ERSTE FoundationFellowship for Social Research

Labour Market and Employment in Central and Eastern Europe

2013–2014

(Un)employment and workfare schemes in rural Hungary – a longitudinal study of the regulative changes of the public work programmeAlexandra Sz!ke

(Un)employment and workfare schemes in rural Hungary – alongitudinal study of the regulative changes of the public work

programme

By Alexandra Szőke

Post-doctoral FellowDepartment of Social Anthropology

University of Vienna

The consecutive governments increasingly see the main answers to long-term unemployment in thecreation of short-term low-paid jobs in the public work programme, the presently most popularworkfare scheme. Similar to other workfare programmes it makes social benefits for long-termunemployed dependent on participation in publicly sponsored communal employment. In mostcases it involves low-skilled temporary jobs provided by local governments, paying salaries belowminimum wage. While in Hungary local governments could organise such public work schemessince the early 1990s, it was the 'Road to work' programme introduced in 2009 by the formersocialist government that made this unemployment measure widespread. It made participation in thescheme compulsory for active-aged and “able” aid beneficiaries, who since then could no longerreceive any form of regular social aid/unemployment support if they refuse work in the programme.Alike to similar workfare measures, the programme aimed to tackle 'welfare dependency' byinstigating the permanent unemployed to take up work instead of “relying on benefits”. Based onthe assumption that long-term absence from the labour market largely contributes to socialmarginalisation, the programme was furthermore seen as a major solution for the social integrationof a growing portion of the unemployed poor. Thus in addition to helping unemployed re-enter thelabour market and mainstream society, participation in the scheme was also held to develop therequired 'work ethic' or morale needed for this. As such, it not only strengthened the 'socialparticipation through paid-work' dogma often concomitant of neoliberal social reforms, but alsosought to contend the growing social tensions of “good hard-working” citizens towards “lazybeneficiaries” taking advantage of an “overly beneficial” aid system.

The present administration, however, added a further element to this usual and often criticisedworkfare programme, which makes its study especially relevant. It not only made the scheme morepunitive and expansive, but has increasingly utilised it as a major solution for low labour forceparticipation of the country. Whilst the current government promotes an active agenda for solvingthe high inactivity rate, in the past years the majority of all jobs were in fact established through thepublic work programme (Busch, Cseres-Gergely, and Neumann 2013), offering only temporary andsocially supported jobs. In line with this new agenda, and as a reaction to heavy criticism againstthe former scheme for “spending tax-payers' money” on ineffective meaningless jobs, the rhetorichas also changed. The most important goal of the programme now is to create value through work,i.e. to accustom “idle” people to do “valuable” and “meaningful” work, hence fulfilling theircitizens' responsibility of contributing to the country's economic wealth.

It however bids for a series of questions that have relevance for both policy making and socialscientific engagements. What makes work “valuable” (or more “valuable” than others), for whom,and how is it related to specificities of local contexts? How successful can a policy be in making

1

work valuable (or creating valuable work) through a workfare programme? And what effect doessuch an endeavour have on people's perceptions of their work outside the programme?

This paper engages with these questions by examining the implementation of this workfareprogramme in two rural localities chosen from particularly disadvantaged regions of Hungary.Whilst critiques of similar workfare programmes from a spatial perspective are numerous (e.g. Eick,Mayer, and Sambale 2003; Peck 2001a; Sunley, Martin, and Nativel 2006), very few of themexamines the results of actual local implementations in a more integrative manner, especially inrelation to local socio-economic contexts. What is even more disturbing, hardly any is concernedwith particularly marginalised areas, where in fact such programs are the most needed and oftenconstitute the dominant employment option. Relying on prolonged fieldwork in two villages, I seekto address these short-comings. The present study assesses the local effects of this workfare scheme(and its recent changes) in particularly remote, marginalised areas by focusing on two specificaspects: (1) what effects the radically different organisation of the programme in the two localitieshave on the social inclusion of the participants; (2) the effects of the programme are assessed inrelation to the local socio-economic contexts by drawing on local conceptualisations of what is“valuable work”.

In the following, first I situate the Hungarian workfare programme within similar tendencies in theinternational arena and point to the broader relevance and specificities of the present study. Afterthis the text is divided into two major parts. The first will critically examine the local effects of the2009 'Road to work' programme in the two ruralities, and the second part will focus on the morerecent changes introduced by the conservative FIDESZ legislation in 2011. In both cases, the localorganisation of the programme will be examined and the way this can affect the social inclusion ofthe participants on the one hand and local views on what is valuable work and how this influencesother work options locally on the other.

II. Geographies of workfare, post-socialist restructuring and local implementations

Following the political-economic restructuring and the consequent economic relapse the early1990s evidenced a drastic transformation of the Hungarian labour market. The closing down offactories and agricultural co-operatives along with their manufacturing branches resulted in asudden escalation of unemployment. Between 1990 and 1993 the overall number of jobs droppedfrom 5 to 3.8 million, but only a fraction of them was since then recreated (Ferge and Tausz 2002).Reaching a low point in 1996, only little more than half of the active-aged population was inemployment, 42% of them were officially inactive (Fazekas and Scharle 2012, 2). Whereas theeconomy was seen to show some upheaval in early 2000, the 2008 global crises raisedunemployment rates again above 10%. While initially the sudden shock of economic insecurity wasblamed on the ‘transition’, it is by now clear that these changes/problems were not of a transitorynature, but are concomitant of the neoliberal restructuring of the country.

The new system provided various possibilities for the unemployed. While the early retirementschemes sipped up a large number of the newly jobless population in the 1990s, as a result of thereform of the social provision system various benefits and services were also made available. Yet,

2

despite various government measures1 and more recent EU support schemes, the number ofunemployed or otherwise officially 'inactive' population remained significantly high. Currentlynearly 1.2 million people live from pension type assistance without being of retirement age; andfrom the 500,000 unemployed, 400,000 are permanently so (Bódi 2010, 26). Hungary has one ofthe highest inactivity rates in Europe – for the 2 million who are socially assisted there are 4.5million tax payers2. And the numbers vary greatly along gender, ethnic and spatial lines3.

As the original hope of quick solutions to economic upheaval passed, social tensions multiplied.There has been growing alarm about the high number of long-term unemployed4 who live, alongwith their families, far below the poverty line, and who appear to suffer from marginalisation andsocial exclusion without much hope of reintegration - trying to manage mostly from social aid withlittle hope of finding employment (Ferge 2008a; Kozma, Csoba, and Czibere 2004; Ladányi 2009;Laki 2008). Others who appear in the unemployment statistics rely on social aid as their onlypermanent income, whilst they supplement this with occasional and unofficial employment or a fewmonths of public work. Their spatial and ethnic concentration is even more alarming5 which oftentriggers social tensions. Thus finding solutions for unemployment has become particularly urgingfor governments in the past years. The resulting workfare reforms, and the discourses thataccompany them, has fed the growing discontentment amongst the ‘good hard-working’ citizens,who increasingly became impatient towards the ‘benevolent’ aid system that helps ‘lazy’ peoplestay on benefits while they struggle with keeping their consistently low paying jobs and maintainingtheir living standards (Ferge 2008a).

In many ways the 2009 'Road to work' scheme was in direct line with the main tendencies of recentsocial policies in terms of making assistance increasingly means-tested, narrowed and stigmatisedwhile pushing the responsibilities of dealing with unemployment and poverty to the recipients andto local authorities (for more detail see Szőke n.a.). Workfare measures that required proof of activejob searching or employment in public work has existed since the 1993 Social Act, and theorganisation of public work was assigned to local governments as a mandatory task in 2000, albeitwith limited results due to lack of central enforcement (Csoba 2010). However, it was the 2009programme, which made regular social aid conditional on participation in public work and whichtherefore delegated issues of unemployment to local authorities.

