Navigating indifference: Irish jobseekers’ experiences of welfare conditionality

Abstract

Abstract This paper analyses the impact of the intensification of work-related conditionality on the lived experience of jobseekers in Ireland. Post-crisis Ireland has witnessed the emergence of a definitive policy trajectory which seeks to enable a lifelong attachment to the labour force through work-related conditionality buttressed by sanctions. This mode of governing unemployment attempts a restructuring of the caseworker–claimant relationship through increased engagement, claimant adherence to mandatory conditions, and surveillance underpinned by potential reduction, suspension or loss of benefit. The paper provides a qualitative investigation of the lived experience of this impact through a thematic analysis of forty-two interviews with jobseekers in a county in the east of Ireland. The focus on the agency of jobseekers illustrates a system based on superficial engagement in which conditionality primarily operates as bureaucratic formality. This is reflective of a systemic indifference to claimants’ needs and circumstances, producing a performance of feigned compliance in response.