is present in social relations in the inherited forms of culture, tradition and the political and institutional practices of the state. Social policy rules are formulated through complex public policy processes directed by expert bureaucrats who seek to make the rules of the moment potent in the social world.
Power is experienced as a spectrum. Hayward says by that power can be conceived as a continuum with domination at one end point and at the other “social boundaries that are understood by all participants and that allow the maximum possible space, not only for action within, but also for effective action upon the boundaries themselves.” (Hayward 1998)(Hayward 1998 p.21). Domination according to Foucault is "only one form of power-relation. Its defining characteristic is that it positions at least one party in such a manner that she has negligible room to manoeuvre and to act to change the power relations (quoted in Hayward 1998 p.20).
This research advances the view that current welfare to work social policy settings in Australia are experienced as forms of domination which deny service users recognition. In their exposure to these settings, service users experience misrecognition, against which they respond to defend their culturally inherited social roles and identities. As the analysis of the experiences and behaviour of the research participants will show, the forms of the capital they possess, and they ways in which they are able to exercise this capital, are critical to enabling them to “bargain” better betters outcomes for themselves.
Specific context
In this research the forms of power the research participants encounter are based on the rules of the social security system, and are delivered by both the government service agency Centrelink and the contracted employment service providers.
On a daily basis individual agents encounter power in the form of rules and processes that govern services contexts including administrative artefacts such as letters and online documentation, as well as the verbal advice provided by service staff in person, by telephone or email.
McDonald and Marston noted how welfare to work governs through micro-level practices which seek to make the citizen both active and responsible for their own employment (McDonald and Marston 2005). This form of governance is reflected in the experiences of the research participants as they encounter the hard structures which define their obligations and choices in their service encounters, through their own research, and the tools of compliance such as threats or actual incidents of withholding of income support payment.
Welfare to work also governs the parents in this research behaviour through the mandated loss of income caused by the policy change which directed them from the higher paid parenting payment to Newstart. This change has subjected them to forms of material control which have had a serious impact on their day to day survival, making it almost impossible for them to survive on welfare without finding jobs. They are also subject to the 15 hour participation rule for specific forms of work or education which have compelled them to participate in activity which they would not otherwise have wanted to.
This research identifies the ways in which these compulsions of the welfare to work policy settings effectively expose these women to forms of cultural and economic domination and which deny them the right to assume the social roles they have culturally inherited. It contributes to gender focused welfare to work research of scholars whose findings substantiate the initial findings of this research (for example Bodworth 2012, Wright 2011, 2012). (Wright 2011; Bodsworth 2012; Wright 2012)
The ontological perspective of this research is critical realist. It adopts concepts from critical theorists and post-traditionalists such as Nancy Fraser and Pierre Bourdieu for their descriptive power. It builds new theory from these descriptive qualities to identify (interactional) relationships between structures and agents.
Valid and invalid activity
While I will argue the configuration of welfare to work policy settings in Australia is oppressive, I firstly point out that my research findings indicates that the research participants do express harmony with the values of work. Both clearly express an active interest in obtaining the right kind of work that enables them to fulfil their parenting roles and career preferences. Leanne reflects,
But even living in a low income area, I can’t think of one person I know of who would choose to live like this if they had a choice.
The problem for both the research participants is that have already been active in ways that are not validated or valued by policy makers.
This results in conflict between their preferred roles and identities and the compulsions of the welfare to work policy settings which is experienced as misrecognition.
In response to the misrecognition they experience, the women involved in this research adopt strategies to negotiate the mechanisms of compulsion to obtain better outcomes for themselves. The strategies they adopt involve the mobilisation of the various forms of capital they have accrued through processes of accommodation, then through acts of resistance. These forms of capital according to Bourdiueu, are what enable us to act within the constraints of the rules of the social field.
The categories of accommodation and resistance are not always distinguishable, because they derive from processes of calculation intended to provide the women with higher levels of recognition of their preferred roles and identities. The initial findings of the research provide evidence to support the hypotheses that misrecognition causes resistance as those whose identities are subordinated seek to have them legitimated in any way they can, including opting out altogether.
Common experiences – single parents Misrecognition and symbolic capital
According to Bourdieu, symbolic violence arises from misrecognition because it is “deeply harmful” by which he means it causes cultural domination and disrespect. The emotional impact results in forms of suffering arising from all three of Fraser's types of socio-economic injustice: economic marginalization and denial of an adequate material standard of living, and exploitation. They also suffer all three types of 'cultural or symbolic injustice: cultural domination, non-recognition and disrespect'.
