Stuck! Welfare state dependency as lived experience

The concern that public support may spur dependency has been voiced throughout the history of welfare states. Nevertheless, little research examines the experience of welfare state dependency in the context of recipients’ everyday lives. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of a case involving Anna, who depends on the Danish welfare system for financial benefits and other forms of support. The study spans five years from age 19 to 24, and includes some of the significant others in Anna’s everyday life – her mother, who also depends on welfare, and her caseworkers. By situating Anna’s experiences in a temporal and social context, the case study advances a nuanced understanding of welfare state dependency and identifies three driving forces of the experience: (1) the concern about intergenerational transmission of dependency that spurs a shared sense of hopelessness among Anna and her significant others; (2) the recurrent changes of diagnoses that adds to the feeling of dependency by repeatedly generating waiting time, e.g. for new psychiatric assessments; (3) the system’s requirement to produce numerous but sketchy future plans that lack real-world plausibility. The case study clarifies the importance that respectable exits out of welfare state dependency are not only imaginable but also believable.

What is welfare state dependency? In a descriptive sense, the concept refers to a reliance on publicly distributed benefits. In European welfare states, many people experience this kind of dependency at some point in life (Immervoll et al. 2015). In Denmark, the share of people aged 16–64 reliant on public support has fluctuated between 19 and 24 percent from 2008 to 2018 (Statistics Denmark 2018),¹ with the majority being reliant for short periods of time (The Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment 2017). In that sense, welfare state dependency is a common and typically transient state in citizens’ life trajectories.

In the public debate, however, welfare state dependency often refers to the minority of citizens who rely on benefits for extended periods of time, and the term is used in more or less explicit normative ways that depict dependency as a pathology (Fraser and Gordon 1994). The concern that public support perverts incentives to work is as old as the welfare state itself (Hirschman 1991), and the portrayal of people left unmotivated to take personal responsibility and manage their lives independently has been a fixture of the last 200 years’ welfare debate (Somers and Block 2005). Exemplifying this, two cases known to the public as ‘Poor Carina’ and ‘Lazy Robert’ have featured prominently in the Danish welfare debate for years. In the debate, Carina works as a lurid symbol of the luxury expenses of welfare recipients (Hedegaard 2014), while Robert has come to personify pathologic dependency after he described himself on national TV as ‘a lazy bastard’ that would rather live on welfare benefits than take ‘crappy jobs’ (Dencker-Larsen and Lundberg 2016).

In research, welfare state dependency has also primarily been addressed as a problem from the treatise of Malthus (1792) to the work of Murray (1984). Heckman (1981) introduced a basic distinction between two sources of dependency which still pervades research (Bhuller et al. 2017). According to Heckman (1981) individual characteristics such as poor health are one source of dependency, while another is the experience of welfare support in itself, as this may induce dependency by altering preferences away from self-support. This latter, direct effect of past welfare receipt on the probability of continued receipt of welfare is termed genuine state dependency (Heckman 1981: 91), and statistical research continues to confirm that ‘genuine state dependency exists’ (Immervoll et al. 2015: 66).

For many years, research on welfare state dependency has relied on statistical methods (Bhuller et al. 2017; Bäckman and Bergmark 2011; Contini and Negri 2006; Stenberg 2000; Antel 1992). In contrast to previous studies that seek to identify the mechanisms of welfare dependency without engaging with the experiences of recipients themselves, this study examines the mechanisms in a specific social and temporal context, i.e. the everyday life of the recipient involving significant others (the social context) and a biographical trajectory (the temporal context). The objective is to produce a deeper understanding of welfare dependency and trace driving forces of this experience through a case study which is a methodology well-suited to produce nuanced and multifaceted knowledge (Flyvbjerg 2006). Specifically, the study examines the case of a young woman, Anna (pseudonym), who depends on the Danish welfare system for benefits and other forms of support to address her needs related to housing, drug problems and mental illness.

