Intimate scandals: social assistance, Denmark, 2011–13

Chapter 7 analyses the reform labelled ’Everyone can be useful’ in Denmark in 2011-13. The reform transformed the system of the uninsured unemployed in several ways. It reduced benefits and installed an ‘education injunction’ for young recipients, required all ‘able’ recipients to work for their benefit, strengthened sanctions, introduced new instruments towards the ‘vulnerable’ recipient and young single parents, and created a complex system of ‘triage’ in order to categorise the recipients according to a variety of instruments. Part of the process were two public scandals in which two individual recipients came to exemplify the dysfunctions of the system. In different ways the scandals put the question of whether the system was in fact ‘active’ to the test. The chapter further analyses the problem of profiling recipients, as well as how so-called ‘utility jobs’ became a panacea for all able recipients.