Basic Income as an Emerging Strategic Action Field? A qualitative investigation of the actors and discussions shaping the concept of basic income. Master Thesis Graduate: Bontu Lucie Guschke Student Nr: 107113 Signature: _______________________________ University: Copenhagen Business School Programme: MSocSc Organizational Innovation and Entrepreneurship Submission Date: 15.05.2018 Supervisor: Prof. Ester Barinaga Pages: 77 Characters: 181,600 Acknowledgements One could say that underneath all the layers of arguments and claims for a basic income lies the shared fundamental conviction that people care about each other and that they want to help and support each other. While I can only hope that this holds true for most of humanity, I can certainly say that it does for the people who surrounded me throughout the process of producing and writing this thesis. I learned a lot in this process and am proud to hold the final version of months of work in my hands. Yet, I know that this would have never been possible without the generous and unconditional support from a certain group of people. First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Ester Barinaga for her continuous support throughout the last months, her constant on-point feedback and for all the engaging and motivating discussions. Not only did she guide me through the process of this work, but she encouraged me to explore a field of research that deeply intrigued me and inspired me to pursue research in a way that greatly motivates me to continue exploring the area of academic work in my future career. I would also like to thank everyone who discussed the idea of basic income with me, who sent me newly published articles and reports about it, and who kept questioning my ideas and thoughts. The field of basic income is gaining increasing attention and it would not have been possible to navigate all the overlapping developments without this support. I would have never been able to see all the different perspectives on the field and constantly develop my ideas if it was not for the inspirational input of these people. Last but not least, my deep gratitude goes to my friends and family who never stopped supporting me. Special thanks goes to my ‘thesis team’ Chris, Ida, Anne, Paula, Dragoş, André and Breno, who in endless debates, in hour-long writing sessions as well as over much needed community dinners helped me through all ups and downs. They kept encouraging me whenever I was in doubt, inspired me when I was stuck and without their unconditional help and support the last months would just not have been the same. Thank you! Bontu Lucie Guschke Copenhagen, May 2018 I Abstract Triggered by the fear of mass unemployment, growing inequality and consistent challenges to combat poverty, discussion about basic income as a possible future perspective increasingly enter the debate between social activists, researchers, politicians, as well as the general public. However, most people who debate the idea of basic income have their own conception of the phenomenon and some of those conceptions are quite dissimilar. There has been extensive academic research on basic income. Yet, studies are commonly concerned with normative, theoretical, or empirical evidence-based arguments for or against the concept, while there is a lack of research that aims at understanding these dissimilarities by studying the field of basic income. This thesis sets out to investigate the actors who shape the concept of basic income as they discuss it and organize around it. The study further examines in how far the field of basic income constitutes an emerging strategic action field. The field is investigated inductively, yet employing Fligstein and McAdam’s (2015) theory of fields as a framework that helps scrutinize the different actors, their position in the field and their ability to act. Based upon a qualitative analysis of more than 65 pages of text from different sources, published mainly in the last three years (2016-2018) by and about the most important actors, the thesis finds that the field of basic income is rather fractured. It discovers that dominant actors in the field can most visibly be classified along their different perception and proclamation of who will benefit from a basic income. Underneath that, they vary in terms of their underlying conceptualization of the relationship between work and income. The study suggests that, even though the idea of basic income brings together a variety of different actors, these actors did not succeed yet to create a shared identity in the field. The concept of boundary reactivation is developed to explain that this identity creation is needed to reactivate a new boundary around the concept of basic income to build a stable strategic action field (SAF). The implications of the study are three-fold. First, it proposes actors in the field of basic income to re-consider their strategies in the field in order to reactivate a new boundary around basic income as a SAF. Second, it encourages researchers to further investigate different angles of basic income as an emerging field. Third, it contributes to SAF theory by offering a more nuanced understanding of the process of field emergence. Key words: Basic Income, UBI, Strategic Action Fields, Field Emergence II Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................................. I ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................................ II INDEX OF TABLES .......................................................................................................................................... V 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND ................................................................................................................................... 4 1.2. ACADEMIC RESEARCH ON BASIC INCOME AND RESEARCH AIM OF THIS STUDY ............................................ 10 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ............................................................................................................... 12 2.1. A THEORY OF STRATEGIC ACTION FIELDS ........................................................................................................... 13 2.2. STRATEGIC ACTION FIELD THEORY IN THE CONTEXT OF INSTITUTIONAL THEORY AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES ........................................................................................................................................................ 18 2.3. EXTENDING AND CRITICIZING STRATEGIC ACTION FIELD THEORY ................................................................. 22 3. METHODOLOGY ....................................................................................................................................... 25 3.1. RESEARCH PARADIGM ............................................................................................................................................. 26 3.2. METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH AND STUDY DESIGN .......................................................................................... 28 3.3. TEXT COLLECTION AND DATA GENERATION ....................................................................................................... 29 3.4. DATA ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................................................................ 32 3.5. SETTING ..................................................................................................................................................................... 34 4. ORDER AND DISORDER IN THE BASIC INCOME FIELD – FINDINGS FROM ANALYSING THE DATA ................................................................................................................................................................ 39 4.1. A COMMON FRAME ACROSS THE FIELD OF BASIC INCOME ................................................................................ 39 4.2. BASIC INCOME FOR THE DISADVANTAGED – THE EMANCIPATORY VIEW ...................................................... 42 4.2.1. Commonalities .................................................................................................................................................. 42 4.2.2. Distinctions ......................................................................................................................................................... 44 4.3. BASIC INCOME FOR MOST PEOPLE PAID FOR BY THE VERY RICH – THE REDISTRIBUTION VIEW ............... 47 4.3.1. Commonalities .................................................................................................................................................. 47 4.3.2. Distinctions ......................................................................................................................................................... 48 4.4. BASIC INCOME FOR ALL IN SOCIETY – THE FREEDOM AND EGALITARIAN VIEW ........................................... 52 4.4.1. Commonalities .................................................................................................................................................. 52 4.4.2. Distinctions ........................................................................................................................................................