Andreas Hirseland

Hunger and nutritional poverty in Germany: quantitative and qualitative empirical insights

Despite increasing social inequality, hunger and nutritional poverty are not regarded as phenomena of German reality; Germanys debate on eating patterns is largely dominated by the issue of obesity. The article challenges this view and shows by means of empirical approaches that hunger and nutritional poverty tend to be underestimated in a supposedly affluent society. Due to a lack of appropriate food research in Germany, our study gives quantitative evidence drawn from a combination of studies to show that there is nutritional poverty in Germany, and that social welfare recipients are widely excluded from eating out, arguably an essential form of social and cultural participation. Furthermore, we provide insights, based on a qualitative longitudinal study, into day-to-day coping practices in response to food shortage. As the empirical results show, physiological hunger and hunger for social inclusion by eating out are a reality in contemporary German society. The predominant responses of the German political and social welfare system, however, can be characterised by delegation and denial of the problem and by a tendency to stigmatise the poor.

How Benefits Recipients Perceive Themselves Through the Lens of the Mass Media - Some Observations from Germany

Dominant cultural representations of ‘the typical benefits recipient’ – notably in reality television and the tabloids – have been marked by an increasing focus on the character and alleged moral defects of individuals. Drawing on interviews from a large-scale German qualitative longitudinal study, this article explores how benefits recipients respond to such negative media images. Our analysis of interviewees’ ‘identity work’ finds that they have internalised and replicate negative public discourses to a surprising extent. The figure of the ‘typical’ benefits recipient constructed in the media emerges as both a threat to recipients’ self-identities, and as a central reference point in the strategies through which they attempt to defend their respectability. The article concludes with some thoughts on the relationship between such negative representations and the political legitimacy of welfare reform.

Migration, Unemployment, and Lifeworld Challenges for a New Critical Qualitative Inquiry in Migration

Migration is an issue for many countries. It affects several areas of social problems, for example, work and unemployment. A relevant issue to study in the context of unemployment and social welfare is, “Which are experiences of migrants with different language backgrounds in finding work and support?” For a running study with episodic interviews and mobile methods with migrants from the former Soviet Union to Germany, several issues are discussed in a “new critical inquiry”: Critical issues in the studied area (help, control, normative claims); applying (familiar) qualitative methods (interviewing in various languages and cultural backgrounds or mobile methods); triangulation in a new critical migration research.