Confronting Unemployment in a Street-Level Bureaucracy: Jobcentre Staff and Client Perspectives
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Confronting Unemployment in a Street-Level Bureaucracy: Jobcentre staff and client perspectives Sharon Elizabeth Wright Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Applied Social Science University of Stirling 2003 Declaration I declare that none of the work contained within this thesis has been submitted for any other degree at any other university. The contents found herein have been composed by the candidate, Sharon Elizabeth Wright. Acknowledgements A debt of gratitude goes to my supervisors, Angus Erskine and Ian McIntosh, for their continual support, advice and guidance. Thank you for never letting me down. This research would not have been possible without the participation of the members of staff and unemployed people who allowed me to observe them and ask endless silly questions. In particular, I would like to thank Jim for all the time that he gave for the research and the efforts that he made to ensure that things ran smoothly. Thanks go to those in Stirling who inspired me and helped me through the long years: Rhoda, Jacqueline, Ruth, Katrina and Gill. I’m going to miss those cake breaks. And to my soul mates at Warwick who have aided and abetted, shared food and drink and helped me to laugh in the face of PhD adversity: Alan, Michael, Alison, Joan and Anne. Thank you for providing relief from the fatigue and strength to carry on. To the friends and family who have kept reminding me that life is about more than getting a PhD - thank you for everything you have done, for the laughs we’ve had and for knowing when not to mention it: Mum and Dad, Julia, Simon and Rachael, Cathy and Giles, Helen, Jane, Erica and Graeme. And most importantly, to Kris who has suffered most and longest. You managed to be there even when I wasn’t there and to understand in a way that nobody else could. Thank you for giving me the confidence to take a fall. It’s finally time to drink that bottle of wine and have a holiday. Abstract This thesis presents an account of the roles played by social actors in the implementation of unemployment policy in the UK. Lipsky’s (1980) theory of street-level bureaucracy has been adopted, updated to the contemporary context of the managerial state (Clarke & Newman, 1997) and developed in the specific case of the Jobcentre. The analysis is based on data collected during an ethnographic investigation of one case study Jobcentre office in Central Scotland. The methods consisted of six months of direct observation, interviews with 48 members of Jobcentre staff, semi-structured interviews with 35 users and analysis of notified vacancies and guidance documents. The argument is that front-line workers re-create policy as they implement it. They do so in reaction to a series of influences, constraints and incentives. Users therefore receive a service that is a modified version of the official policy. Users do not necessarily accept the policy that they are subjected to. They do not identify with the new managerialist notion of customer service because as benefit recipients they are denied purchasing power, choice and power. Unemployment policy is not delivered uniformly or unilaterally because front-line staff are active in developing work habits that influence the outcomes of policy. Policy is accomplished by staff in practice by categorising users into client types. This is significant because staff represent the state to the citizen in their interaction. Users are also active in accomplishing policy, whether they conform with, contest, negotiate or co- produce policy. Understanding what unemployment policy actually is, and what it means to people, depends on understanding these social processes by which policy emerges in practice. Contents Abstract Chapter One Introduction 1 Research Questions 5 Outline of Chapters 5 Chapter Two Street-level Bureaucracy: policy 9 implementation from front-line staff and user perspectives Introduction 9 Making and Implementing Policy 10 Policy making 11 Policy implementation 12 Delivering Policy 14 Discretion 19 Informal Discretion 22 Rule Breaking 23 Categorisation 26 People-processing 27 People-changing 29 Rationing 30 Gatekeepers 35 Users and the Implementation of Policy 35 Users and street-level bureaucracy 37 Users and the Accomplishment of Policy 38 Users and policy making 42 User participation 42 Co-producing Policy 44 Conclusion 46 Chapter Three The Policy Context: UK 49 unemployment policy and the role of the Jobcentre Introduction 49 The History and Development of the Jobcentre – Past and 50 Present Roles Current role of the Jobcentre 63 Trends in Benefits for the Unemployed – Towards Active 64 Labour Market Policies Active Labour Market Policies 68 Conclusion 73 Chapter Four Methodology 77 Introduction 78 An interpretivist approach to social policy research 77 An inductive approach 80 Data Collection 81 Access 82 Observation 83 Field Roles 86 Field Relations 87 Impression Management 93 Balance of Power 95 Staff interviews 97 Staff Characteristics 98 Sex 98 Age 99 Grade 100 Interviews with