While politicians celebrated the results of the programme, the larger public and social scientificarena has been highly critical about its actual effects. It was shown that it not only failed tore-integrate the long-term unemployed to the “world of work”, but also locks them to their oftenremote locality and binds them into cycles of unemployment/deep poverty (see Csoba 2010; Szalai2009; Váradi 2010; Virág and Zsolnay 2010). It also created immense difficulties and tensions forlocal governments (Szalai 2009; Virág and Zsolnay 2010). Furthermore, studies maintained that thescheme further deepened the stigmatisation of the unemployed and reinforced the divisionary line

1 or according to some economic analysis exactly as a result of these (see Fazekas and Scharle 2012)2 In 2010 the activity rate (percentage of total population ages 15+) in Hungary was 50.60 percent, while the OECD

average was 65.4 percent and EU average 62 percent. (http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/submitViewTableAction.do andhttp://www.indexmundi.com/facts/hungary/labor-participation-rate)

3 See data in the report by TARKI published in June 2006 in Social Policy Review: Hungary.4 Some estimates are as high as 400-600 thousand people.5 Two thirds of the unemployed live in the 47 most disadvantaged micro-regions of the country (Ferge 2008a), 75

percent of the Roma living in these areas live below the poverty line and about half (46.6 percent) of the inhabitants ofthese regions live from less than 60 percent of the median income (Bass 2010).

3

between those with regular jobs and the permanently unemployed (see Ferge 2008b; Szalai 2009;Váradi 2010). Yet the conservative government that came to power in 2010 continued to raise itsimportance. While up to 2009 only one fifth of the total employment policy expenditure was spenton public work programmes, raising in each year, by 2012 it was near half of all spending,allocating over 130 billion forint for the programme (Busch, Cseres-Gergely, and Neumann 2013,281). The current goal of the government is to give jobs to some 300 thousand unemployed throughpublic work, which would mean the largest government-assisted job creation since the 1989changes.

The introduction of workfare measures is widely documented in the US and Australia as part ofneoliberal state and welfare restructuring of the 1990s and more recently in many Western Europeancountries (see e.g. Handler 2004; C. McDonald and Marston 2005; Peck 2001b; Rose 1995).Usually they involve making formerly rights-based benefits conditional on active job seeking,participation in (sometimes communal) low-paid and socially devalued work or in other forms ofactivation programme. Consequently, welfare to workfare policy changes attracted immense socialscientific attention regarding the changing basis of social citizenship/membership. Signalling asignificant shift from the rights-based entitlements of the Keynesian welfare constellation toconditional or contract-based assistance that stress citizens’ obligations, they are often described toenhance neoliberal subjectification (Goldberg 2007; Handler 2004; Paz-Fuchs 2008; Roets et al.2012). As such they seek to create responsible, flexible, active citizens ready to take up evenprecarious, low-paid, insecure jobs in the transforming labour markets, hence being elementaryparts of neoliberal economic reforms.

Large number of studies call furthermore attention to the geographies of workfare. As Peck (Peck2002) underlines, workfare measures always go along with decentralisation, i.e. the scalarreorganisation of welfare and governance. Thus they constitute part of the neoliberal reorganisationof the state, which ‘dumps’ welfare responsibilities and the dealing with risks on the local level andon the unemployed themselves, while advancing welfare retrenchments (see also Eick, Mayer, andSambale 2003; Peck 2001; Sunley, Martin, and Nativel 2006). Furthermore, it prompts new formsof governance, by propagating cooperation between multiple agents and larger community andcivic sector involvement in employment as well as provision of social services (see Eick, Mayer,and Sambale 2003; Mayer 2003). These studies note that this leads to large unevenness in the localimplementation of such programmes and consequently great variations in their results.

While the above approaches undoubtedly brought significant contributions for studying workfareprogrammes, they mostly remain at the level of national policies, thus are not very instructive forunderstanding how particular workfare measures influence individual lives and particular localcontexts. Despite of their acknowledgement of large local variations, little effort has been so farmade to study the differences in such local implementations in a more systematic manner,delineating processes that bring about them or identifying their effects on particular local contexts(for an exception see Matejskova 2013). Those works which do examine workfare programmesthrough their agents usually emphasize processes of governance and neoliberal subjectification, andhighlight the unequal power relations between street-level bureaucrats/officials and their clients (seeBonvin 2008; Catherine McDonald and Marston 2005; Roets and et. al. 2012). Yet these worksmake little allusions to the uneven spatial context of workfare programmes. Overall, studies arerather critical regarding the ability of such policies to reach its stated goals, i.e. the integration of theunemployed into the labour-market/society and the decreasing of unemployment. However, in mostpart existing works fail to show the actual processes involved in the implementation of these

4

programmes as well as the diversity of outcomes for both the participant and the localsocio-economic contexts. My study seeks to enhance such agendas by examining the effects ofparticular local implementations of workfare measures in two marginalised localities. This hasparticular importance, not only for deepening our understanding of geographies of workfare, butalso because these are usually the places that are the most in need for such programmes. Thus it isof foremost importance for policy makers to understand the local effects of workfare programmes inthese places.

The two chosen villages are relatively small and, albeit from different geographical regions(Tiszacseke from the North-Eastern border region, Kislapos from Northern Hungary), both arepositioned in highly disadvantaged areas of the country. They are both characterised with highunemployment, limited local employment options, scarce access to different resources (transport,jobs, education, services), and a considerable Roma population. In both villages the number ofactive age population is considerably high. Despite their similarities, they also differ by theirutilisable local resources. Tiszacseke has natural/cultural assets for developing tourism, is in thevicinity of the Ukrainian and Romanian borders and has maintained a relatively strong agriculturalbase, which all provide possibilities for livelihood even if often through informal channels.Meanwhile in Kislapos the presence of a nation-wide civic organisation, the Hospitalier6 plays asignificant role, as does the fact that the local population is mostly Roma who are the largest ethnicminority in the country and are especially affected by the structural unemployment.

Figure 1 – Map of most disadvantaged micro-regions and the location of the two villages

6 The name of the organisation along with the name of the villages and all personal names of informants were anonymised.

5

My analysis draws on two periods of fieldwork, 16 months during 2009-10 after the 'Road to work'programme was introduced and 4 months in 2013 after considerable changes were implemented bythe current conservative government. This makes it possible not only to reflect on the spatialdifferences in the implementation of this workfare measure, but to assess some longer-termtendencies. During both periods, participant observations among the public workers were madealong with semi-structured interviews with the workers, local officials, other local employers andregular wage earners (altogether 60 interviews in each village during both periods). The effects ofthe particular local implementations were examined from two perspectives: (1) how they affect thesocial integration or local acceptance of the participants, and (2) how they affect the value of work,i.e. the way participants conceptualise their work and other inhabitants in the village relate to theirjob as a result of the programme.

