Which capital do you mobilise? How bureaucratic encounters shape jobseekers’ social and cultural capital in France and Germany

Abstract

Based on participant observations in the French and German public employment services (PES), this article proposes a new way of analysing bureaucratic encounters following Bourdieu’s capital theory. We show that caseworkers who are supposed to support jobseekers into employment, force the allegedly needy jobseekers to accumulate capital, but only in its cultural or social form, and never both at the same time. While there are national differences in the accumulation process, the findings highlight the coexistence of two different strategies: accumulation of cultural capital for a long-term and stable return to employment or accumulation of social capital for a short-term and temporary access to employment. Caseworkers attribute different importance to each type of capital, which results in an uneven distribution that reproduces inequalities through social policy services.