Researching welfare regimes from below – a comparative study on youth unemployment in Spain and Germany

Christoph Gille, University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf

Ute Klammer, University of Duisburg-Essen

1 Introduction

The focus of numerous works in comparative welfare state research – based on, and in critical scrutiny of Esping-Adersen’s ‘The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism’ (1990) – has been on the determination and distinction of various ‘regimes’ of regulation and the granting of benefits by welfare states in Europe. Regime research has been picked up in social work studies and substantially made fruitful by Andreas Walther, who, in his concept of life course regimes, particularly places the focus on the relationship between the individual and the society at transitions during the course of life (Walther 2005, 2011; Walther et al. 2016).

But what happens when regime analysis is combined with a perspective that puts everyday routines and the ways of thinking of addressees of social policy in its centre? How do welfare regimes look when analysed from such a perspective? The following study provides insights into such an approach by integrating regime analysis with actor-based methodologies, which have been developed by social work sciences.

Based on a study on young unemployed people in Spain and Germany, characteristics of the welfare regimes of both countries will be presented. Such an approach widens the regime analysis in two aspects: Firstly, practices and rationalisations reveal regime characteristics independently from their programmatical logics, which nevertheless constitute societal orders and their reproduction in everyday life. Secondly, regimes are analysed from an agency perspective. This reveals which contributions to personal agency are made by a regime, and which options and constraints are connected to it (Raitelhuber 2013). By focusing on relational agency, such a regime analysis can be a specific contribution of social work research to regime analysis, as we will outline in the next section.

2 Regime research and perspectives ‘from below’

Generally, the emphasis of regime research as developed by Esping-Anderson and others is on institutional structures and generalising benefits for typical hardships from a macro perspective. Therefore, regime analysis is often based on quantitative data and legislative regulations, for example by looking at public spending in different areas or by studying the rights to receive social benefits. Typical of such analysis is the examination of contribution of various spheres of welfare production, which are classically called the triad of market/state/private community. In this triad, social policy cannot be understood solely as a provider of social benefits but as an entity that regulates the relations of each of the spheres (Kaufmann 1991).

But additionally, regime analysis has always been aware of the importance of everyday practices and its significance when establishing “relatively stable, politically institutionalised arrangements of regulations” (Lessenich & Ostner 1998, p. 12). To show their importance, some researchers have been incorporating various dimensions in regime analyses. Walther, for example, distinguishes between the socio-economic, institutional, cultural and individual dimensions. Accordingly, regimes are seen as configurations that consist not only of rules and institutions, but also of ideas, norms and individual practices (Walther 2011, p. 84). From this perspective, attention is already drawn to individuals as producers and reproducers of social order. Ideas and practices in everyday life keep regimes relatively stable. Therefore, regime analysis has increasingly integrated qualitative data in recent years, for example when examining attitudes towards welfare state institutions (Goerres & Prinzen 2012; Ebbinghaus & Naumann 2018).

However, when it comes to labour market policies in general and youth unemployment in particular, regime research has so far been focused on the analysis of macro data and institutional regulations (e.g. Serrano Pascual 2007, Chevalier 2015, Dingeldey et al. 2017). To examine the deeper grammar of welfare capitalism, social work research might add an inspiring approach to this analysis. Over the last years, various approaches have been developed to look at institutions of social work (overviews: Graßhoff 2013; van Rießen & Jepkens 2020). They detach themselves from the unambiguous logics set by institutions by taking the angle of addressees of social work and social policy as the basis for their analysis. While coinciding in this perspective, they also display differences when looking at the specific methodological frames: While the ‘user approach’ by Oelerich & Schaarschuch (e. g. 2013) is based on service theory and puts processes of appropriations of service users at the centre, the ‘addressee’s approach’ by Graßhoff (e.g. 2015) focuses on matching relations and power constellations in social work institutions. A third, the ‘using approach’ by Bareis et al. (2015), which is grounded in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, applies a broad understanding of work and looks at what people have to do to constitute their participation in societal resources.

