Keeping the/at a Distance. an Analysis of the Social Construction of Relations to the Institution of Unemployment

EasyChair Preprint no. 13694

Abstract

In analysing the relationship between the State and the individuals it governs, the social sciences have focused on the professional side of the street level bureaucracy or on the interactions that take place there. This study therefore proposes to broaden the focus usually adopted and to question the relationships and expectations that jobseekers have with regard to the Public Employment Service (PES), a central institution of the welfare state: how do jobseekers perceive it? Are these perceptions marked by the dialectic of rights and duties currently in force within the PES? And what effects do they have on the expectations and attitudes of the unemployed, both towards employment and towards the institution? Following the Foucauldian analysis of governmentality that consider the people are not the simply recipients of public action, we are seeking to understand the relationships they have constructed with it. Our survey enables us to analyse the effects of this government of behaviour when individuals have internalised the norms and responsibilities - particularly in terms of activation - specific to their situation. It provides at least a partial answer to the question of how the governed cope with the mismatch between institutional discourse and actual practice. To shed light on these issues, we conducted a qualitative study based on 41 semi-structured interviews with unemployed people. This material allows firstly to distinguish three types of relationship with the institution, according to the distance from it, which, far from being random, can be partly linked to the socio-demographic characteristics of the unemployed (1). We then show that these relationships with the institution are likely to change over time, depending on the path taken (2) but also on the institutional discourse (3). Ultimately, the study reveals a disjunction between the promises made by the institution and the expectations of the unemployed.

Keyphrases: activation, Governmentality, Non take-up police services, public employment service, street-level bureaucracy, Unemployement

@Booklet{EasyChair:13694,
  author = {Aurélie Gonnet and François Sarfati and Jules Simha},
  title = {Keeping the/at a Distance. an Analysis of the Social Construction of Relations to the Institution of Unemployment},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 13694},

  year = {EasyChair, 2024}}