ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a similar set of neoliberal welfare reforms in Slovakia in January 2004 by the centre-right government of Mikulas Dzurinda, and the media-led "moral panic" that surrounded subsequent protests by disadvantaged populations in Eastern Slovakia. Promoted under the slogan "Work Pays", the so-called New Social Policy promised to deliver a "fair" redistribution of public funds by substituting universal welfare for means-tested "work-fare". Focusing on the slogan "Work Pays," the chapter illustrates the degree to which its formulation relied not only on stereotypes of the Roma as "idle", but it also resonated with vernacular concepts of honest labour, corruption, and laziness shared by the general population. It shows how it echoed the earlier discursive coupling of employment and citizenship found in communist-era celebrations of collective labour. The chapter problematizes the commonplace characterization of neoliberalism as a morally bankrupt ideology that promotes a society "in which materialism overwhelms moral commitment".