III. On a road to where? - Social inclusion and the 2009 workfare programme

Before turning to the local implementations of the 'Road to work' programme in the two villages,some more general aspects of the present cases need to be pointed out. In comparison to otherdocumented workfare policies, the case of Tiszacseke and Kislapos (and numerous other villages inHungary) presents an extreme example of workfare, where a large part of the local populationpermanently relies on this programme for their main source of living. For many locals theoccasional opportunity of public work and the social benefit tied to it are their only significantincome. The difference between the two is considerable. In the 2009 scheme public workersreceived the minimum salary of 36,750-73,500 forint (150-300 euros) per month7 while the monthlybenefit for long-term employed was only 28,500 per month (around 100 euro)8. Another specificaspect of the Hungarian workfare programme is that it is left to one specific official, the mayors, toorganise, plan, construct such programmes, i.e. choose participants, divide and organise workamong them. This makes many beneficiaries highly dependent on their decision, and in smallcommunities it can give way to extreme paternalism and favouritism as is shown below.

The 2009 'Road to work' programme constituted a significant step in social and unemploymentpolicy for two reasons. It bond reception of regular social aid to participation in public work, itsrefusal closing the unemployed entirely off from the aid system. Secondly, it delegated theresponsibilities of dealing with unemployment substantively to local authorities, which were alsofinancially instigated to organise encompassing public work programmes in order to take as manypeople off social aid as possible. This considerably raised the number of public workers in manysettlements. It was also the case in Kislapos, where earlier only five-ten persons were employedyearly. This tripled with the start of the Hospitallers’ ‘host village’ programme9, nevertheless it wasstill far from covering the entirety of local unemployed. However, in the early summer of 2010 themayor presented a very different picture:

7 Local governments have to guarantee the minimum wage to the public workers, but the final salary depends onwhether they were employed in four, six or eight hour per day positions.8 In the present construction this was changed somewhat, which will be explained in more detail in the next section.9 The Hospitalier is a nation-wide Catholic charity, which appeared as a civic organisation in the village starting a modelprogramme in 2004 that settled urbanite homeless families in the locality. Since then the organisation built up aworkshop that offers low-skilled manual jobs for 30 inhabitants, renovated numerous public institutions, took overseveral social service provisions from the local government and by now runs most of the local institutions in the village.

6

Now we are employing 90 people, we have been raising the numbers each month by 20-25. It requirespre-financing, so we cannot take everyone at once… but the target is that by August we bring every socialbeneficiary into the scheme. That means 106 people.

His explanation for the large rise in the number was the advantageous central financing:

If I keep them on aid the local government has to cover 20% of their benefit, but if we employ them, Ionly need to pay 5% of the minimum wage. And this 5% is a much less. So for every person whom Ileave at home on aid the local government loses out. It is a forced motivation. But in a small settlementlike this, this is a matter of life and death.

He explained that financial considerations overrule other concerns and dominate the entireprogramme. Consequently, questions of efficiency and quality of work were less often addressed.All of the workers engaged in open-air manual jobs like cutting grass, maintaining roads, cleaningaway buildings or helping with construction work, hence to satisfy the mandatory tasks of the localgovernment that it would otherwise struggle to undertake.

During my research visit in 2009-10 winter, given the large number of workers in the programme, Iwas surprised at the small number of people that could be seen daily on the streets. When I visitedlocal families I often found many of the workers cooking or doing other tasks at home during theday. When it turned out that they were in fact public workers, they told me that they had just quicklynipped back home to do some housework as there was little to do in their job and no one waschecking on them. Furthermore during the winter months even if the local government tries toemploy a similarly large number of people than in summer, there is not as much outdoor work, norcan people be kept in the cold for extended periods, thus are often sent home. The workaccomplished by the public workers, albeit considered to be a great help by the local government,was not taken seriously. It was considered largely ineffective and their salary was conceived moreas a form of social aid. In the mayor’s words:

It is a highly debated issue now, whether it is good or it’s just a new form of aid. I say that it depends onthe mayor. You can give work to the people, but it is a lot of effort and it doesn’t always work. But at leastyou are giving salary to these people, for whatever work it is they have done…. Even if I let them sitaround the ditches and whistle all day, it still worth more than if they just lay around at home on aid. Atleast they left their home. And the next generation sees that mum or dad is going to work in the morning.

The situation in Tiszacseke was very different. Since the 1990s the village has been locally knownfor its large public work programmes, long before the 2009 regulation. On average about 80-120people are usually employed for three-six month periods, thus the programme overall circulatesover 200-250 people from among the 300 eligible locals a year. The mayor believes themaintenance of a large public work programme is one of his major responsibilities. The localgovernment is the only large-scale employer in the village and public work substitutes permanentemployment for many locals. In fact, it became a permanent job for many participants; numerousinformants reported that they worked in the programme continuously for over 10 years, albeit onshort contracts with shorter-longer periods of interruption. It also usually involves a wide range ofpeople, from unskilled to qualified, from fresh job seekers to ageing inhabitants, and both men andwomen. Another significant aspect is that a large emphasis is put on equally employing Roma andnon-Roma inhabitants in the programme, who usually work together in both skilled and unskilledjobs, although the Roma are more frequently found in the latter. This effort also relates to the fact

7

that in the village the Roma and non-Roma families are equally affected by the widespreadunemployment, which is becoming increasingly prevalent in similarly positioned villages.

Similarly to Kislapos, the additional work force was used to fulfil compulsory tasks of the localgovernment, such as maintaining public spaces and institutions or fulfilling service provisions. Thusworkers were usually divided into groups of 10-12 with a head in each, and strictly supervised bythe main organiser of the programme, an employee of the mayor’s office, who checked attendanceon a daily basis, along with the intensity and quality of the work. Furthermore, the mayor regularlyvisited the various groups during working hours and unjustified absences or careless work was oftenpunished with overtime, as I observed on various occasions. Nevertheless, most locals stillconsidered the intensity of work to be much below that in regular employment.

The majority of work brigades undertook unskilled labour such as cleaning public places, restoringditches or cutting grass. People in these jobs were usually rotated more often than those in the morequalified or more ‘valued’ positions, which often guaranteed more or less permanent employment ifthe mayor was satisfied with the worker’s ability and motivation. These ‘permanent’ groupsundertook qualified jobs, which were indispensable for the local government, such as substitutingcarers in the day care home, or doing mechanical repair work at public institutions. Furthermore,several groups were kept for maintaining the important tourist sites, such as the wooden markcemetery, and a “woman’s group” exists which regularly represented the village in festivals andprepares local products for promoting the village.

The importance of the jobs accomplished by the workers was not only enhanced by the seriousnessof the officials, but also by the attitude of mayor towards the workers. Not only were they involvedin locally significant and indispensable jobs, such as the organisation of the annual InternationalPlum Jam festival or public building restoration, but they were given the same status as the otheremployees of the local government. This was evident at various occasions. To mention oneexample, public workers were invited as “employees of the local government” along with otherinstitutional workers in regular jobs, like teachers, officials, and service providers, to the celebrationof International Women’s Day. Not only they were treated the exact same way as other employees,but the mayor specifically thanked their contribution and efforts for the betterment of the village.

Obviously, the strong support of social beneficiaries, who constitute a large part of the localpopulation, ensures him significant electoral support, as is often mentioned by locals. What is more,the programme is widely criticized by many inhabitants for various reasons, not least among thosewho have been denied participation for many years due to personal conflicts with the mayor. Yet itstill has various positive effects in the village, which complicate the conclusions of the abovediscussed scholarly critiques.

