Work at the margins

Since the late 19th century modern social welfare policy established social insurances in certain formalized cases of non-work: in case of old age, illness, invalidity and finally unemployment. Doing so, it gained importance to control the entitlement to social welfare, the national affiliation, the precondition of willingness to work or the (in- )ability to work. These new regulations of work and non-work also manifested certain concepts of work and profession. Simultaneously and with reference to the new social status of labour and to the new social rights debates on vagrancy, begging and the work-shy relived a new boom. Who should receive help? Who is a threat to the greater public good by refusing labour? Not every way to find income was equally acknowledged as work. There was a variety of activities changeable between work, search of work, non-work, begging and vagrancy. These activities were suspected of being a cover of work-shyness and negative work. Through that they belonged to a disputed sphere at the margins of welfare, labour market and criminality. Within this context unskilled, occasional, seasonal labour were further marginalized and subject of re-definition. The project analyses these disputed boundaries of work. Changes of work and the emergence of the welfare state have mostly been written about from the perspective of the state and of politics. The project changes perspective. It focuses on precarious forms of waged labour and non-work within the context of the organisations of labour market, search for employment and job placement. The survey focuses on the geographic area of Austria in the period from 1918 to 1938, but also considers relevant developments since the late 19th century. Of particular interest is the tramping of the unemployed and forms of integration, support and control of the ramblers being related to it. The project analyses all these practises - with varying efficacy - of defining, distinguishing and imposing hierarchies. What was labour or non-work, and how was it defined? The project will equally include marginalised perspectives and practices into the analysis. Autobiographical writings, court records and police records will be the basis for that.