Traditionally, qualitative researchers have been reluctant to address welfare dependency (MacDonald et al. 2014; Shildrick et al. 2012). Patrick concludes in response to the almost ‘universal consensus among mainstream politicians on the need to address “welfare dependency”’ (2014: 706) that the whole notion is ‘undermined by the empirical evidence’ (2014: 722). The blank rejection among qualitative researchers to discuss welfare dependency as anything other than a myth (Dean and Taylor-Gooby 2014) may be seen as a reflection of a scholarly taboo that followed in the aftermath of ‘the culture of poverty’ controversy, where scholars were accused of ‘blaming the victims’ for their problems (Ryan 1976). According to Small et al. (2010), fears of this accusation have deterred scholars from asking questions about dependency culture. While the concern of avoiding ‘blaming the victim’ certainly remains valid, they argue that scholars again need to address the troublesome questions about dependency culture, so that we may gain a nuanced understanding of the phenomenon and the mechanisms behind it.

Addressing these questions does not mean that researchers should uncritically reproduce the normative and theoretical assumptions that accompany the concept of welfare dependency. One way to critique the current concept is to argue that welfare dependency does not exist and that being dependent on benefits is never a lifestyle choice (Patrick 2014, 2017). In the present study I propose a different strategy of critique. First, I suggest that the best question to ask might not be whether welfare is ever a lifestyle choice. The argument that welfare is never a lifestyle choice is disputed every time just one individual claims to prefer welfare the way Robert did on Danish national TV. More importantly, this way of posing the question reduces lifestyles into something chosen by individuals, and disregards how this ‘choice’ is grounded in multilayered social, cultural and economic contexts they have not chosen (Emirbayer 1997; Somers 1994). Second, I propose a critique that targets the normative assumptions that dominate the public understanding of dependency. Following Fraser and Gordon (1994), we should ask how and why the connotations of the concept became so negative. As they demonstrate in a genealogy of dependency, this need not be so. A strategy for critique is to insist on interdependence (Patrick 2014) as the favored norm of welfare societies. This is a different type of critique: Rather than rejecting the existence of welfare state dependency, the critique rejects the idea that welfare state dependency represents a social problem, and advocates the desirability of a society where citizens can depend on the welfare system.

This study diverges from previous research on welfare state dependency, which are primarily statistical and emphasizes the importance of ‘preferences, prices, or constraints’ (Heckman 1981: 91). In this research, scholars embarks from assumptions that ‘prolonged experience of social assistance may have a negative effect on the preferences and behavior of recipients’ (Bäckman and Bergmark 2011: 478) and that past welfare receipt ‘reduces information cost or the perceived stigma from receiving benefit payments’ (Bhuller et al. 2017: 1833–1834). The individual recipient is the key analytical unit; it is the individual’s preferences or the prices and constraints which the individual does or does not encounter that are assumed to drive welfare dependency.

The theoretical framework of this study differs, as it draws on relational sociology (Emirbayer 1997) implying that the individual recipient is not the key analytical unit:

Rather than preferences, this approach emphasizes the importance of identity and meaning as produced through dynamic, unfolding relations. For this study, it means that the individual recipient of welfare is approached as embedded within a social and temporal context. Further, by emphasizing meaning, the theoretical framework recognizes narrativity as fundamental for human behavior: Following this, the case study examines how the individual welfare recipient, Anna, in interaction with significant others, makes sense of the world. It examines the relational storylines she locates herself in and the storylines she finds herself located in by other actors, e.g. welfare state authorities. The case study thereby contributes with a relational and context-sensitive understanding of welfare state dependency that has previously been missing from the research.

The intergenerational transmission of welfare dependency has attracted attention in previous statistical research (Wiborg and Hansen 2009; Stenberg 2000), and focusing on this theme offers one way to illustrate how the theoretical framework matters for the explanations produced. Antel (1992) concludes: ‘After controlling for observed and unobserved sample heterogeneity, a mother’s welfare participation is found to increase her daughter’s subsequent welfare dependency.’ (p. 467). He explains that the transmission works through three mechanisms. First, growing up with parents receiving welfare may ‘lower their offspring’s distaste for welfare’, second it may ‘lower the labor market opportunities’, and third ‘lower the participation costs as welfare children directly observe how the system works. They may learn how to “play the system” at an early age’ (Antel 1992: 467–468). The theoretical explanations offered by this kind of research hinge exclusively upon the individual. It suggests that the intergenerational transmission of dependency is driven by the offspring’s preferences (their taste for benefits) as well as prices and constraints (their acquired skills to ‘work the system’).