Firstly, it has become a regular source of income for a large number of local inhabitants. Because itis a long-term prospect10 it can serve as a basis of security in a locality where few other employmentpossibilities exist or can be envisioned to exist in the foreseeable future. Even those who are notkept on permanently can count on being “called in” to at least one of the two large programmeseach year. As such, it not only came to provide a source of security in Tiszacseke, but has alsoestablished a general level of well-being that is extended to a large segment of inhabitants. This isvery visible in the housing, way of living and general appearance of the village, from which onecould not guess the high rate of unemployment. The mayor claimed that the most important

10 as people are often kept in employment continuously instead of the usual few months period

8

motivation behind public work was the extension of such general well-being for most inhabitantsand prevention of social tensions and crime. In his words:

…it is an unimaginable effort; it requires lots of energy to make this work… But then it is not acoincidence that Tiszacseke has the best public security in the area. Because here you don’t have fights onthe street, you don’t have gangs, or big problems of stealing, apart from the occasional wood cutting orsmall appropriation of crops, and we are fighting strongly against the few loan sharks too, they are afraidhere…this makes a big difference.

In comparison, participants did not feel the same level of job security in Kislapos, where it appearsto follow the rapid changes of central government policies. The mayor explained: “I cannot tellwhat will happen next year, with the elections. If they take away this ‘Road to Work’ programme Iam not sure what will happen. But until then this is what we have, so we keep it”. Admittedly, theposition of the two villages, although they are both remote and struggling with seriousunemployment is slightly different – in Tiszacseke people can still utilize some local resources suchas subsistence farming, tourism and border activities. Additionally, it is also important to highlight,that while public work constitutes one of the main priorities in the village, it sucks up resourcesfrom other spheres, which often materialize in failures to satisfy other tasks. All public buildingshave a large mortgage, the gas has been long switched off at the school and on occasion otherbenefits are paid with few months of delay.

Nevertheless, the difference about the permanency and reliance of this option also manifested itselfin the way participants and other locals spoke about it. In Kislapos, like in many other places,participants were referred to as “public workers” in a rather pejorative tone, not much different fromsocial aid beneficiaries. The same moralising and stigmatising discourse was used for them as forsocial aid recipients in general. In contrast, the regularity, long-term maintenance and the wide scaleof the programme in Tiszacseke somewhat 'normalized' this form of support, although obviously notentirely. Thus often people did not identify themselves or each other as public workers, but rather aspeople “working for the office”, referring to their status as employees of the local governmentsimilar to other local officials.

Furthermore, due to the seriousness, local importance and often public appreciation of the work,many of the participants felt pride in their job. A middle-aged Roma woman explained herexperience:

We were working in the far end of the cemetery when I heard some tourists talking. They said how nicethe cemetery looks now, how well kept it was in comparison to last time they were here. It felt reallygood. I was so proud; we did not work for nothing.... And the mayor praised us in front of the whole team,it was very good, the others were all jealous of us.

Another woman in her thirties who was leading a team trusted with the maintenance of the littlesquare near the cemetery accounted for a similar feeling of pride:

Last year our team worked in that little square, taking care of the flowers, bushes and grass there. By theend of the summer it looked so nice, it was all cleaned up and even many locals told us how much betterkept it was during that time. I really liked that, I liked working there.

The workers in Kislapos in contrast did not feel appreciated or in any other way valued. In theexplanation of my interviewees, taking part in the programme for them was more like a criterion

9

that had to be fulfilled, a duty to attend to, or an obligation to just show up in order to receive theirrightful benefit.

Another important aspect is that Roma and non-Roma were equally involved and often worktogether in the same brigade in Tiszacseke. In general the mayor was often mentioned toparticularly support the Roma in the village in various ways, especially if compared to other places.His positive and inclusive attitude was often related to his family background; according to localrumours he has some Roma origin. Regardless whether it originates from his family background orin the seeking of electoral support, this inclusive orientation offers more possibilities for the Romaminority than in other settlements and the division between different ethnicities is not so pervasiveacross different spheres (cf. Schwarcz and Szőke, n.a.). Most Roma inhabitants told me they votefor him in the village, even if they are not necessarily personally favoured by the mayor. Theexplanation given by a woman of five children and her mother, who both live in serious povertyresonated the general local opinion:

...here the Roma will have an easy time as long as he remains the mayor, because he likes the Roma anddoes everything for us. Here, if anyone else would get into his position, there would no longer be anyRoma called in to work. They would not even be able to put their foot into the office. Once we had anotary, who only allowed people in during Tuesdays and Thursdays between 14 and 16, but here theRoma are not used to this, we are used to going any time we want to. Then the mayor told her it is nothow it is done here. She left not much after... As long as he stays the mayor it will be good for the Roma.The problem is that he often helps those who don’t deserve it, those who go to his office to shout everyday, they are the ones who are helped the most.

Since the 2009 regulation, mayors enjoy a particularly large power to alter the means and conditionsof those who are dependent on them for their aid. Such power in small communities can also giveway to personal cults and favouritism, as is also the case in Tiszacseke. At the same time, in thiscase it was used to contravene general public notions that hold social beneficiaries and publicworkers in general undeserving and second-rate citizens. Due to his general approach, localpractices and not least the organisation of public work, he has reconfigured these notions andestablished a much more inclusive basis of membership in the locality. As such, the case ofTiszacseke shows that public work can be organised in a way that can have some overall positiveresults for the social inclusion of participants, even if it does not necessarily enjoys the full supportof local officials and local inhabitants. Needless to say, officials and other local regular-wageearners often felt this wide and generous supporting attitude of the mayor to be unjust, especially asmost of them struggled to maintain their living from minimum-wage jobs.

The situation in Kislapos was very different. Even though the mayor had a similarly paternalistview and helping attitude towards the Roma inhabitants11, public work nevertheless was organisedin ways that further strengthened the line between the Roma and non-Roma in the locality (see alsoThelen et al. 2011). While the few non-Roma public workers were employed for administrativework inside public institutions, the rest of the public workers were all ethnically Roma and workedin the unskilled low-level jobs of grass cutting and ditch cleaning, “in front of the eyes” of thewhole village. Thus public work was used to further demonstrate and assert the differing positionsof the two local groups.

11 For example in lack of local government resources for giving crises aid to people in urgent need, he often lends from his own money.

10

Here a very important aspect of the village needs mentioning. Kislapos, situated at the edge of theGreat Plain and the Northern Hills, has very good basis for agricultural activities, which during theSocialist period made the village rather prosperous (see Bell 1984). At that time, the few localRoma families were considered to be still relatively integrated into local society (see Szuromi2007). Since then the village was affected by significant population changes and socio-economictransformations, as a consequence of which its present social structure is rather peculiar: out of the800 inhabitants, around 160 are (predominantly elderly) non-Roma (with only about 15-20active-aged families), while the rest belong to the Roma ethnic group and are mostly children oractive-aged. The latter are mostly unemployed, living from social benefits, aid packages from theHospitalier, often 'crimes of necessity' and occasional public work. The formerly rich village nowappears to be in decay with its un-built muddy roads, torn-to-pieces dilapidating houses andunkempt public buildings (some of which though has been recently renovated by the Hospitalier).Even though local informants acknowledged that larger structural forces, the post-socialistrestructuring and the disappearance of work places, had a great influence on the local situation, the“original” inhabitants still hold the 1974 events to be the major turning point in the fate of thevillage. Following the 1974 flood in the neighbouring village, a large number of Roma familieswhose homes were washed away were settled in Kislapos. Since then the “original” inhabitants feelthey are being “pushed out” from their village. Their children, supported by education and theirparents' wealth, could settle in larger towns, leaving their ageing parents behind. This was paralleledwith the increasing moving of often Roma urban “under-classes” into the village during the1980s-90s. This resulted in the present constellation, in which the Roma inhabitants make up themajority of the village. It is in this context, ridden by various social and ethnic tensions overbelonging to the place and social justice, in which the particular organisation of the public workprogramme can be fully understood.

