Selective Targeting And Unemployed: The Implication Of Behavioral Criteria In Public Assistance Eligibility To Enable Transition To Work
Selective Targeting And Unemployed: The Implication Of Behavioral Criteria In Public Assistance Eligibility To Enable Transition To Work

Author(s): Esien Eddy Bruno
Subject(s): Economy, Labor relations, Migration Studies, Asylum, Refugees, Migration as Policy-fields
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Selective targeting; unemployed; Austria; Finland; Czechia;
Summary/Abstract: This paper analyzes the implication of behavioural criteria under selective targeting to understand young third country immigrants’ transition to work in Austria, Finland and Czechia. Existing research pointed out fiscal and demographic necessities have forced policymakers to shift welfare provision from universal to income-tested selective targeting, but income test always leads to withdrawal of benefits as income rises. Based on document analysis, this paper concludes a convergence of the selected entities towards a moral-induced selective targeting redistributive policy process that administer young third-country immigrants’ transition to work. However, the legislative behavioral agenda in Austria is dissimilar to those of Finland and Czechia because it is based on individual basis, whereas Finland and Czechia focus on the units of household, where there may be a legal behavioural requirement applied to other adults living in the same household like beneficiaries. The outcome pointed to new paternalist regulatory governance in time of neo liberal austere policy process. This is relevant because it reflects a pivotal shift in the conventional welfare-state discourse based on universal provision to everyone as social rights to an increasingly degree of means-tested selectivity that may undermine vulnerable people’s belongings, infringe transparency and solidarity, create stigma, impair democratic values, and penalize a cohesive society.

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