This book discusses and illustrates how deservingness can be approached as a discursively and rhetorically accomplished phenomenon having varied empirical consequences with regard to welfare, poverty, class and care arrangements.
Providing a thorough analysis of how deservingness representations are generated in the twenty-first century by focusing on the analysis of discourse and rhetoric of policymakers, reality TV participants, frontline workers and unemployed individuals, it shows that different actors actively participate in constructing representations of deservingness through which variety of political, practical and social implications and objectives are achieved and performed. The book addresses key themes such as
• What kinds of rhetorical and discursive tactics can be associated with un/deservingness?
• How deservingness is accomplished as a speech act?
• How different actors such as policymakers, reality TV programme participants, frontline workers and individual citizens participate in constructing un/deservingness?
• What kind of practical implications and consequences deservingness representations have for policy making, frontline work and research
This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of social policy, social work, sociology, social psychology, political science and media studies.
Author(s): Laura Tarkiainen
Series: Social Welfare Around the World
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 125
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
Age-old, yet contemporary
Structure and aims of the book
References
2 Deservingness theories and conceptualisations
Quantitative approaches in previous deservingness studies
Unemployment, welfare recipiency and deservingness
Deservingness and border crossing
Health deservingness
References
3 Policy discourse and deservingness
Deserving and undeserving policy target groups
Rhetoric in parliamentary discussions
The undeserving freeloader in need of an attitude adjustment
The deserving and effortful unemployed person lacking control over one’s situation
A needy unemployed person deserving the welfare state’s reciprocal acts
Conclusions
References
4 Reality TV’s representations of deservingness
Deservingness in media and reality TV
Rich House, Poor House format
Deservingness of wealthy people: representations of hard work and charitable acts
Deservingness of people living in poverty: representations of entrepreneurial attitude and legitimate need
Conclusions
References
5 Frontline workers and deservingness assessments
Frontline workers putting welfare policy into action
Unemployed people’s deservingness negotiated at the frontline
Discursive positioning in interviews
Motivated and deserving client
Unfortunate and deserving client
Resistant and potentially undeserving client
Blameworthy and undeserving client
Conclusions
References
6 Deservingness negotiated in research settings with individuals
Performing deservingness in interviews
Interviews with long-term unemployed Finns
Means of disassociating oneself from the ‘other’: addressing one’s proximity to the deserving ‘us’
Declining the category applied during interviews: addressing neediness as a deservingness cue
Enriching the cultural image of unemployment: addressing the lack of control as a deservingness cue
Conclusions
References
7 Conclusions
Othered, irresponsible and undeserving agent
Victimised and deserving agent lacking responsibility
Entrepreneurial, responsible and deserving agent
Final remarks
References
Index
