The Reflections of Religious Traditions and Welfare State Regimes in the Worldviews of the Unemployed in Great Britain, Sweden and Ireland. Analyses of Biographical Experiences and Collective Orientations.

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The project examines in a comparative perspective religious and non-religious worldviews of persons who are not able to sustain their lives on their own financial means and are therefore dependent on welfare benefits. This group of people is equipped with few material resources and restricted possibilities of social participation. They are particularly confronted with the risk of social exclusion and stigmatization and have to face the insecurities and contingencies of life. At the same time they depend on the solidarity of society. In traditional societies poor relief was in the responsibility of religious institutions. As the functional differentiation of society proceeded, this function was delegated to the welfare state, but in different ways and to a different degree shaped by the confessional traditions and religious social doctrines. Countries, where either the Catholic Church or Calvinistic respectively Puritan communities played an important role, only formed a fragmented welfare state, because poor relief was carried out by private donors and church or religious communities. Countries with a Lutheran state church developed a generous and universal social democratic welfare state, where poor relief became a public issue and was assigned to state institutions; claims for social provision are there based on citizenship. Catholic social doctrines in contrast are guided by the principle of subsidiarity, i.e. in the first place the family is responsible for the support of members in need. In the applied project it is explored, whether and in which manner the mentioned religious roots condensed in worldviews of recipients of social provisions in different countries. Interpretations of the world, the life and the social relations of support will be reconstructed: How is the receiving of compensations legitimized by the affected persons and which obligations do they connect with their situation? In a biographical perspective it will be analyzed how welfare benefit recipients cope with their situation in different contexts with varying activation policies. The analyses refer to the worldview-model as a heuristic concept, that allows to differentiate religious and non-religious interpretations of the world, the life and experiences of contingency. A qualitative approach will be used for analysis with biographical narrative interviews in order to reconstruct the accumulation of life experiences that condense to worldviews. On the other hand, group discussions will be conducted that allow to discern collective patterns of orientation. The project consists of three case studies comparing the following countries: Firstly Sweden as a country with a social democratic welfare state regime and the tradition of a Lutheran state church, secondly Great Britain with a liberal welfare state, an Anglican state church, a religious plurality and a considerable Puritan tradition, and thirdly the catholic Ireland with a recently developed welfare state.