The discourse of the social benefit system in The Netherlands

摘要: With the introduction of the Participation Act the Dutch government decentralized their social services to the municipalities. This entailed not only the ‘participation society’and the emphasis on own responsibility, but also tighter prerequisites which are enforced by sanctions, fines or even the complete termination of receiving benefits. While the experiences of social benefit recipients have been discussed by other authors, the discourse of the social benefit system remains uninvestigated. Furthermore, the aspect of criminalization has not been linked to the Dutch social benefit system. A critical discourse analysis was performed in line with Fairclough’s (1992) three-dimensional model by studying 59 documents of different actors in the social benefit system. The distrust in social benefit recipients is entrenched in all dimensions of the model. The aspect of criminalization therefore dominates the discourse of the Dutch social benefit system.