For the present study, these approaches are adapted to assert their relevance for regime analysis and therefore broader social policy research. Three aspects are especially relevant: First, to capture the social world, analysis is based on everyday life as the interface of objective structures and subjective meanings. It is therefore linked to the phenomenological and interactionist traditions of the lifeworld approach (Schütz & Luckmann 1973). Secondly, – following Thiersch and Böhnisch (2014, p. 24) – power relations are seen as inscribed in the structures of everyday life. Everyday routines offer relieving and stabilising practices while at the same time generating constraints, exploitations and exclusions. Thirdly, the chosen perspective draws special attention to the obstinacy of people when dealing with powerful structures. Following Bareis and Cremer-Schäfer (2013, p. 145), it poses the question of how people are utilising the scarce societal resources of welfare capitalistic figurations in their own manner. Their approach in particular points at the fact that everyday actions do not necessarily or rather do not even follow programmatic logics. Everyday life, critique and obstinacy mark central methodological aspects, which characterise the analyses undertaken here. Following Steinert’s and Pilgram’s (2003) cross-European research on living in European welfare capitalisms, such an approach can be labelled as ‘welfare state research from below’.

3 Methods

The empirical basis of the study is a series of narrative interviews with young unemployed people between 18 and 26 years of age in Spain and Germany. 53 were chosen for in-depth analysis, 28 in Spain and 25 in Germany (five others where disregarded since the interviewees eventually did not fulfil the requirements defined in the sampling process such as 6 months of unemployment or the age limit). The interviews contain a biographical first part and a second episodic part, which concentrates on manifestations of welfare policies in the everyday lives of the interviewees. The average duration of an interview is 83 minutes. The biographical and episodic narratives thus obtained a twofold testimony: On the one hand, they reveal the socially structured nature of biographies, on the other hand, they express biographical obstinacies. Therefore, the narrations are expressions of the interwoven relation of structure and agency.

The interviews were held in four waves from March 2014 until April 2016 in the Barcelona province (Spain) and in the Ruhr region (Germany). Spain and Germany were chosen for comparison since a couple of remarkable differences of both regimes were expected to be reflected in the actor-based analysis. On the one hand, the labour markets of the two countries were very differently hit by the multiple crises which began in 2008. These differences were reflected on the regional level, too: in Catalonia, the youth unemployment in 2015 was 42.3%, which means five times as high as in the Ruhr region with 8.9% (Gille 2019, p. 147-150). On the other hand, Spain and Germany provided very different public answers on youth unemployment. While in 2015, people below the age of 25 in Catalonia as in most of Spain almost never had access to social provisions, in Germany, young unemployed generally were entitled to unemployment benefits. But despite these differences, both countries (and regions, too) implemented a number of active labour market policies addressing young unemployed. Both countries have been part of the shift towards activation in the social policy affecting great parts of Europe over the last three decades (Serrano-Pascual 2007). Some institutional features and their relevance from an actor-based perspective will be further explained in sections 4 to 6.

The sampling of the interviews followed the logics of contrasting cases. Besides the differences in how the young people coped with unemployment, various socio-demographic features show significant differences in the sampling (table 1). As an additional factor, half the interviews were conducted with young people who were taking part in programs of active labour market policies at the time they were interviewed. In Germany, they took part in programs based on §45 of the third social code and in Catalonia in the labour market program “Joves per l´Ocupació”. The other half of the interviews were conducted with young adults outside of such programs in order to analyse narrations both with and without the influence of such institutions.

Table 1: Sample

Spain 28 young unemployed (21,6 years)						Germany 25 young unemployed (average 22,2 years)
young men: 13			Young woman: 15			young men: 12			young woman: 13
without degree: 9	low degree: 6		middle degree: 5		high degree: 8	without degree: 7	low degree: 7		middle degree: 5		high degree: 6
autochthonous: 10		migratory background: 6		other nationality: 12		autochthonous: 12		migratory background: 5		other nationality: 8

Overall, the analysis followed the principles of the grounded theory (Strauss 1987; Strauss & Corbin 1990). The guiding question for analysis of the narrations was which forms of agency are displayed and how these forms are interconnected with the social constellations the young unemployed people are living in. During the process of open coding, a distinction was made between the three spheres of welfare production: Market/state/private communities. Additionally, following ideas by Strauss and Winker & Degele (2009), three different dimensions were distinguished when coding: A dimension of personal coping, a symbolic and an institutional dimension. Results from the first dimension (personal coping) were taken as a basis to identify six central agency modes of young unemployed people in Germany and Spain.

