Looking presentable, feeling optimistic, performing potentiality:How recipients of social assistance in the Netherlands are ‘activated’ for the post-Fordist labour market

The gradual retreat of many governments from guaranteeing secure labour relations and social security, and the attendant normalisation of precarious working and living conditions, goes hand in hand with a promise that ‘the good life’ can be attained through paid work. Welfare-to-work programmes are at the centre of this, as they problematise social assistance and seek to ‘improve’ recipients and their positions in society by obliging them to find precarious employment in the post-Fordist labour market. This dissertation examines how this is done within the daily practices of ‘labour market (re... Mehr ...