In a relational framework, intergenerational transmission of welfare dependency is explained by reference to the transactional context. The theoretical assumptions are that the driving forces relate to the daughters’ experiences of themselves, their own opportunities and place in the world, and that these experiences are developed in dynamic relational processes situated in specific spatio-temporal contexts. For empirical investigations, this theoretical framework implies that we do not only need data on individual mothers and individual daughters. We need data on how individuals interact with significant others in unfolding everyday processes to investigate how meaning and identities are produced and how this influences the perceptions and social actions taken by various individuals.

The case study involves a young woman referred to as Anna. At the time Anna spoke the words prefacing this section, she depended on benefits and other forms of support provided by the Danish welfare state. Anna has been dependent on welfare since she turned the legal age of 18. Her contact with the specialized welfare system began in early childhood with a placement in out-of-home care, and she refers to herself as a ‘child of the welfare system’ (Anna, age 23; interview). Anna feels stuck in the welfare system and describes a desire to get out. Simultaneously, she expresses a feeling of dependency and a fear of leaving the welfare system. She experienced food scarcity in her childhood, and homelessness in her youth. The welfare system has helped her get a place to live and to develop a stable everyday life. Anna explains that ‘I do dream about escaping the system but […] I have to stay put where I know I will be safe’ (Anna, age 24, counselling session).

Anna’s case was selected for this study from 25 cases in my research that began in 2011. The research is carried out as a multi-sited ethnography, observing young people with complex needs in various types of welfare state encounters in drug treatment, psychiatry, job centers, prison and probation services. When possible, I interview the young people, the professionals working with their cases and their parents, and I gather case file material. The case of Anna was selected for this study because welfare state dependency was a concern for the parties involved (Anna, her mother, caseworkers) in a more explicit manner than in any other case. Rather than selecting the case for this study, I found that the case called for a study on welfare state dependency. Over the months of data collection, I struggled to understand things such as why Anna’s mother said in an interview ‘Anna really doesn’t bother [to work]. She just wants an early retirement pension like me’. On the face of it, statements like this seemed to confirm to the crudest version of welfare dependency; give the mother welfare benefits and the daughter will get a taste for it. At the same time, the observations made it very clear that this understanding is too simplistic. There is a context that needs to be taken into account and hence I came to believe that the case called for a context-sensitizing study of welfare state dependency (Flyvbjerg 2006).

All young people in my research have been recruited from drug treatment programs. The sample encompasses youths from middleclass families (including some quite financially privileged ones) and youths from poor and socially disadvantaged family backgrounds. Anna is part of the latter group. The data in each case varies in both substance and extent as I have followed the youths for different time spans and in various institutional settings depending on which parts of the welfare state they interacted with. The data informing the case study of Anna consists of three types of data: observations, her case file and interviews.

The observations of interaction between Anna and welfare state professionals took place from the summer of 2016 to the summer of 2017, and were recorded through ethnographic fieldnotes and audio recordings. In the period of observations, Anna had weekly sessions with a caseworker from drug treatment, monthly sessions with a psychiatrist and regular meetings in other places, e.g. the job center. I participated in one to three sessions or meetings a month. The documents from Anna’s casefile were collected from three institutional authorities and span five years (from age 19 to 24) of frequent interaction between Anna and welfare state professionals from the municipality, services for homeless youths, psychiatric care, education programs for vulnerable youths, and drug treatment. Anna gave informed consent and we went to the relevant authorities to apply for access to the case file documents together. My interviews with Anna, her mother and the professionals that worked closely with her case in the twelve months of observations (her counselor and psychiatrist) were audiotaped and fully transcribed.