In these stories symbolic violence was exercised though the many dimensions through which social policy rules and compulsions were being exercised against the preferred roles and identities of the participants. In some instances this was experienced as panic and an almost absolute sense of powerlessness. Kelly’s first comments during the interview were that she was shocked that one person could have so much control over the life of others a point she repeated throughout the interview.
Both participants speak of fighting not only for their only for their own survival but that of their children, introducing her the idea of a maternal response as much instinctive as it is culturally inherited, which appears to provide the source of a great deal of their power to resist the demands placed on them.
Symbolic violence is expressed as forms of domination and misrecognition. Despite the expressed preference to fulfil her parenting role, Kelly and Leanne were forced into a role of combining caring and working. For Kelly because of the changes to PP, she chose to become more welfare dependent on NS, so that she would not have to “buy into that”, that is needing to work so much that she would not have sufficient time to spend with her daughter, and participate in voluntary activities, like supporting the school community, with NAPLAN exams.
These choices come at great cost for Kelly who speaks about going back to basics, and “going camping on the way down” as her savings run out and she is forced to live more and more frugally. She says she would live in a tent if she had to, so that she can maintain her happiness with her child. But there is regret that she has had to let go of a three bedroom house because of the changes to parenting payment.
Both parents speak of financial hardship and the extraordinary measures they have taken to survive on reduced incomes. Their only option to avoid the poverty of Newstart is to work hours above the level they believe it is safe for their children. The work they are able to get is also exploitative, such as the short term retail work Leanne is offered and is reluctant to take up again, because she wants to hold out to find a job that is a better match to her capabilities.
When being threatened with participation failures, Leanne speaks of how it feels like she is being treated like a child and being abused or punished for something she hasn’t done. There is a sense of indignation in the face of being dominated but also of sorrow and sadness throughout her story.
The effect of the abusive impact of the system settings is present for Kelly most strikingly in the forms of inhumane treatment during her illness when her basic needs were not only ignored, but which were further subject to threats of financial penalty.
.. another aspect I wanted support with was when I rang up sick, would be someone to say I hope you feel better soon, like when you’re sick and overwhelmed you know you just burdened by your bodies, your burdened your overwhelemed by everything, you ring and obviously they don’t care, and sometimes that affects your confidence you know when you are dealing with people who are so uncaring.
The greatest sense of injustice is reserved for the ways in which the system settings diminish the value of caring and are based on an assumption of inactivity which is patently wrong. Both participants are single parents with the full set of parental responsibilities that entails as well as providing contributions to their communities via their schools and social networks. The value of this activity is discounted by the employment service agencies because of the rules they are required to administer, rules that for Leanne, do not even always seem to be well understood.
In hindsight, I think the JSA workers had even less of an idea then about sole parent’s requirements on Newstart. I was told that my payments could be cut off if I didn’t attend Job Search training over the school holidays even after I explained that I would be unable to attend with two children at home. I had to persist and offered to continue with the work sheets from home. I stood there while the worker phoned her manager and while she used a tone that suggested I was trying to evade the training. The senior manager must have known the different requirements as she gave me an exemption.
The mixed message about the new social value of the role of parenting pervades the experiences of the parents, in some cases they encounter aspects of the system that accommodate this in very blunt ways, such as the exemption from activity over the school holidays, but in other ways, the role is invalidated, such as when Kelly cannot attend an appointment because she is looking after a sick child or when she chooses to help the teacher at the school administer the NAPLAN exam.
Both parents report shock once they realise they are now classified as job seekers, rather than parents, as if someone had waved a magic wand and the value of parenting had changed overnight. Leanne mentioned the same external change in perception of her status when she referred to herself as becoming one of them, the “undeserving poor”. This way of reflecting on the externally constituted change to their social position shows both how they are conscious of the ways in which the discourses of unemployment are used in political ways to denigrate “inactive” social roles, classifications which these two participants attempt to resist.
The value of parenting transmitted by the social context is fused in confusing ways with the discourses of the underclass, that both Kelly and Leanne report as driving the new policy settings they experience. Leanne mentions how she feels she is now being treated as “one of those, the undeserving poor”, while Kelly’s lament draws on the paternalistic discourse, of tough love, both having as their target, citizens failing to live up to the right moral standards.