It is the symbolic and institutional dimension, which were particularly relevant when analysing both regimes and on which we will therefore concentrate in the following sections. Both dimensions are included and combined in the process of axial coding, which led to central features of the respective welfare regimes. Therefore, the identified features show aspects of organisational-institutional formations and cultural rationalisation (Kessl 2013, pp. 149–152), which are brought together from the perspective of the young unemployed people. 17 characteristics were identified when analysing the welfare regimes of Spain and Germany employing the perspective of young unemployed people (Gille 2019, p. 356). They are structured along the trias market/state/private community, while the dimensions are closely related.

In the next three paragraphs, we will provide examples of some of the regime characteristics. We will focus on the absent (Spain) and assigning state (Germany), the market as a lottery (Spain) and the subjectivation of unemployment (Germany) as well as compulsory (Spain) and optional communities (Germany). When outlining the characteristics, we will give paradigmatic examples from the interviews. These quotes give insights into both the “rationalisations” as well as the “formations” of the regimes. Where it seems necessary, we will provide short insights into those institutional features that are relevant to the young unemployed people in both countries and are reflected in the narrations. The way that both sides of the coin – rationalisations and formations – merge has to be considered to understand how the regimes are reproduced by institutions and actors at the same time.

4 Public spheres: Absence and assignation

In Spain, the absent welfare state in the narratives of young unemployed people can be seen above all in the widespread absence of mentioning of state institutions and programs. This absence is effective even when young unemployed people do access public services and institutions. Khalid, for example, reports as follows:

“At the moment I work, I work for an electrician, with electricity and as a janitor and so on. And ... I did a course here and they took me. I did a job interview, and it went very well, and they took me and so on. And now I'm working.”

Although it sounds different, the work Khalid reports on is not regular employment, but a public program of active labour policy, in which he will be trained in labour market-related skills both in educational courses and through internships. He receives financial support of around 250 Euros for his participation in the six-month program. But the public character of his employment is no longer apparent in his narrative. He speaks of a “job interview”, of the fact that he has been “taken” and is now “working”.

Narrations like this, which can be found throughout the Spanish sample, refer to the weak institutions of Spain’s sub-protectionist welfare state, where young adults have no independent social rights. Both the social provisions of the central government and the autonomous communities, which do not entitle all older unemployed people either, widely exclude those under 25 years of age. Between 2014 and 2017, just a little over 50% of all unemployed people who were registered with the labour office received any form of federal government assistance, and the percentage of people under 25 years of age dropped to around 3% of those entitled to benefits (SEPE 2020; MSSSI 2018). From instruments of basic subsistence allowances that are run by autonomous communities, individuals under 25 years of age are excluded by law. The “Youth Guarantee” adopted by the European Council in 2013 has changed little when it comes to the weak endowment of young adults with social rights. In Catalonia, the “Youth Guarantee” was detailed in the Inserjoves plan, which extended FEM and JOVES, the two most important training programs of its active labour market policy, from 3,500 places in 2013 to about 5,500 in 2015. The limited range of that measure becomes evident in view of the number of young unemployed people: 115,000 persons under 25 years of age were registered in 2015, and the numbers of those not registered isn't even included (for further discussion see Rodríguez-Soler & Verd 2018; Cabasés Piqué & Pardell Veà 2014).

As a consequence of this widespread absence of state instruments, the logics of the other regimes’ spheres override welfare state institutions – as in the example of Khalid where the logics of the market become effective in everyday constructions. In other cases, it is the logics of private communities that override public regulations, for example when reciprocity and loyalty become the determining principles in dealing with state institutions.

In Germany, on the other hand, state instruments are not constructed as unconditional guarantors of social rights but are instead linked to the positioning practices of the labour administration across all interviews. There are numerous moments in which young unemployed people implicitly or explicitly refer to allocations to precarious or devalued segments of the labour market, such as the following by Julia:

“Then they said: Yes, you wanted to do gastronomy and so we picked out Burger King and McDonald's and so on. I said: Yeah, no, of course. I didn't want something like that. I really wanted to do something in a restaurant. And, yeah, it didn't work out that way.”