The local government has only limited resources and admittedly cannot satisfy all local needs. Thuseven though the local elderly (who constitute the “original” inhabitants) live from very meagrepensions, in most cases it does not justify their eligibility for further state support, while themajority of the local Roma live from benefits and also enjoy the social programmes of theHospitalier. Feelings of injustice are apparent in the local claims by the elderly, who accuse both thecentral and the local state of unjustly supporting the local Roma. In this context, public work hasbecome yet another measure (along for example with the way social aid is distributed – for moredetail see Thelen et al. 2011) which in the eye of the local non-Roma re-establishes the line betweendeserving and undeserving citizens destabilised by the present situation.

In Tiszacseke the strong support of the mayor towards the Roma and social beneficiaries establisheda situation, where although their claims for equal status were locally renegotiated by other officialsand the ‘properly working’ inhabitants, they were nevertheless taken seriously. In contrast, withinthe scattered social relations of Kislapos, local state official practices, including the organisation ofpublic work, fell prey to re-establishing and strengthening the lines of division between the Romaand non-Roma. What is more, local claims for social membership by the non-Roma elderly hasbeen made on the grounds of belonging and physical contribution to the place, which attempts tore-establish their former position in a situation when they became the minority and feel lesssupported by the state in comparison to the ‘new-comer’ Roma.

11

IV. Creating value through work – the 2011 modification of the programme

The conservative government that came to power in 2010 spring maintained the general approach ofits predecessors towards the public work programme. It continues to fill a major role inunemployment measures, what is more it has been accorded special significance in the current jobcreation strategies of the state. Yet, the new legislation also introduced various changes andproposed some new aims. The current political discourse identifies 'value creation' as the mainelement of the programme. As described by Sándor Pintér, Minister of Home Affairs, in a recentinterview12: “as public workers, they receive a salary instead of aid, we sustain their work strength,their self-respect, they no longer feel idle, they do not become lost or fallen, becausefrom-day-to-day they are performing value-creating work” He went on stressing:

Furthermore, it also shows to their children that the future, a present living, can only beensured by work. But it is also natural that we do this in a way that can also profit thesociety. We don't want anybody to dig ditches uselessly. Everyone should pertain useful,meaningful, value-creating work.

Yet this brings up some more fundamental question that nevertheless have high relevance for policymaking. How does value become attached to work, why is certain work considered more valuablethan others, and how this affects people's relation to their work? In this section I examine howdifferent actors attach value to work and what effect this have on the way people evaluate theirwork in the two local contexts. On a more pragmatic level, I am interested in whether public workparticipants do feel they are doing valuable work in the light of the more recent changes in theprogramme, what they consider valuable work, and how the particular organisation of the schemeeffects local employers and regular wage earners' attitude to their work. In the following I examinesome of the most significant current changes in the scheme in the light of these questions.

Presently public work could be organised through two major schemes. One of them remained verysimilar to the earlier construction, with changes only in financing. Thus local governments applyonly for wage-related costs of the participants to the Regional Employment Agencies13, which coverhowever only 70-90%14 of the costs in comparison to the former 95%. In contrast, the other scheme,the newly established “model START programmes”, cover 100% of all costs (also material ones)centrally. While this latter has a more complicated application procedure and involves much moreadministrative responsibilities, obviously they appear financially more advantageous for localgovernments. Moreover, the number of participants that can be employed in the first type aredetermined by the Regional Employment Offices, and are limited to only a few people employed in4-6 hours shifts in the case of the two examined villages. With the change of financing therefore thelatter form is propagated.

The differentiation between the two form furthermore also enforces the political wish to makepublic work more valuable or at least to delineate work which is valuable from the less“meaningful” jobs in the scheme. It is not only because the second form is better financed andprovides longer-term 8 hour jobs (participants are usually employed in longer, 1-2 year12 Interview made by Attila Fekete Gy. and can read in Népszabadság Online, 25 September 2013. http://nol.hu/belfold/20130925-unios_minta_lehet_a_kozmunka13 Formerly it was the National Treasury.14 Depending on the number of hours participants are employed in, which can vary between 4, 6 or 8 hours per day.

12

programmes), but because local governments have to apply with a work plan that proposes“value-creating” projects. One such well supported one, which presently employs a significantamount of participants in both villages is the agricultural programme. It involves animal husbandry,vegetable garden or labour-intensive cultivation of larger pieces of land usually owned or rented bythe local government. Participants are typically employed for a 2-year period, and work in 8 hourshifts. The products are used primarily by local public institutions, but in both places there are someadditional gains. While in Tiszacseke, some of the farrows from each new breed are distributed onsocial basis among needy families, the vegetables produced in the programme in Kislapos are soldto enterprises on market price. The longer-term aim of the programme is on the one hand therestoration of agricultural knowledge and work in villages, and the revival of self-sufficient localco-ops in marginalised rural places with scarce employment possibilities.

While participants of the programme in Tiszacseke do feel more valued and think they are doingmeaningful jobs, this separation of the two schemes reinforces the divisionary line between thosedoing meaningful valuable work and those who do not, even among the public workers. Suchseparation of citizens based on their contribution to society through “valuable” (often equalled toregular-waged) work has increasingly been deepened by various benefit measures. As aconsequence, public opinion and political discourse reflects heightened social tensions against those“able” people who nonetheless are living on society's support, and are treated as second-rateundeserving citizens. However, the present programme made this separation even among the publicworkers. Yet this division did not necessarily raise the public workers in the “valued” scheme to thelevel of first-rate citizens either.

This is again partly related to the local organisation of the schemes in the two villages, and partly toother regulatory changes that were introduced in September 2011, which largely contradicted themajor goal of the legislation to make work more valuable. As mentioned before, in Tiszacsekeparticipants of the agricultural programme feel more appreciated and treat their work-place as aregular job. According to the chief of the work unit, this is related to several aspects. Firstly, theyalready went through a large self-selection process; during the first months those who were notserious about their work dropped out. In her words:

It is a job where you cannot have people miss work, otherwise the animals will suffer. People have to bethere over-night or even during weekends, to feed the animals or in case they got sick. So it's not foreveryone. Not everyone have such commitment and feelings of responsibility.... On the fields it's a littledifferent. But still if the rain is coming, people need to stay even after working hours, otherwise we loosethe produce. You can't have people there who just wants to stand around leaning on a scythe all day.

Furthermore, it is often people who already had previous experience with husbandry or gardenwork, who remained in the programme. Thus even workers among themselves contributed to suchself-selection, by expelling from their group those who did not show the necessary commitment orresponsibility. While in other work groups which were cutting grass in the village or cleaningditches, most workers did not judge each other's work morale too much, in the agricultural groupworkers often phrased their responsibility to each other and emphasised the requirements of the job.Thus workers voluntarily would stay overtime if haying needed to be finished before the rain or if apig was farrowing. And if someone failed to show such commitment, they themselves reported it totheir unit leader or the mayor, complaining about the harms done in the produce or animals.

In comparison, in Kislapos, even though these are also the most valued jobs in the programme, theyreceive less seriousness by both the workers and unit leader. According to the latter, it yields great

13

results, it almost entirely covers the vegetable needs of the local school and kindergarten, on top ofwhich they manage to sell a considerable amount to enterprises. Yet, he feels the participants do notshow the right attitude. They often cut work; as soon as he leaves the site, many of them leave forhome, or simply lie in the shades, which I also evidenced multiple times. Secondly, a considerableamount of the products are stolen by other villagers, which is basically accounted for by the mayoras a kind of “social aid” that would be given to the local children anyway: “So it doesn't reallymatter if they eat it in the school or at home. But we can't really do much about it. We are workingon 7,5 hectares, so even if I had enough people to watch it day and night, it would be difficult toprevent such thefts in a village with no public light15.” As such, locals and participants do notconsider the programme among the most valuable jobs in the village; it is not separated inimportance from other jobs in the public work scheme.