The project is founded on situated ethics implying that ethical issues are taken into account at every stage of the qualitative longitudinal research process (Thomson 2007). The participation of Anna, her mother and the caseworkers was voluntary and based on informed consent. All names of places and persons and distinguishable traits have been changed in order to protect identities. Youths, parents and professionals involved in the research sample’s 25 cases have not been presented with end products (such as journal articles) in line with the ethical consideration that ‘[r]eading a sociological account of the life that you are living is perhaps more than we might ask of a study participant’ (Thomson 2007: 580). All quotes from interviews, sessions and case files have been translated from Danish to English.

Throughout the period I observed Anna, she conveyed an intense feeling of being stuck in the welfare system. In the quote prefacing the case presentation, Anna used ‘roundabout’ as a metaphor, and in the 12 months of observation she used various other metaphors to express this experience. For example, she used the metaphor of ‘a broken record’ to explain how she heard herself continuously repeat the same things, and in another counseling session she explained how it felt like ‘I remain seated in the rollercoaster. Other people take 3–4 rides and then they get off. I just remain seated.’

As an ethnographer, I could easily relate to her experience, especially as the months went by and I saw how Anna was always waiting for something that was supposed to happen in the welfare system. The sources that generated waiting time were many and sometimes incomprehensible. These included bureaucratic mess-ups leaving applications un-processed, or changes in regulations that confused both Anna and her caseworkers. Anna’s experience of being stuck also became increasingly understandable as I gradually came to share the sense of hopelessness I saw in Anna, her mother and the professionals. Anna was not viewed – by herself or others – as one of the ‘likely to succeed’ youths. Her mother had also struggled with drug problems and homelessness and Anna was a second-generation user of services such as drug treatment. Her case was considered ‘heavy’ by the professionals. This was rarely stated straightforwardly. The weight was sensed rather than spoken. The combination of waiting for things to happen and the sensation that even if they did it would probably be futile spurred this feeling of being stuck which could be almost suffocating.

The analysis disentangles the driving forces of Anna’s experience of welfare dependency. Following the theoretical framework (Emirbayer 1997; Somers 1994), the analysis contextualizes Anna’s experience socially in relation to significant others and temporally in a storyline with a past, a present and a future. The first part focuses on the participants’ perceptions of intergenerational dynamics in the light of her family history. The second part addresses how recurrent change of diagnoses adds to Anna’s feeling of dependency by continuously generating waiting time. The third part focuses on how the welfare system’s routine requirement to produce future plans undermines the plausibility of the plans’ realization. Each part relates Anna’s experiences to significant others in her life, specifically her mother and her caseworkers. In the period of fieldwork, Anna also had regularly contact to a few friends but she often struggled to leave her apartment and she spent much time alone. Hence, on an everyday basis she mostly saw her mother and caseworkers.

The family history as narrated by Anna, her mother and caseworkers involves comprehensive social problems including homelessness, severe mental illness, violence, and drug problems occurring in different combinations over three generations. Anna’s mother explains that ‘my own upbringing was crap’ (Anna’s mother, interview). As a child Anna’s mother was sexually molested by a family member who was only convicted of the crime years later, and in her youth she lived on the street while struggling with drug problems. The instability of life conditions continued into her adult life, and despite periods of employment she has found it difficult to establish a steady routine of labor market participation. In terms of intergenerational dynamics, Anna’s mother fears that her ‘failure’ to work is the reason that Anna today is dependent on welfare state support:

