ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how frontline encounters serve as sites for defining individuals as deserving or undeserving. In particular, this chapter demonstrates how undeserving subjects become discursively constructed when a novel activation policy legislation is interpreted by Finnish frontline workers in interviews. The chapter focuses specifically on how frontline workers’ discursive positionings of clients can be used to examine welfare deservingness and its material consequences, such as unemployed people’s access to services. In addition, the empirical examples used in this chapter illustrate how employability enhancement in Finland can be justified through frontline workers’ engagement in ‘class talk’ that positions frontline workers themselves as belonging to the deserving middle class.
