2024/12/20 by Manstetten, Ruth
#300
paper · doi:10.6094/behemoth.2024.17.1.1106
Sociological research on poverty and unemployment is often based on employment-normative typologies, which can lead to misleading representations of the jobless as passive and dependent. In contrast, the concept of ‚distributive labour‘ developed by Ferguson (2015) in the South African context breaks with the association of non-work with dependency and passivity by describing activities as ‚labour‘ that transfer resources from the richer to the poorer, often building on relationships of ‚active dependency‘. Against this background, this article discusses the terminological and empirical potential of the term ‚distributive labour‘ in the German context. Based on 25 interviews with people excluded from wage labour, the findings raise questions about the success and failure of distributive labour linked to local social policies and the wage-labour norm. The contribution highlights the empirical benefits as well as the terminological weaknesses of notions of distributive labour in the context of highly fragile livelihood practices.