%0 Journal Article
%T Evidence from the ¡®Frontline¡¯? An Ethnographic Problematisation of Welfare
%A John David Jordan
%J Work, Employment and Society
%@ 1469-8722
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0950017017741238
%X Researchers both supportive and critical of welfare schemes regularly explore the influence, legitimacy and effects of welfare administrator opinions. However, the ¡®origins¡¯ of those opinions are generally less well considered. This article explores and problematises the use of welfare-to-work administrator testimony in social science and social policy research. Rejecting both Foucauldian models of ¡®elite conceptual download¡¯, and approaches that take administrator views at face value, it argues that the material circumstances of day-to-day working may constitute the most significant influence on administrator views. This both supports a more materialist, less idealist and/or positivistic approach, and also suggests the pressing need for more contextualised, ethnographic analysis of data in welfare-to-work debates
%K Benefits
%K ethnography
%K unemployment
%K welfare
%K welfare-to-work
%K workfare
%K Work Programme
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0950017017741238