There are matching correspondences in the formations: Through the state-supported expansion of the precarious labour market segment (e.g. through mini-jobs and temporary work), through profiling and the division into “customer groups” at the employment agency and through the “historically new disciplinary regime” (Dörre et al. 2013, p. 377) in force since 2005, the allocations are institutionally generated. And while young unemployed people from the lower classes have to accept these derogatory allocations if they are dependent on social benefits, young unemployed people from the upper classes quite naturally elude such positioning:

“I mean, I'm not officially registered as unemployed. Um, because I'm very scared of this, when I get money, I must accept the jobs they offer me. The catch is to get out of this (...) then I will end up where I feel I am now. Er, yes, with (!) other work experience, but no relevant work experience.”

Like Caro, who doesn't associate “relevant work experience” with the assignments given to her and thus sees her social position threatened, none of the young adults from the higher classes are claiming benefits. The German welfare state thus no longer guarantees the universal character of social rights from the point of view of the actors involved; instead, it consolidates social inequality that is visible to all.

5 Market spheres: lottery and subjectivation

Following the financial crisis, the market lost its meaning as guarantor of economic stability. While an annual average of 20 million people was employed in 2007, the number dropped to 16.9 million in 2013. The unemployment rate tripled during the same time. The flourishing and collapse of the Spanish job market are closely linked to the dynamics of the European institutional structure and the financial markets, especially visible in the boom and crash of the construction industry, where about 1.6 million jobs were destroyed in the crisis (Banyuls & Recio 2012). Young people were most affected by the crisis; their unemployment rate was above 50% between 2012 and 2014. 1.9 million young people aged between 16 and 29 years lost their jobs in the period from 2008 to 2012. Additionally, unemployment statistics even understated the extent of youth unemployment: The decreasing ratio of the economically active population among people younger than 25 from 48 to 33% indicated that more and more young people evaded the threat of unemployment by extending their training periods (all numbers INE 2020). As a result, in the everyday rationalisations, the market is no longer seen to be following the alleged principles of competition, supply and demand but is instead structured by the principles of a lottery. Murad tells:

“Nooo, you don’t have to do anything, it’s just luck, you get it? (…) Look, I’ve thrown in many applications and no one called me. But someone else in my situation sure put in an application and they called him, you know? You don’t have to do anything, it is, what do I know, someone simply has to bet on me, you understand?”

Like all other unemployed people, Murad relies on “luck” and can only improve his chances of getting a job by the aimless and mass “throwing in” (tirar) of applications and the supposed increase in his chances of getting a job. This principle of the lottery applies across all classes; it applies equally to all unemployed people. While the risk of young people with low educational qualifications becoming unemployed is about five to six times higher than that of young people with high educational qualifications in Germany, in Spain it is only about twice as high and is further distorted by the different ways of remaining in the education moratorium (Eurostat 2020, LFS and youth series). The chance of being unemployed is therefore very high across all classes.

As a result, the myth of the labour market as a system of supply and demand is being challenged from an actor's perspective, but not without creating a new myth: Participation in the gambling labour market provides hope and thus is the basis for remaining capable of action in the present. Murad says elsewhere: “If you are positive and think well about it, you will follow your path. Because then you think optimistically, and you get organised.” Bourdieu (1977/2000, p. 67) has already observed the faith in fate that can be seen here in the sub-proletariat of the Algerian transitional society, whose entire existence seems to be “under the star of the random and arbitrary”. And it is this belief in fate that is able to establish the capacity to act in the here and now. The lottery describes a modern myth, a rationalisation that denies its own influence on the social world but nevertheless offers an orientation to act, which allows the young unemployed people to shape the present. In this way, belief in the lottery becomes a necessary social institution to continue to act in the here and now.

In Germany, on the other hand, the principle of competition as the determining moment of the market in everyday constructions remains valid. This is accompanied by the characteristics of individualisation and rigorous subjectivation of unemployment, which are also supported in the formations by the numerous labour market policy programs for young unemployed people. In recent years, the various programs of the so-called transitional sector have identified some 300,000 beginners who have contributed to the individualising logic (BMBF 2018, p. 68). In Caro’s narrative, such individualising and subjectifying logics supported in the formations are clearly evident:

“When I think of the bad, then it is immediately this incredibly unsatisfactory and I don't want to say everyday, (...) but is very much this, when I call it failure, then it gets so real, but yes, this failure to find a job. And the question why. Um, which I can't answer, which is always there and increases the doubts. Well, no, am I not enough, it is not enough what I've done. What am I doing wrong, I must be doing something wrong, because there are jobs out there.”