Leanne also identifies the ways she sees she is being perceived by others with this status when she reports how customers seeking medical reimbursement from Medicare seem confused they have to attend the same office as the Centrelink office. She comments on how she wants to tell them that yes, Medicare is welfare too, an urge she resisted but which show how she is aware of the stigma associated with being in the Centrelink queue.
Rights and rules
In advanced modernity, the rights of citizenship have become so convoluted, as Hartey Dean has noted, there is no single allegiance to class-based entitlements and roles, yet at the foundation of their views of rights and entitlements, both participants express a moral rationality, that aligns with their preferred role of parents and which until welfare to work arrived had a socially mandated value attached to it (Dean and Melrose 1999; Dean 2003)
The expectations and entitlements of modern citizenship are articulated in the tools that support their administration such as online documentation. These repositories provide sources of information for users of the system to whom the rules are foreign and bear little resemblance to their culturally inherited expectations of their rights.
Despite this alienation, both participants showed strong knowledge of system rules, and the capacity to research them to find out about their social security rights and entitlements. Knowledge of the rules provides them with the information they need to assess whether the way they have been treated by the system is fair or not, and even to understand how the system works.
Having access to knowledge of the rules provides information against both participants are able to assess what they are entitled to, and importantly use this information to adapt their strategies to get better results for themselves from the system. They find going to service encounters armed with this information better equips them during their interviews, even though it has the potential to involve them in conflict with workers who do not always have better knowledge of the rules as they do, or whose judgement involves the use of discretion which is not mutually “reasonable”.
Both participants are able to cite ways in which their knowledge of system rules has enabled them to develop strategies of resistance to prevent themselves from being forced into taking jobs that do not leave them better off, indicating the ways in which access to this knowledge is empowering.
I gain a sense of control by knowing my situation and the system well enough so I can question their decisions. Repeated exposure has taught me to be respectful and compliant in order to financially survive but to also look for and use any discrepancies to question decisions.
My attitude has gone from originally trying at all times to follow directions and do the right thing … to seeing the situation as a challenge. I listen to what the ‘experts’ inform me, then check and double check the information. So, I no longer believe what I’m told.
Leanne researches the rules to find out why she has been classified as a Stream 3 job seeker, believing this classification will subject her to higher levels of micro-management. Her research is thorough to the extent she is able to calculate her own JSCI score, the tool that is used to classify job seekers by labour market disadvantage. She is dismayed to find this tool classifies her as hard to help, a classification she resists.
Knowledge of the rules act has a source of reassurance but also frustration where they are not applied consistently. Kelly comments on how she feels safer at Centrelink where they are obviously checking the rules as they go, and telling her about them, rather than the ES, where she finds out a decision about a participation report is discretionary. Leanne also finds out that a participation report is discretionary and experiences a similar feeling of alarm that one person’s perceptions of the validity of an excuse can be used to determine the application of a financial penalty.
It doesn’t make me feel safe, knowing that I’ve got a job centre that doesn’t uphold the law, that tells lies really
The interesting aspect of this form of resistance is that rather than leaving them feeling empowered, it makes them feel both angry and sick. The anger is a response to the injustice of the arbitrariness they encounter against their sense of entitlement to fairness and recognition of their role as parents. The sickness is the fear they experience knowing they are only one person’s decision away from the deprivation and humiliation of financial sanction for so called “participation failures”.
I felt sick. If I wasn’t fighting for my children as well, I don’t know if I would’ve even asked. To me, it felt like I was a child asking an authoritarian and grumpy parent for permission. Not nice.
In Kelly’s case the sense of being bullied by one case worker following her experience of also being threatened with a participation failure had a direct implication for her attitude towards that individual, and was then generalised towards the agency. She reported concern that if she complained about this worker she would be the subject of ridicule in further service encounters. There is a clear transition here between her subjective experience of being threatened with material hardship by an agent of the state, and her attitude towards the agency and system rules in general.
Both participants also responded they thought it was right for the government to threat withholding of payment for people who frequently or deliberately avoided work, but that in their cases, the threat of withholding payment was considered too severe a punishment for behaviour that was perceived as noncompliance but which to them had a perfectly reasonable rationale. The effect of this misrecognition between their own rationality, and those of the system, results in radically changed the nature of their engagement with service providers.
