Families receiving basic assistance in Germany. Interaction effects between relationships and institutional contexts in "poor families"

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Family is a primary level of coping with economic constraints and precarious life situations. Material deprivation thus has consequences for the organization of family life. At the same time, however, family life faced with income poverty is framed by public institutions of the welfare state such as the means tested basic assistance for job seekers ("Grundsicherung für Arbeitsuchende") in Germany. In particular, community constructions that are anchored in this legal system define relationships and solidarities between the family members and thus have a strong influence on families’ everyday life. While this has always been the case in the context of the principle of subsidiarity, it applies even more so under the condition of welfare state change in the light of the ‘activation’ paradigm, that is a shift in policy goals from passive to active social policies: In the wake of the "Hartz reforms", the German system of basic assistance for jobseekers regulated in Social Code II (“Sozialgesetzbuch II”, short: SGB II) is increasingly focusing on activation of jobseekers (application training, behavioral rules, e.g. the obligation to accept any job offer, sanctions) and redefines the responsibilities between family members via the construct of the "community of needs" ("Bedarfsgemeinschaft"). How family relationships are shaped and biographically designed under these conditions and what regulatory role political institutions play in these processes is thus an urgent research desideratum. The project therefore examines interactions between the microsocial dynamics of couple and parent-child relationships and institutional contexts using the example of families receiving basic assistance in Germany. Under investigation is how relationship structures in families that receive basic unemployment benefits develop and change and to what extent family relationships are influenced by the institutional constructions of the Social Code Book II and their organizational implementation in employment agencies (“Jobcenter”). In the framework of a case based, reconstructive family research, biographical interviews with families will be conducted. The pilot project aims to develop adequate concepts to better understand such complex interaction effects; this will form the basis for a larger-scale empirical study in international comparison.