Punish, protect or redirect? Synthesising workfare with ‘spatially Keynesian’ labour market policies in times of job loss

Journal article


Barnes, Tom. (2023). Punish, protect or redirect? Synthesising workfare with ‘spatially Keynesian’ labour market policies in times of job loss. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. 55(4), pp. 871-889. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X221140891
AuthorsBarnes, Tom
Abstract

The relationship between job loss and workfare has been well documented. Workers who lose jobs, including long-term careers in previously secure employment, enter systems of workfare that churn them through precarious jobs in return for meagre income support. But the relationship between workfare and alternative systems of labour market assistance rolled out before job loss is less understood. To shed new light on this issue, this article critically analyses an attempt to synthesise two labour market policies implemented in response to the closure of Australia's automotive manufacturing industry in 2017. The first policy was an altruistic, spatially Keynesian response to deindustrialisation; the second policy was based on Australia's notoriously punitive system of workfare. The article asks: how was it possible to synthesise systems framed in mutually incompatible terms? This question can be addressed, it argues, by deploying an Agency-Structure-Institutions-Discourse (ASID) approach to understand how and why these labour market policies were hybridised. The article's results are instructive in a ‘post-pandemic’ environment in which opportunities to rollout alternatives to workfare will be forced to contend with resurgent workfare states.

Keywordsagency; ASID; deindustrialisation; job loss; redundancy; workfare
Year2023
JournalEnvironment and Planning A: Economy and Space
Journal citation55 (4), pp. 871-889
PublisherSAGE Publications
ISSN1472-3409
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X221140891
Scopus EID2-s2.0-85143830210
Page range871-889
FunderAustralian Research Council (ARC)
Publisher's version
License
All rights reserved
File Access Level
Controlled
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online12 Dec 2022
Publication process dates
Deposited16 Jun 2023
ARC Funded ResearchThis output has been funded, wholly or partially, under the Australian Research Council Act 2001
Grant IDDE170100735
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