The pervasiveness of govermentalist or instrumental disciplinary strategies is also experienced through the tools through which system compliance is communicated. A SMS reminder of an appointment, or online letters, are reported by both participants as evoking immediate emotional and behavioural responses. For example Leanne reports an immediate change of mood to becoming frustrated such as when she receives an online letters with incorrect information, provoking her to gathers all her documentation and marching down to her local Centrelink to get their records straight. She fears she will be held responsible for a mistake they have made when she has reported a change in circumstance.
An SMS, phone call or online letter has the effect of recalling this fear, the fear Hartley Dean has identified as a response to the brutality of material threats to survival, as real and brutal as those of their feudal predecessors (Dean 2007; Dean 2009; Dean 2010).
Kelly’s indignation and Leanne’s weary defiance provide clear evidence of the link between the effects of domination, misrecognition and resistance.
Misrecognition
The early findings of this research are promising in relation to the theory of domination and misrecognition, because both participants to varying degrees resist the identities being imposed on them. While Leanne’s story suggest indicates a greater “accommodation” of the rules of Workfare in the ways she attempts to adapt the conditions of her employment to meet the rules, at all times she is adopting strategies to have her needs and capabilities recognised. The same is true of Kelly who goes to great lengths to protect her needs and the needs of her child to the extent she will go camping if necessary, in order to avoid rents which are too high for her to pay. Although she see this as not really a healthy option for her child it is preferable to having no time with her at all.
“where other people are quite locked in to the places they are in and the lifestyle they’ve built around them with children.”
Further to this descriptive analysis, evidence of the causal link between misrecognition and resistance has been supported. This is a new application of existing theory of domination and misrecognition, in which causal links have been established, at least for the few cases that have so far been examined.
Both research participants have clearly exercised power in the social context through the forms of capital they have accrued within the range of options available within the social field, to the extent they have used system rules to obtain better outcomes for themselves. In both examples, analysis of the behaviour of the research participants shows the importance of the role of the forms of the capital the possess, and they ways in which they are able to exercise this capital in the process of negotiating outcomes for themselves, almost as a form of bargaining. This suggests, the forms of capital they possess are critical to the amount of power they have to “bargain” certain outcomes for themselves.
Domestic Violence and the status of single parents
What the early findings of this research indicate also, is that the parents who have become single through relationship breakdown, have experienced abusive relationships in which both their access to and control of the material resources to support their families have been subject to highly controlling behaviour from male partners. Both participants report they have an immediate corollary to their experience of being in an abusive relationship to their newfound dependence on welfare, to the extent that threats of withholding payments reminds them immediately of the abuse and control that preceded becoming a single parent.
Both participants produced this account unprompted through the process of reflecting on their experience of the material control they have encountered. This suggests that for women who have experienced traumatic relationship breakdown, the effects of this trauma persist for many years. Their responses to coercive institutional forces are informed by this trauma in the ways in which it reminds them they are at risk and dependent on others for their safety and security and that any moment this can be withdrawn for apparently little reason.
Leanne offered this analysis:
Having left a controlling relationship I really struggle with what feels like Centrelink’s micro-management of my life. I understand enough about psychology to realise why the similarity brings up unhelpful feelings…
Critical feminist analysis would identify the ways in which patriarchal forms of domination have been exercised in the context. The first is in the form of DV, and the inherited cultural and inherent physical capacity of some males to exercise domination over women.
This signals the failure to recognise the roles of single parent women who have experienced DV in several ways. For example, they can no longer expect to receive sufficient financial support if their child is over 8 years of age. This subjects them to lack of recognition as women who have been forced into the role of single parents because of the prevalence of DV. The caring role they have had to assume because they have become solely responsible for the financial support of their family is no longer recognised as valid. The social policy parameters have failed to recognise both the existence and consequences of DV for women as well as the other forms of misrecognition discussed earlier.
Implications for social policy
We have seen how these research participant have adopted strategies to have the roles and identities they hold in higher worth recognise by using their “capital” to bargain better recognition for themselves. The particular roles and identities for these research participants include both being parents and working in the occupations they are qualified in.
The research has shown that misrecognition is a significant issues for systems engagement. When it occurs, it results firstly in strategies to obtain recognition (the fight strategies), and then in fugitive behaviour if it is not obtained.
