ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how policymakers’ discourse and rhetoric construct un/deservingness that aims to achieve a variety of political goals, such as legitimising or objecting to welfare policies. More specifically, this chapter focuses on how un/deservingness can be approached as a speech act in parliamentary discussions in which policymakers debate topics such as welfare conditionalities. The chapter provides empirical examples of how Finnish parliament members rhetorically present unemployed people’s un/deservingness as factual when debating retrenchment policy in plenary sessions. In addition, it shows how policymakers strategically construct undeservingness, for example, to avoid being blamed for their unpopular actions.
