ABSTRACT
This chapter tries to 'isolate' the identity effect by means of a most similar design based on data from two social democratic regimes, Denmark and Finland. It describes the different levels of generosity in Denmark and Finland and how it is measured in few samples of long-term unemployed. The chapter analyses to what extent this difference in generosity influences the degree of stigmatisation felt by the long-term unemployed. Denmark and Finland are extreme cases among the social democratic regimes in terms of economic resources given to low-income groups in unemployment. From a psychological perspective, one of the main theses would be that the feeling of stigmatisation during unemployment is dependent on alternative legitimate identities that are not related to work. The chapter isolates the effect from the degree of generosity on the degree of 'us-them-divide' or the cultural distinctiveness of the long-term unemployed.
