Individual Responsibility versus Social Category Problems: Benefit Officers' Perceptions of Communication with Young People

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Abstract
With many young people today dependent on welfare benefits, communication with benefits officers is an important and consequential part of their lives. The question of how benefits officers perceive their communication with young people has a bearing on issues of individualization and power, yet is an area neglected by research. The present paper describes an interview study in which 14 benefits officers were asked about their perceptions of communication with teenagers. A prominent finding was that most interviewees sought to deny that young people were different from adults, yet also made certain generalizations about young people (e.g. lack of understanding and motivation). It is argued that such discursive contradictions may reflect young people's contradictory relations with labour market and benefits institutions.