Her question of “why” is answered first and foremost by looking at herself. As in other narratives, the subjectivation of unemployment results in an individual responsibility for permanent self-optimisation – regardless of what formal qualifications already exist. Thus, a new myth is revealed here, too, which is created by the everyday actors and enables them to act in the here and now. The young unemployed people in Germany only have to find the individual “failure” or the appropriate additional qualification, regardless of the social situation, in order to succeed in integrating into the labour market. On the basis of such regime constructions, this new myth also finds a logical consequence in certain agency modes, in which accessible knowledge and resources coagulate and structure everyday life. In the empirical results, they are marked with the titles “training” or “work at every price”.

6 Private spheres: communities as obligation or option

Because the market and the state in Spain do not provide sufficient security for young people, the private community – partners, the (extended) family, the circle of friends, the clique – becomes a guarantor of social security and thus of the ability to act. However, the private communities do not necessarily prove to be altruistically solidary environments: Agonic gifts must be affordable (Adloff 2006). Particularly where living conditions are marked by poverty, exploitive relationships can be constituted by instrumental expectations of reciprocity – whether within the communities or outside them, e.g. through the obligation to accept precarious jobs. And other relations of domination, often male dominance, are established through the obligation to be instructed, too. Thus, fundamental rights violating orders – e. g. lock ins, lock outs and physical violence – are found in a very large number of the interviews. The denial of social rights makes it very difficult for young unemployed people to escape such conditions, and the community becomes an obligation. Maria speaks of an episode in which the dilemma becomes clear:

“So it's been like this for two years (...), I argue with him, my grandmother comes up 'I'm going to call the women´s helpline because you hit my granddaughter'. I have my whole body full of bruises from the beatings, because he hits me, I go outside and I yell at her, I yell at her. 'You're crazy! There's no reason to get involved in this. He and I are fighting here, not you, you understand?'”

Maria refuses to interfere with the violence in her domestic relationship. In an environment where financial resources are scarce, ensuring loyalty within her community is worth more than the redemption of fundamental rights. Only in the obligatory community – whether violent or not – does it seem possible to cope with and shape everyday life.

In Germany, the integration into private communities presents itself differently. It is true that violent situations can also be found there. Nevertheless, the reference to a state that in many cases does grant social rights changes the relationship to exploitative or violent private contexts. This is shown, for example, by an excerpt from the story of Nadine, who was violently and sexually abused and locked up by her boyfriend:

“By the time my ex-boyfriend threatened to beat me up again, I'd just get punched in the face and everything. .. And... That was the time when he went to bed and I really thought to myself ... he's sleeping now, pack your clothes, get out. This is the time when you can change your whole life. So that's what I did. I went to a friend's house and... with the clothes I had on... And they took me straight to the women's shelter. And, yes... the women's shelter wasn't that great either, I left there immediately, ... because ... it was ... pretty terrible there. ... and yes, I just stayed with a friend for a while, ... and, ... yes. For a short or a longer time, then I found a flat, ... where I'm currently living.”

Nadine and her friend access the women’s shelter as a matter of course – and no explanation seems necessary to the interviewer. Similar and perhaps even more revealing is her talk about the flat she found. The financing of this flat is guaranteed by a legal obligation and even this does not need to be brought up separately. The rights of the welfare state act as a normalisation foil in front of which everyday life and the ability to act can relax. The matter-of-course (even if there are still major hurdles associated with claiming them) with which young unemployed people in the German regime assert their rights in the face of exploitation or violence can be found in a series of similar episodes. From an actor’s perspective, community in interaction with the mediating state appears as an option that can be revoked if one’s own rights are endangered.