unemployed Jobcentre users 101 Sex 104 Age 104 Postal Claimants 105 New Deal 105 Duration of Unemployment 105 Usual Occupation 107 Documentary analysis 109 Vacancies 109 Analysis 110 Rigor 112 Validity and Reliability 112 Triangulation 114 Safeguards 116 Ethical Concerns 118 Informed Consent 118 Anonymity and confidentiality 120 Conclusion 121 Chapter Five Re-creating Unemployment Policy 122 Introduction 122 Example One – Signing On 123 Official Policy 123 Front-line Practice 124 Pressure 127 Example Two – Job Matching 130 Official Policy 130 Front-line Practice 131 Rationing Vacancies 132 Submission Limits 137 Matching Section 139 Pressure 145 Caseloads 148 Example Three – The New Deal 150 Official Policy 150 Front-line Practice 151 Pressure 153 Staff resistance 155 Conclusion 159 Chapter Six Receiving Unemployment Policy: 165 users, customers or citizens? Introduction 165 Lack of Choice 167 Becoming a client 168 Customer Service 176 User demand for vacancies 181 Mismatch between Vacancies Sought and Vacancies 184 Advertised Restrictions 192 Local Vacancies 193 Hours of work 194 Temporary work 195 Rate of pay 196 Lack of Control 200 Having to wait 202 Lack of privacy 204 Lack of Purchasing Power 205 Conclusion 209 Chapter Seven Accomplishing Unemployment 213 Policy: staff roles and the categorisation of clients Introduction 213 Constructions of Client ‘Types’: classification and ‘people- 214 processing’ (Prottas, 1979) Administrative Categorisation: the process of constructing 216 clients Becoming a client 216 Coaching Users 218 Occupational classification and previous work experience 221 Moral Categorisations: constructing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ clients 225 ‘Good’ Clients 226 ‘Bad’ Clients 230 ‘Wasters’ 230 The Unemployables: ‘They’re useless some of them’ 233 ‘Nutters’ and ‘Numpties’: the benefits and costs of non- 237 compliance Controlling Clients 239 The ‘Hoity-Toity’ ‘Snooty’ Ones 246 The ‘At it’ Label 248 Ambivalence and the categorisation process 248 Conclusion 251 Chapter Eight Accomplishing Policy: users’ roles 257 in compliance, contestation, negotiation and co- production Introduction 257 Policy accomplishment as a two-way process: compliance 258 and contestation Complying with policy 259 Contesting policy 260 Staff reactions to problems or complaints 260 Trouble 261 Accomplishing and negotiating the ‘actively seeking work’ 263 condition The Jobseeker’s Agreement 266 Widening the job search 272 The ‘Looking for Work’ form 278 Co-producing Policy 285 Conclusion 289 Chapter Nine Conclusions 296 Implications for Recent Policy Developments 306 Emerging Research Agenda 312 Bibliography 317 Appendices One Staff Interview Schedule Two Interview Schedule for Jobcentre Clients Three Employment Service Staff Characteristics Four Guidance for Fortnightly Jobsearch Reviews Five Example of a Typical Vacancy Card Six Conditions of entitlement to Jobseeker’s Allowance in 1998 List of Tables and Charts Table One: Extent of ‘Plus-ups’ in One Jobcentre Office, October and 144 November 1998 Table Two: Notified Vacancies Compared with Occupation Sought by 188 SOC Group, August-October 1998 Table Three: Hours of Work by Type of Contract for Local Vacancies 195 Table Four: Rates of Pay for Local Vacancies 197 Chart One: % of Vacancies for Full-time and Part-time Work 194 Chart Two: % of Vacancies for Permanent or Temporary Work 194 Chapter One Introduction Having their roots in the welfare to work policies of the USA and being embraced more recently by European member states, active labour market policies have become increasingly popular. A widespread trend towards active labour market policies as a response to unemployment has been identified (Clasen, 1999, Lødemel & Trickey, 2001, Sarfati & Bonoli, 2002, Sinfield, 2001). Often, the impact of these policies has been evaluated at a macro level. By contrast, with the premise that ‘policies cannot be understood in isolation from the means of their execution’ (Elmore, 1978: 185), this thesis provides a micro level analysis of unemployment policy in practice. The argument is that policy does not fully exist until the social actors who deliver and receive policy bring it into being. Implementation is not simply a peripheral matter of technicality or practicality, but is central to understanding the constitution of what policies are and what they mean to people. The emphasis is, therefore, on how service delivery is accomplished and emerges in practice, through social interaction. The research presented in this thesis is designed to explore both sides of the contemporary staff-user relationship through an ethnographic case study of one UK Jobcentre office. 1 It was Lipsky’s (1980) theory of street-level bureaucracy (based on the USA in the 1970s) that sparked interest in the role of front-line workers as policy makers. However, this has come to be a neglected perspective (Hudson, 1993), particularly, it would seem, in the UK context1. With the important exception of Blackmore’s (2001, also see Finn et al., 1998) study of the Stricter Benefit Regime, little has been written recently about the street-level implementation of social security.