Turning to Anna, her view is that her mother – in contrast to her father – has always been supportive even though her mother ‘always has had to struggle […]. It’s been very challenging and unstable for her’ (Anna, interview). In a session with a psychiatrist, Anna explains that she has always been very ‘attached to my mother even though she may not always have been a good mother’ (case file). In terms of intergenerational dynamics in relation to public support, Anna emphasizes that her mother has been a valuable support in the interaction with welfare state professionals. In Anna’s perception, her mother has the potential to make things happen in a system which she herself often finds difficult to understand and navigate. The welfare state professionals tended to be concerned that her family background makes Anna’s case more difficult. A psychiatrist notes in Anna’s case file that her upbringing was ‘extremely disharmonious and unstructured’ (psychiatrist, case file) and that Anna may be showing signs of ‘disproportional loyalty towards her mother’ (psychiatrist, case file). A counselor explained to me during my fieldwork that he thought the extent to which Anna and her mother ‘take a common interest in diagnoses and welfare systems’ (fieldnotes) was problematic. Another psychiatrist described Anna to me as coming from ‘one of those families with extensive experiences of welfare dependency’ (fieldnotes). In an interview, this psychiatrist expressed concern that the experiences and expectations of parents in these families have been formed in a welfare system that used to be more resourceful: Summing up, the perception of intergenerational dynamics in relation to welfare dependency differs across perspectives. Anna’s mother expresses a concern of a ‘like mother, like daughter’ dynamic that keeps Anna in welfare dependency; Anna’s mother worries that her daughter does not bother to work and just wants an early retirement pension. In contrast, Anna herself never voices the wish for a pension and she describes her mother’s extensive experience with the welfare system as at least potentially empowering because her mother can help her understand what is going on in the system. However, as time passes, Anna finds it difficult to maintain hope that her mother actually can make things happen in the welfare system. Finally, welfare state professionals tend to believe Anna’s family background lowers the possibility of Anna leaving welfare dependency and increases chances that Anna is going to expect more public support than is available.

In her interaction with welfare state professionals Anna experiences that various psychiatric diagnoses are suggested as applicable to her – ADHD, borderline, autism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety. Some diagnoses are made formally by psychiatrists based on assessments. Other diagnoses are merely suggested by professionals as applicable to Anna. Some diagnoses are withdrawn and replaced by others. In this second part of the analysis, we focus on the experience of wavering diagnoses and how this relates to Anna’s feeling of being stuck in the system.

At age 21 Anna is diagnosed with ADHD and PTSD by a youth psychiatrist. During this period, Anna describes her experience with the psychiatric system to a counselor:

At this point in time Anna does not have regular contact with any psychiatrists. She is living at a shelter for young people with homelessness experiences and has been waiting six months for a referral to the district psychiatric center. The counselor asks her what kind of support she is seeking and Anna replies that she ‘wishes help to figure out how “the nuts and bolts” in her head work and further support to get started with education’ (Counselor, case file).

In the following years, a pattern emerges in Anna’s case where she keeps waiting for a psychiatric assessment that will reveal how her head works so that she can get started with an education. At age 22, district psychiatry withdraws Anna’s ADHD diagnosis and replaces it with a new diagnosis: personality disorder (borderline). However, as Anna is also at this point a regular cannabis smoker the diagnosing psychiatrist finds it difficult to help her in a systematic way. At age 23, Anna is therefore referred to drug treatment where yet another psychiatrist begins working with her case. This psychiatrist suspects that the borderline diagnosis is wrong. She first describes Anna as suffering from depression and anxiety, but after seeing Anna about once a month over a year she suspects Anna may have autism (possibly Asperger’s syndrome). She explains:

Relating the experience of the changing diagnoses to the theme of dependency it is important to note that a thorough psychiatric assessment is frequently articulated by welfare state authorities as a precondition for getting an education. For example, when the new psychiatrist refers Anna to an Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) test, the counselor notes in the case file: At this point Anna herself attaches much hope to the prospect that the ADOS test will finally help her getting on with life. However, to get the test, Anna needs a referral. The caseworker holding the referring authority assesses the situation in an email to Anna’s case coordinator: This means that even though the psychiatrist argues that Anna needs this test and that Anna’s counselor further emphasizes that Anna’s future prospects of education and employment hinge upon this test, the referring authority declines the request because the test according to a ‘sector responsibility regulation’ should not be carried out in the frame of drug treatment (where Anna’s current psychiatrist is institutionally based), but in another frame – which the referring authority, however, is unable to refer Anna to. Thus, due to bureaucratic technicalities, the test described by one welfare state authority (the psychiatrist) as a prerequisite for exiting dependency is declined by another welfare state authority (the caseworker), leaving Anna stuck. Anna’s counselor informs her about the declination and describes the following reaction: ‘Anna is disappointed but notes that she is used to not getting help’ (Counselor, case file).