7 Conclusion

To look at welfare regimes from below proves to be a beneficial perspective, especially with regard to three aspects. First, such research enriches regime analysis with insights from an actor-based angle. Some of the results coincide with dominant political rationalisations (Taylor-Gooby et al. 2017), others don't. From this angle, the discourse of the “activating” welfare state, for example (Klammer et al. 2019, p. 6), simply shows no relevance. Instead, the Spanish regime is characterised by the denial of social rights and the absent state. Even programs such as those propagated in the so-called “Youth Guarantee” turn into a farce, because from the point of view of the young unemployed people, there can be no question of a guarantee of social rights. Instead, the rhetoric use discredits welfare state principles and thus increases mistrust of political representation. In Germany, welfare state benefits exist – but they are accompanied by allocations that reinforce inequality. Contrary to the programmatic rhetoric, state interventions from the everyday understanding of social welfare are by no means based on the self-activities of young unemployed people. Instead, in the better case they act as paternalistic and in the worst case as openly pejorative interventions in everyday life, e.g. by assigning them to the growing precarious segment of the labour market.

Secondly, it is shown that aspects of regime construction by the young unemployed people – such as the lottery or rigorous subjectivation – can also contribute to the stability of the regimes and to the associated exclusions. They represent “regular social practices” (Giddens 1984/1997, p. 77) that support the continuity of the welfare capitalist figuration and create contexts from which capacity for action can be drawn. By doing that, they conceal, legitimise and reinforce the socially produced inequalities. Results show that social work on the one hand is involved in such dynamics: When they are part of labour market programs, social work can strengthen the ideas of lottery or subjectivation and by doing that, it negates the social conditions of the production of unemployment (further discussion see Sánchez Casineira 2019; Gottwald & Sowa 2019). On the other hand, to paraphrase Willis (1977/2013, p. 292), it can contribute to the demystification of everyday life and make its doxa accessible – in research as well as in practice.

Thirdly, actor-based regime research can be used to make transnational aspects of welfare capitalist transformation clear. In this way, it can also contribute to overcoming, at least partially, methodological nationalism (Wimmer & Glick Schiller 2002). The agency of young unemployed people is influenced by changes of capitalism and the welfare state, which affect both places. On the one hand, the effects of a changed market organisation, which is characterised by increasing financialisation, commodification and precarisation, can be seen in both countries. The crisis of gainful employment in Spain cannot be explained without trans-nationalised financial capitalism. And while Spain has experienced downsides since 2008, Germany has even been able to benefit in the following years from the multiple crises, among other things through the depreciation of the Euro and interest rate savings. Although the concrete situation of the labour markets in Spain and Germany has been fundamentally different in subsequent years, the underlying order is the same. Additionally, the social-political transformations associated with this change are also reflected in the new type of transnational austerity state in both countries (Streeck 2015).

Due to these changes, the social rights of young unemployed people have been eroded in recent years in both Spain and Germany. In the worst case, this downsizing can lead to exploitations and endangerments of basic rights in private communities, which is very visible in the cases of Maria and Nadine. The precarisation of a considerable segment of the labour market in both countries is consolidated by the welfare provisions: In Spain by the simple lack of social rights, in Germany by the state allocations. And while young unemployed people without material resources must accept being placed in these segments, young unemployed from richer backgrounds can withdraw from such allocations. As a consequence, social polarisation is being consolidated in both Spain and Germany. Especially since young people are again among the first affected as first numbers from the 2020 Covid-19 crisis show, it will be necessary to analyse whether the effects of this new crisis will lead to similar effects or policy measures will be taken to counter such developments.

Finally, empirical analysis shows that young unemployed people in both regimes develop similar ways of coping to establish agency (Gille 2019, pp. 210-274). On the one hand, this is related to the described similar effects of transnational developments on national regimes. On the other hand, it shows that coping mechanisms are influenced by socioeconomic positions within the regimes, for instance along the lines of class/gender/race. As a consequence, young unemployed people in Spain and Germany have similar opportunities to establish agency when they are in comparable positions. Thus, it is not only the differences that become apparent through the actor-based exploration of welfare capitalist regimes, but above all the convergences and commonalities of a globalised world that emerge in different places and in spite of different features of the welfare state and social protection schemes. By making such findings available, actor-based research, if focusing on international comparisons, can contribute to breaking down the veiled separation between transnational markets on the one hand and national social policy on the other.

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Author´s Address:
Christoph Gille
Department of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf
Münsterstr. 156, 40476 Düsseldorf
christoph.gille@hs-duesseldorf.de

Author´s Address:
Ute Klammer
Institute of Work, Skills and Qualification (IAQ), University of Duisburg-Essen
Lotharstr. 65, 47057 Duisburg
ute.klammer@uni-due.de