It is however not only the local specificities of implementation, but also some further legislativechanges that influence the values attached to public work vis-a-vis other work options in the twovillages. Since 2011 one needs to prove 30 days of official work (in public work or otheremployment) in order to receive any kind of social aid. Those unemployed who fail to do this, dropout of the social security net and remain without any income. As a result in both villages, in lack ofsufficient number of public work places, employing people in public work as “volunteers” whowould thus work 30 days without receiving any salary is quite common. The local officials andmany regular-wage workers do not feel this to be unjust, these people are usually considered“undeserving” of social support for failing to live with other provided possibilities by the localgovernment, hence should work even to receive their social aid. Yet participants and the heads ofsuch units consider the accorded work non-serious, people literally only have to show up and tickattendance. This, however, in overall also induced some negative feelings among the other publicworkers, who were supervised and judged more seriously. In their eyes, furthermore, such freework, devalues public work as such. Such tensions were evident in both localities.

The 2011 legislation introduced another element that similarly advocated a more punitive approachtowards social aid recipients. It made behavioural habits (such as school attendance of beneficiaries'children) or vaguely defined requirements (keeping gardens and houses orderly) the condition ofreceiving basic social aid. This furthermore gave even more discretionary power to local authoritiesto influence the well-being of welfare recipients, and possibly reinforce certain local norms. Failingto satisfy these conditions in ways specified by individual local governments or their officials closespeople off from any kind of social aid. This aspect has further strengthened the moralising andpunitive character of social support for the poor and long-term unemployed, hence making thedemarcation between “deserving” and “undeserving” citizens even deeper. The latter now not onlyhave to bear the regular control and moralising behaviour of officials over different spheres of lifesuch as child bearing, consumption, housekeeping, but also the disciplining and punitive reactionsto determine their behaviour.

Another significant legislative change concerned the amount of wage, which was significantlydecreased from net 74,000 forint (of minimum wage) to 45,000 a month (from 270 to 150 euro),regardless of the skills of the worker. In Tiszacseke especially, where several work units performskilled work, this was evaluated very negatively. Public workers felt this shows to them they are notvalued, their work is not appreciated. As one woman, with 3 grown-up children, explained:

15 This was a recent problem in the village, the public lights were switched off as the local government could not pay its electricity bills for several months and accumulated a considerable debt, consequently the utility company switched off the public electricity in Kislapos in January.

14

Both me, my husband, and two of my children work in public work. Luckily my eldest son, he could getaway fom all this, he works now in Ireland in a chicken factory. I do not care for myself any more, because,what is to be shameful for, I do not have any technical vocation, but my children, I can't stand seeing it.They each learnt a vocation, one is a carpenter, the other is a stone-mansion. They are both digging ditches,just like everyone else, for the same amount of money as people with only elementary school. What is thereto hope for then?!

At the same time, some of the former very apparent social tensions between public workers andother inhabitants working in minimum-wage regular jobs considerably decreased. Often the lattertalked about public workers with sympathy, concluding that it is simply not enough to live on,especially as it is now only one person who can officially be employed from a family, and the othermembers could only receive child allowance (if applicable) or the decreased social aid, which isabout 75 euro a month. As a local shop-keeper explained: “I don't know how they can live fromthat. It is simply not worth working for. And it's not like they are not doing anything, often theyhave to do very heavy work, men and women alike. Out there on the fields working under the 40degree sun for hours, it's not a small thing”. As such it also had a negative effect on public work,which was earlier a rather well-sought employment option in Tiszacseke. While it continued toremain an important option for people, more and more unemployed turned to cucumber growing orother formerly less wanted work options, such as working for the water company.

The water company has been employing public workers through various schemes for several years,however three years ago these positions were not very popular. Workers were employed withsimilar contracts and conditions as in the local government run scheme, yet, had to attend very hardphysical work and often work overtime. The situation, however, somewhat changed. Whereasformerly it was the micro-regional cooperation (of all local governments in the micro-region) whichcontracted the workers, with some changes in the legislation since 2011 private companies, utilitycompanies, public maintenance companies, as well as civic organisation and churches can alsoapply for state support for organising public work programmes. As a result, the number of workersdoubled and their employment is more or less permanent (with only 1-2 winter months).Consequently, more and more people consider it as a valuable work option, despite of thedemanding work and are seeking to get employed in it. Yet, the dam-keeper who is the local boss ofthese public workers complained that when his workers see that the others receive the same amountof salary in the local government-run scheme, they do feel resentment and injustice. As heexplained:

Here you often have to stay until 10 pm or start at 4 am, if a farmer puts an order on the hay from the dam,then it needs to be cut in one go, otherwise he won't pay. And the water company partly maintains thislarge number of public workers from such entrepreneurial activities. But then, once we have a quota, wehave to satisfy it on time. It's not like in the regular public work, where it doesn't really matter if youfinish cutting the grass in one street or if you finish cleaning the cemetery within one day or one week. It'sextremely demanding, I know. And I receive the proper minimum wage, as I am a regular employee, not apublic worker. I feel extremely lucky for it. But them, they have to work such hours and do very hardwork, cutting long hay on a dam all day in this heat, all for 46.000. But I have to be strict. If there is aquota, it has to be done on time, that's it!

Even though the decrease in salary had similar effects on local social tensions in Kislapos, itsresults were slightly different. People were still very eager to participate in the programme. Thisdifference between the two places might be connected to the organisation of the work and todiffering local conditions. Public workers in Tiszacseke started to re-evaluate public work as anoption since the salary decreased considerably while the working conditions, strictness and

15

supervision stayed the same. At the same time, in Kislapos, since workers are not so stronglysupervised, could often arrange other tasks or do other business during their working hours (just likebefore), conceived this change more as a sudden decrease in their aid, rather than less appreciationof their work. But it is also related to differences in the two villages. As the mayor of Kislaposacutely summarized:

These people are not wanted anywhere else. Even if there were factories that would transport people to thework place, because here this is also a great problem, one would need to get up at 4 am if would get a jobin Eger, the nearest place with factories for unskilled labour force, this is not the social strata they arelooking for. These are the people who are not wanted anywhere, by anyone. For them public work is reallythe only option.

Yet, people working for the Hospitalier institutions or the small electronic dismantling workshop16,the only permanent work options in the village started to value their work-place much more. Thiswas described both by the workers and their boss in the workshop. Whereas three years ago theyoften complained about the working morale of the public workers and often used their example toask for leaves during the day, now many employees accounted for being very lucky to have such apermanent wage-earning option.

They furthermore explained that often they also receive additional benefits, such as advances onsalary, special assistance from the organisation in their everyday matters, organised vacation trips,Christmas packages for their children, or could take home working equipments in exchange of theones in their home. As Laci, a 25 year old worker, an employee of the workshop for 3 years nowtold:

I like working here, you feel appreciated, like in a proper job. Also you only worry about your own quota, ifyou work properly, you won't be short, but you don't depend on others. I would not want to work in thepublic work, there are many there who don't have the proper work attitude, they immediately say as the bossleaves 'ok, let's sit or play cards'. But then if you keep on working, they will mock you, but if you also do asthey, and the boss suddenly comes back, you would also get into trouble. I don't want that. We are allworking here, we are not here to just sit around and pass time. But the bosses are also good, they treat uswell.

