Empowerment and Disempowerment of Workfare Volunteers: A Diachronic Approach to Activation Policy in the Netherlands

This article focuses on experiences of welfare recipients summoned to do volunteer work. Proponents of ‘workfare volunteerism’ argue that it leads to empowerment and employability while critics dismiss it as disempowering, stigmatising, and disciplining. Our longitudinal qualitative inquiry into experiences of sixty-six ‘workfare volunteers’ in the Netherlands shows how experiences of disempowerment or empowerment are dependent on caseworker approaches as well as on time. Disempowerment can turn into empowerment when an individual's past is considered, but can revert to disempowerment if chang... Mehr ...