Where possible, repeat interviews were carried out in an attempt to capture how attitudes evolved throughout the process of engaging with the unemployment services. In order to gain a rich understanding of the experience of being governed as an unemployed person this research used semi-structured in depth qualitative interviews with 33 participants as its main method. In practice this happens through a variety of institutional and bureaucratic practices which range from filling out forms to group engagement sessions to one on one meetings with caseworkers. Theoretically speaking this thesis uses the governmentality paradigm as described initially by Foucault (2007) to examine the ways in which unemployed people are enjoined to become active job-seekers. The way in which unemployment and unemployed people are characterised is examined at length using the theoretical construct of the Active Welfare Imaginary. As such welfare policy under PTW justifies itself using punitive logics which individualise responsibility for unemployment and sees unemployed people as being in need of guidance into employment using an array of positive and negative incentives. This work examines emergent practices of the use of sanctions as a means of eliciting job seeking behaviours. There is a particular focus on how the introduction of more stringent measures of behavioural conditionality enforced by the threat of sanctions influences the experience of being unemployed. Unemployment is not a naturally occurring phenomenon and instead is a political, institutional and governmental creation. This thesis examines the lived experience of being unemployed in Ireland during the roll out of a range of new Active Welfare Policy measures introduced in 2012 as part of the Pathways to Work (PTW) scheme.
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