When my observations ended, Anna was still waiting for answers that could help her on her way towards education and employment. Through her general practitioner, she had obtained a referral to yet another psychiatrist and expressed anxiousness regarding the assessment process:

In contrast to Anna and the welfare state professionals who see thorough assessment as the best way to help Anna getting started in education, Anna’s mother points to adverse consequences of the diagnoses and the psychiatric system: In Anna’s case file, a counselor similarly notes that Anna has a tendency to change the way she interprets and explains her difficulties depending on the diagnoses. For example, she notes that in one period Anna tends to explain everything with a ‘borderline vocabulary which she seemed to use as an excuse – “it’s all because I am borderline” – rather than for understanding’ (Counselor, case file), and when a new psychiatrist talks about Asperger’s syndrome, Anna immediately accepts that and starts to ‘enumerate a long list of symptoms of Asperger’s’ (Counselor, case file).

In summary, the psychiatric assessment and diagnosing of Anna was not completed in the period of observations. Further, across the perspectives represented by Anna, her mother and the welfare state professionals, the experience of wavering diagnoses was assessed to have adverse consequences by making Anna wait. From the age of 19 to the age of 24, Anna continuously waited for psychiatrists to reveal how ‘the nuts and bolts’ of her head work, as she hoped this would help her get started in education and move on in her life.

The third part of the analysis focus on how Anna pursues ways out of dependency. Anna expressed a desire to get out of the welfare system, and together with welfare state professionals she made several plans for how to achieve this. In the welfare system these plans often work as institutional requirements for access to support. For example, in a period when Anna was homeless, she was offered a place to live in supported housing targeting ‘youths that have difficulties in fulfilling demands of ordinary education or activation […] aiming to make the youths ready to enter education/employment’ (Youth worker, case file). Getting access to housing thereby required her to make a plan for how to get started in education.

While Anna in principle had a plan – or rather several plans such as ‘action plans’, ‘treatment plans’ and ‘education plans’ – she often felt it was difficult to believe in the plan(s). They were sketchy plans ‘on paper’ rather than plans that meant a difference in practice. In response to a caseworker’s question about how she imagines her future, Anna explained:

The caseworker encouraged Anna to believe that getting an education was possible. She also helped Anna get started in some preparation courses for youths seeking to get back in education and helped her with practical matters such as purchasing school equipment.

In contrast, Anna’s mother remained very sceptical of the plans Anna made in cooperation with welfare state professionals. In an interview, Anna’s mother recaps how she and her partner voiced their scepticism to Anna:

Despite her mother’s scepticism, Anna continued to see education as her way out of welfare state dependency, and in addition to waiting for a psychiatric assessment, Anna also waited for the system to approve a plan where she could start in ordinary education with aid provided through the welfare system. This would include financial support that would give her more money than the basic Danish student grant, and a mentor to help structure her time and homework.

After following her case for more than a year, Anna’s primary caseworker suggested that Anna could choose to stop waiting, and just start in education by herself. The following dialogue unfolded:

The extract reflects the ambivalence Anna experiences regarding the system. On the one hand, she wants out. On the other hand, she cannot picture managing by herself and she fears being left on her own to crash. One issue Anna frequently brings up is how financial matters tie her to the system; Anna fears poverty. As noted in her case file, Anna ‘experienced severe poverty as a child’ (Psychiatrist, case file) and even as a young adult Anna has had ‘experiences of having to steal food to avoid starvation’ (District psychiatrist, case file). Another aspect that holds her back is that she is not sure that she can fulfill the requirements necessary to get an education without extra help. Thus, while getting an ordinary education with the support of welfare state professionals is imaginable and believable to Anna, she does not believe she would succeed in education without special support.

In summary, the perception of ways out of welfare state dependency differs across perspectives. While Anna’s mother does not believe in education as the right path for Anna, Anna herself – encouraged by the welfare state professionals – does pursue this way to escape welfare dependency. However, to make the plan not only imaginable but also believable – ideally for all parties involved, i.e. including Anna’s mother – Anna needs a kind of support which she was still waiting for at the time the observations ended. The waiting intensified her experience of being stuck in the system and made it difficult to believe that the plans for education would ever be realized.