What is more, at the present several locals were working as unpaid volunteers for the Hospitalierinstitutions, in the hope of getting re-employed again by them for a more permanent position. Rékais a 37 year old woman, who raises her four children by herself. She was employed for 2 years inthe kitchen of the playhouse last year. However, after the project from which she received her salaryexpired, she continued coming to the playhouse every day for 8 hours, organising programmes forthe children. She said she receives unemployment aid for only 3 months (regardless of the 700 daysof official employment during the past two years), so she is ok now, but she has no idea what shewill do next. Yet, in the meanwhile she volunteered to help out in the playhouse, hoping that if shestays in touch with the organisation and they see her strong commitment to work, they will employher again in some other positions as soon as a chance arises.

In fact, such “volunteer” work or “free work” was also rather prevalent in Tiszacseke among themost permanent “distinguished” public workers. Many of them admitted it to me that at manyoccasions they went on working for 2-3 months without receiving a salary when people wereneeded but the local government could not cover their wages. Similarly, they often worked for the

16 A workshop established by the Hospitalier in 2006, which employs 30 unskilled workers on minimum wage, who dismantle old electronic equipments.

16

tourism enterprise or land owned by the mayor on weekends or in extra working hours. Theyexplained this was part of their “work requirements” if they wanted to be among the “chosen”public workers who are always re-employed whenever there is a chance. Many of these workerswould even bring their own tools to work or their seedling to the nursery-garden of the “Startprogramme”, saying these were better than the ones available in the office, hence could yield betterwork results (cf. Leonard 1998). Some even went as far as saying they looked after the mayor'sassets or the public work garden with more seriousness than that of their own.

Yet, their perseverance was not only explained with hopes for better chances of being re-employed,but by the numerous ways the mayor “looked after” such workers. Many of them pointed out thatthey could always count on him for organising long-distance trips for administrative matters orhospital visits (with the local government vehicle), covering their medical costs or offering themlarger sums for flat renovation or maintenance if needed. Things that they could not have paid forfrom a public work wage. Such additional benefits were often conceived as ways of valuing theirwork and their person as employees. Many respondents talked with great pride of their job and howthey are appreciated as workers by the mayor. They themselves phrased it that they are nowindispensable for the mayor, for being such trustworthy, responsible, committed, and often skilled(in certain works, such as traditional Szatmár jam cooking, preparation of tourist services)employees.

However, one aspect that relates to being “only” a public worker and not a regular-waged employeewas underlined by several informants. This was future security. Panni, one of the longest and closestof such “chosen” workers, a Roma woman in her 50s, described the situation very acutely:

Something happened last week, which made me suddenly realise how unstable my situation is. Myneighbour, a man of similar age, had his health really deteriorated, and so he wanted to apply forinvalidity pension. And then came the cold shower, he couldn't do it, because he didn't have enoughcontribution through official work. And then I thought about it. Because here, we are happy to beemployed in public work, for 2 months, 6, or 3, whatever chance is given, it is till better than social aid.But then, if I look at myself, I don't even have 3 years of official employment over the past 10 years. Andyet, there was not a single day when I wasn't working hard, in the mayor's guest-house, his garden or forhis family, wherever I was needed. Because if I weren't, my garden wouldn't look such way, it would beneat and blossoming. So what does this tell me then about the value of my work?! About how much I amvalued?!

Public work, no matter how well organised in Tiszacseke, has appeared to have some longer termnegative effects in the village, too. Since my last visit in 2010 I could observe that the attitude oflocal officials towards their job has also changed enormously. Even those officials, like the childprotection official or the nurse, who were very meticulous and proud of their work and its resultsback then, now were taking their work much less seriously. The nurse for example regularly wenthome 1-2 hours before the end of her working time, and the child protection official told me she isnot looking into every possible case that gets reported any more, as usually things work themselvesout anyway, so why she should bother herself. Both of them, working for over 7-8 years in theirjobs, explained this change in their attitude through public work. They increasingly felt that they aremaking a fool of themselves for working so hard and with such conscience while receiving hardlymore than the public workers, who obviously do not have such high responsibilities or work withsuch intensity.

17

Concluding remarks

While multiple studies engage with the geographies of workfare, most of these works examinepolicy directions and usually focus on processes evident at the national level. My study shows,however, that looking at local implementations of national level policies and examining these inrelation to particular socio-economic contexts can enhance our understanding of such workfareprogrammes. Bringing particularly marginalised places into our focus can deepen theoreticalconsiderations about geographies of workfare. However, they also have great relevance for policyplanning, as often these are the places where such programmes are the most needed and ultimatelysuch programmes are implemented in specific local contexts, which largely influence theiroutcomes. National statistics and national policy analysis hide such variations, consequently cannotbe the only basis for further policy adjustments.

My examination of local implementation of two different phases of this workfare programme inHungary revealed that first of all local mayors have a particularly high role and power to influencethe outcomes of the programmes. This can be problematic for two reasons. Firstly, mayors areelected officials, hence could use their position to both strengthen the local majority values or infact go against them, as the case in Tiszacseke. This can enhance the social position ofunemployed/aid beneficiaries or further deepen lines of social segregation. Secondly, as in bothcases, it can lead to extreme paternalism and favoritism, which makes unemployed even moredependent and vulnerable. Taking advantage of locales' high dependence on public work (or workopportunities in general), in both places it resulted in “pushing” unemployed people to oftenworking for free on the mayor's own asset or for the financially struggling local government inTiszacseke, and for the Hospitalier in Kislapos. In several cases, people who would not do this orhad no favourable connections to the mayor, became closed off entirely from public work orHospitalier jobs, the main employment opportunities in the localities. In this sense, my findings notonly confirmed other criticisms towards workfare measures about pushing especially thelow-skilled to take up increasingly flexible, precarious, low-paid jobs, but also to take advantage ofthe dependence and structural disadvantages of these social groups to fill in with “volunteer” workfinancial constraints of local governments/civic providers in a neoliberalising contexts of budgetcuts and state rescaling.

Concerning value-creation, the programme appears equally controversial. In both localities, publicwork provides the only or widest employment option. In a context, where there is little possibilitythat in the foreseeable future other jobs will be available for the mainly unskilled dominantly Romaand low-educated workforce, it has great importance whether this work option has value or thework of participants is valued. My findings, however, show that on the contrary to the politicalgoals, many of the recent legislative changes in fact work against according value to public work ormaking the workers feel socially valued. Considerably decreasing the salary, binding social aid eventighter to official work, making benefits more punitive and disciplining certainly convey theopposite idea. In general, short-term underpaid employment with intermittent periods of free labourrises feelings of insecurity in even those public workers, who are in a distinguished good position inthe scheme, and suggest that they are only second-rate citizens whose work is not as valued as thoseon regular waged jobs, even if they work as hard if not harder, show as much dedication if not moreby often working for free and using their own tools and assets to make their work better.

18

Finally, it also needs to be considered what effects such expansive work programmes that are thedominant work options in a locality can have on other work places. The research revealed that thisis also highly dependent on the ways work programmes are locally organised, conceived andvalued, which in fact also strongly relate to the local socio-economic contexts. Thus while inKislapos it made other, especially more secure and more permanent, jobs more valued over time,whereas in Tiszacseke its long-term effects seem more ambiguous. While it is still a very popularoption for which especially the “chosen” more permanent workers would still work for free, it alsomade other possibilities more sought for, whereas also decreasing the work enthusiasm andappreciation of local regular-wage officials in their jobs. These conclusions have particularimportance in a political climate which for over two government cycles increasingly sees publicwork as the main way of general job creation in the country.

