Research project SO/01/004 (Research action SO)
Young people in the active welfare state. Sociological research into experiences with the social integration contract of young people entitled to minimum income benefit.
Young people have a special place within the active welfare state. Assorted measures have already been taken in order to integrate young people entitled to guaranteed minimum income benefit into the labour market by investing in education and work. One such measure is the individualised project for social integration (also known as the social integration contract) for young people who are receiving guaranteed minimum income benefit. Although this measure has already been the subject of several different evaluations, this particular project marks a break with previous research, which has focused time and again on OCMW/CPAS (the Belgian local public social welfare centre) benefit offices in Belgium and in which young people themselves have been less to the fore. The aim of this project is to let young people themselves do the talking and investigate their experiences of benefit dependency.
The issue of benefit dependency among young people will be approached from a dynamic perspective emphasising the fact that the life of a benefit payment not only has a set beginning and runs a set course, but also has an end in most cases. From this angle, the ‘period on benefit’ is usually seen therefore as a transitory phase in life that begins and also ends with specific events in the lives of people. Three concepts are central to this systematic approach to benefit dependency: ‘temporalisation’, ‘democratisation’, and ‘biographisation’.
The present research project focuses its attention chiefly on the third concept.
The term ‘biographisation’ is based on three assumptions:
1) benefit dependency is linked with specific events in a person’s life,
2) the objective disadvantages of this dependency are fashioned by the biographical significance that individuals attach to it, and
3) the objective duration of financial dependency is coloured by the benefit claimant’s subjective perception of time. Clearly, therefore, the right to guaranteed minimum income benefit may be experienced and coped with differently, the reason being that benefit claimants, too, are active, individualised actors who develop different strategies for coping.
The emphasis placed by this investigation on the biographisation of benefit dependency highlights the subjective time dimension of this dependency. This time dimension needs to be differentiated from its objective dimension, which is measured by referring to days, months or years.
However, the effects of benefit on a person’s life cannot simply be determined on the basis of the objective duration of benefit dependency. Individual interpretations and the biographical context - in short, the subjective perception of time - are also crucially important. In this way, an answer can be given to the following question: how is the period of benefit dependency experienced and how is this situation evaluated in the context of a person’s own life?
When applied to young people receiving guaranteed minimum income benefit, this project will use qualitative research techniques, in particular biographical research, in order to investigate the causes of requests for help as well as perceptions of the right to guaranteed minimum income benefit and the social integration contract. This will be done on the basis of sixty or so in-depth interviews involving young people (not students) receiving guaranteed minimum income benefit, who will be recruited from some twenty OCMW/CPAS benefit offices in Flanders. Only one answer to these ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions of recourse to guaranteed minimum income benefit makes it possible to assess the present-day discourse and the position of ‘active welfare state’ measures within an OCMW/CPAS context.
Aan de rand van de actieve welvaartsstaat : een socio-biografisch onderzoek naar jongeren en OCMW-hulpverlening : eindrapport
Seynaeve, Tine - Hermans, Koene - Declercq, Anja ... et al Gent : Academia Press, 2004 (PB6016)
Au bord de l'état actif : une étude socio-biographique sur les jeunes et l'assistance du CPAS : résumé
Bruxelles : Politique scientifique fédérale, 2003 (SP1250)
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Aan de rand van de actieve welvaartsstaat: een socio-biografisch onderzoek naar jongeren en OCMW-hulpverlening : samenvatting
Brussel : Federaal Wetenschapsbeleid, 2003 (SP1251)
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On the fringes of the active welfare state: a socio-biographical study about young people and public welfare assistance : summary
Brussels : Science Policy Office, 2003 (SP1252)
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