By studying the mechanisms of dependency in the everyday life of a recipient situated in a particular social and temporal context (Emirbayer 1997; Somers 1994), the case study presented in this paper illustrates why the question of whether welfare dependency is a life style choice is too simplistic. It demonstrates how Anna’s ‘choice’ of dependency is grounded in a multi-layered social, cultural and economic context that she has not chosen herself. Discarding this, one may still argue that Anna in principle chooses to depend on the welfare system but in practice she does not experience this as a real-world choice. Rather than choosing welfare dependency, she experiences herself as being stuck in the welfare system and this experience is driven by other forces than choices of preference. Specifically, the driving forces of welfare state dependency identified in this study are (1) hopelessness, (2) waiting time, and (3) lack of future plans with real-world plausibility.

The preoccupation we see in the public debate (Somers and Block 2005) with the question of whether welfare dependency reflects lifestyle choices, is closely related to assumptions about preferences that – following Heckman (1981) – dominate research on welfare dependency. The case study, in contrast, indicates that dependency has more to do with the lack of credible ways to exit the system than with preferences, and that the driving forces of welfare dependency have more to do with ‘how the welfare system works’ than with how recipients ‘work the system’. Overall, explaining welfare dependence in terms of preferences and capabilities to ‘work the system’ seems unsubstantiated on the basis of this study.

The theoretical explanations that are linked to the empirical phenomenon of welfare dependency have concrete and tangible consequences when they materialize in policy and practice (Danneris and Nielsen 2018). Explaining welfare dependency in terms of choices and preferences encourage policymakers and practitioners to approach welfare dependent people in ways intended to make welfare un-preferable. Indeed, within the last decade, a series of coercive, disciplining and sanctioning measures have been introduced to target welfare-dependent citizens in Denmark and other European welfare states (Caswell and Høybye-Mortensen 2015; Danneris 2018; Watts and Fitzpatrick 2018). Economic language and assumptions have the potential to ‘become self-fulfilling by shaping institutional designs and management practices, as well as social norms and expectations about behavior, thereby creating the behavior they predict.’ (Ferraro et al. 2005). Thus, regardless of whether the theoretical assumptions that welfare dependency is driven by preferences, prices and constraints are untrue, they may have very real consequences.

The social sciences must address the empirical question of what drives welfare state dependency in ways that are not only methodologically advanced but also theoretically sound. A deeper understanding of the empirical mechanisms will enable policymakers and citizens to consider the normative question of how to organize policies and practice related to welfare state dependency on a better informed basis. If, in fact, welfare state dependency is not driven by preferences, prices and constraints (Heckman 1981), but rather factors related to social relations (identity) and narrativity (meaning) (Emirbayer 1997; Somers 1994) then a sensible policy and practice would be to remove focus from the individual and instead focus on the welfare system itself. What is needed then are not measures that make welfare dependency un-preferable. Instead, we need measures that reduce waiting time and secure credible, hope-inducing future plans for vulnerable citizens. If we want European societies where people in need can depend on the welfare state, in line with ethics of care (Patrick 2014; Williams 2012), this may be what we should strive for.

I would like to thank Professor of Sociology Margaretha Järvinen (University of Copenhagen) for vital contributions to this paper and for long-term support, mentoring and inspiration. Prof. Dorte Caswell, Dr. Sophie Danneris and Dr. Stefan Bastholm Andrade also provided useful and much appreciated comments for this paper. Finally, I would like to thank the young people and the welfare state professionals who graciously enabled this research.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Ditte Andersen is a senior researcher at VIVE – The Danish Center for Social Science Research in Copenhagen. Her scholarship focuses on interaction between welfare state authorities and citizens with complex needs related to e.g. drug problems, homelessness and mental health. She primarily draws on ethnographic methodologies and is inspired by relational sociology, narrative theory and ethics of care. Her work is published in journals like Sociology of Health & Illness, Time & Society, Symbolic Interaction, Addiction Research & Theory, and ACTA Sociologica.

Ditte Andersenhttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-2085-3305