References

Bass, László. 2010. “Az ‘Út a Munkához’ Program Hatása - Egy Kérdőíves Felmérés Tapasztalatai (Effects of the ‘Road to Work’ Programme - Results of a Survey).” Esély 21 (1): 46–64.

Bell, Peter D. 1984. Peasants in Socialist Transition. Life in a Collectivized Hungarian Village. Berkeley - Los Angeles - London: University of California Press.

Bódi, Ferenc. 2010. “Népességfogyás, a Szegénység Ördögi Köre. Fejlesztési Modellek (PopulationDecline, the Vicious Circle of Poverty).” A Falu XXV. (3): 21–35.

Bonvin, Jean-Michel. 2008. “Activation Policies, New Modes of Governance and the Issue of Responsibility.” Social Policy and Society 8 (3): 367–377.

Busch, Irén, Zsombor Cseres-Gergely, and László Neumann. 2013. “Institutional Environment of the Labour Market Beteen September 2011 and August 2012.” The Hungarian Labour Market 2013, Eds. by K. Fazekas, P. Benczúr and Á. Telgedy. Budapest: Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences & National Employment Non-profit Public Company.

Csoba, Judit. 2010. “A Közfoglalkoztatás Régi-új Rendszere. Útközben Az ‘Út a Munkához’ Programban (The Old and New System of Public Employment. On the Road in the ‘Road to Work Programme’).” Esély 21 (1): 4–24.

Eick, Volker, Margit Mayer, and Jens Sambale, ed. 2003. “From Welfare to Work”. Nonprofits and the Workfare State in Berlin and Los Angeles. Berlin: John F. Kennedy-Institute, Freie Universität Berlin.

Fazekas, Károly, and Ágota Scharle. 2012. “1.1. Munkaerőpiaci Látlelet (The State of the Labour Market).” In Nyugdíj, Segély, Közmunka. A Magyar Foglalkoztatáspolitika Két Évtizede, 1990-2010 (Pension, Aid, Public Work. Two Decades of the Hungarian Employment Policies.), Eds. by K. Fazekas and Á. Scharle, 2–20. Budapest: Budapest Szakpolitikai Elemző Intézet–MTA KRTK Közgazdaság-tudományi Intézet.

Ferge, Zsuzsa. 2008a. “Miért Szokatlanul Nagyok a Magyarországi Egyenlőtlenségek? (Why Are the Hungarian Unequalities Particularly Large?).” Esély 19 (2): 3–14.

———. 2008b. “Rögös Út a Munkához (Difficult Road to Work).” Népszabadság.Ferge, Zsuzsa, and Katalin Tausz. 2002. “Social Policy in Hungary: A Balance Sheet after Twelve

Years.” Social Policy and Administration 36 (2): 176–199.Goldberg, Chad Alan. 2007. Citizens and Paupers: Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedman’s

Bureau to Workfare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

19

Handler, Joel F. 2004. Social Citizenship and Workfare in the United States and Western Europe. The Paradox of Inclusion. Cambridge Studies in Law and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kozma, Judit, Judit Csoba, and Ibolya Czibere. 2004. Helyi Társadalmak, Kirekesztettség És Szociális Ellátások. Lehetőségek a Kirekesztődött Társadalmi Csoportok Érdekérvényesítési Esélyeinek Javítására a Helyi Társadalomban (Local Societies, Exclusion and Social Assistance. Possibilities for the Interest Recognition of Excluded Social Groups in Local Societies). Debrecen: Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó, Debreceni Egyetem.

Ladányi, János. 2009. “Az Antiszociális Szociálpolitika Formáinak Átalakulásai (Changes in the Forms of the Anti-social Social Politics).” Élet És Irodalom 16 (3): 3–4.

Laki, László. 2008. “Szocializáció Néhány Jellemzője a ‘Szegény Magyarországon’. Előzetes Megjegyzések a Szocializációról És a Társadalomról. (Some Characteristics of Socialisationin the Hungary of the Poor. Comments on Socialisation and Society).” In A Helyi Szociális Ellátórendszer. Tanulmánygyűjtemény (The Local Social Assistance System. Collected Studies), Edited by Ferenc Bódi, 145–159. Budapest: MTA Politikai Tudományok Intézete.

Leonard, Madeleine. 1998. “The Long-term Unemployed, Informal Economic Activity and the ‘Underclass’ in Belfast: Rejecting or Reinstating the Work Ethic.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 22 (1): 42–59.

Matejskova, Tatiana. 2013. “‘But One Needs to Work!’: Neoliberal Citizenship, Work-Based Immigrant Integration, and Post-Socialist Subjectivities in Berlin-Marzahn.” Antipode 45 (4): 984–1004.

McDonald, Catherine, and Greg Marston. 2005. “Workfare as Welfare: Governing Unemployment in the Advanced Liberal State.” Critical Social Policy 25 (3): 374–401.

McDonald, C., and G. Marston. 2005. “Workfare as Welfare: Governing Unemployment in the Advanced Liberal State.” Critical Social Policy 25 (3): 374–401.

Paz-Fuchs, Amir. 2008. Welfare to Work: Conditional Rights in Social Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Peck, Jamie. 2001a. “Workfare Versus the Cities.” Urban Geography 22 (5): 493–498.———. 2001b. Workfare States. London: Guilford Press.———. 2002. “Political Economies of Scale: Fast Policy, Interscalar Relations, and Neoliberal

Workfare.” Economic Geography 78 (3): 331–360.Roets et al., Griet. 2012. “Reinventing the Employable Citizen: A Perspective for Social Work.”

British Journal of Social Work 42 (1): 94–110.Roets, Griet, and et. al. 2012. “Reinventing the Employable Citizen: A Perspective for Social

Work.” British Journal of Social Work 42: 94–110.Rose, Nancy E. 1995. Workfare or Fair Work: Women, Welfare, and Government Work Programs.

New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Sunley, Peter, Ron Martin, and Corinne Nativel. 2006. Putting Workfare in Place: Local Labour

Markets and the New Deal. Oxford: Blackwell.Szalai, Júlia. 2009. “Fórum (Forum) - A Romák Integrációja.” Fundamentum 13 (2): 39–43.Szuromi, Rita. 2007. Otthom, Álom, Kislapos. Életképek as Elsö Magyar Befogadó Faluból.

(Home, Dream, Kislapos. Snapshots from the First Hungarian Host Village). Budapest: Kornétás.

Thelen, Tatjana, Stefan Dorondel, Alexandra Szőke, and Larissa Vetters. 2011. “‘The Sleep Has Been Rubbed from Their Eyes’: Social Citizenship and the Reproduction of Local Hierarchies in Rural Hungary and Romania.” Citizenship Studies 15 (3-4): 513–527.

20

Váradi, Mónika Mária. 2010. “A Közfoglalkoztatás Útjai És Útvesztői Egy Aprófalvas Kistérségben(The Paths and Mazes of Public Work in a Tiny Village Micro-region).” Esély 21 (1): 79–100.

Virág, Tünde, and János Zsolnay. 2010. “Csapdába Került Önkormányzatok, Csapdában Tartott Szegények - Közfoglalkoztatás a Csereháton (Trapped Local Governments, Trapped Poor - Public Work in Cserehat).” Esély 21 (1): 119–130.

21