While ending long term welfare dependence was the aim of the welfare to work policy changes, it affects all parents equally regardless of their history of benefit receipt. However, the broad brush approach, sometimes known as tough love, has begun to reveal some defects of major significance for social policy makers because of the way it has been causing misrecognition
Firstly, many of the women affected by the Parenting Payment – Newstart changes had already been working (about 60% - see article by Eva Cox about this). The changes have made it more difficult for them to survive by balancing work with caring, to the extent they have been forced to make radical changes to their circumstances which in some cases, like Kelly’s, have actually made them more welfare dependent.
At the time of writing new HILDA data was published which showed income for one parents families had declined by x per cent, compared to an overall national trend towards increased household income. The data has been gathered since the introduction of welfare to work helps to support the case that for sole parents welfare to work has not enabled them to become more socially included, it has actually created higher levels of poverty.
Secondly, the capacity to exercise autonomy, self-efficacy and choice, have all been severely impacted by the changes once they have been exposed to the rules of activation and the punitive nature of the employment services compliance system. The focus on compliance rather than employment assistance services has introduced high levels of antagonism as the service user comes to mistrust the service and the client worker relationship. The approach has denied access to the basic services that might have enabled them to find suitable work, and provide social and economic continuity for their families.
Yeah, I just think of like they’ve cut our payments back and they’re making us see these people and they’ve got all these offices, and how much money is going into these services is it worth the output, and like, if there’ve got 5 offices in one street and you’re paying rent on all those buildings and ECs in there, why can’t they just pay us back the money and just give us back the money and give us one centre to go to, and I know some people need more support than I do, but I’m not one of those and to be forced through this system it’s just like putting a round peg in a square hole, it just doesn’t fit. (Kelly)
Employment services have been experienced not as environments in which they have been enabled to participate to negotiate or construct roles and identities that align with their capabilities or preferences, but as institutions which actively prevent recognition that from occurring.
They put everyone into the same basket, it’s not saying well do you need help, not grading people in degrees of help they need, or individualising treatment according to what sort of help the need, well not treatment, support, the support I need is a good computer with office so I could do a resume, and if there was someone there who could quickly look over my resume and make suggestions, that would have been ample support, I think in the degrees they are trying to over support us,, and it comes across as harassment, because I’m educated I can do this sort of stuff if given the resources and where are these computers where I can sit down and do my resume. (Kelly)
These single parents have exercised choices they believe are rational for example by not getting into low paid jobs with high number of hours, but which have also exacerbated levels of disadvantage they experience, increased their level of poverty, and made them become vulnerable and dependent on welfare. As Kelly said:
I know of a lot of women there who don’t have that ability who are being forced into low paid jobs who are really stressed and worried about what’s happening to their kids while they are not home, and just keeping on top of everything they have to do.
Socially beneficial activity such as helping the school with NAPLAN exams, and using this as a venue for networking for potential future work were not accepted as valid forms of activity for the 15 hour activity rule, even though it is known the 80% of people find their next job through friends and word of mouth (DEEWR 2013).
The cases I have encountered to date have also indicated the complex reasons why these parents are doing it on their own, not always by choice and because of intolerable factors in the relationships they have left. While the myth of the welfare dependent and morally deficient underclass informs policy assumptions about sole parents, the facts are that many of the women in this research show extraordinary resilience and entrepreneurialism in their efforts to secure conditions of employment that are safe for themselves and their families. This means being at home to care for their children after school.
As if working, looking for work and being financially responsible for your family isn’t enough … the system feels like a big hampster wheel! I’m left with the impression the JSA’s have to justify their funding so keep people constantly jumping hoops even though they don’t appear to have the industry or employer contacts to find employment for you.
However, few jobs are available in the professions for which they are qualified – yet they are forced to apply for and take up jobs to meet their participation requirements in lower paid and insecure roles. Meanwhile they are subject to ongoing supervision by employment services while actively attempting to find jobs that reflect their capabilities.
Finally, it is interesting to note ways in which the high level of contestability about what is a “reasonable excuse” regarding a participation failure contributes to the research participants view that employment services are unregulated and can do what they please relative to the safety of the processes and procedures they experience at Centrelink. This suggests that as far as participation reports are concerned, the employment services system needs to have better defined parameters as to when a participation failure applies, at that these parameters need to reflect the severity of the noncompliance event. For even the threat of participation failures, the form the most often appear as, results in a shift in the service relationship from one of helping, to hassling, with the most extreme threats to financial security which is already a significant cause of concern for the women.
Dean, H. (2003). "The Third Way and Social Welfare: The Myth of Post‐emotionalism." Social policy & administration 37(7): 695-708.
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