Mutual obligation: why reciprocity is an inadequate principle for unemployment programmes

Abstract

Individualised reciprocity is the moral bedrock of recent Australian unemployment policies including the Howard Government’s principle of Mutual Obligation. In this paper I explore the function of reciprocity within unemployment policy and the politics of redistribution. This exploration allows me to extend existing discussions about Mutual Obligation and include a broader analysis of the civic obligations are framed within it. I argue that temporal and conceptual inconsistencies within Mutual Obligation frame unemployed citizens as perpetual recipients with no past and no future. This artificially static representation justifies the enforced obligations found in current unemployed policy. Other citizens are represented as eternal contributors who are already fulfilling their obligations, a conceptualisation that offers little guidance on general civic responsibilities. Consequently, I argue that reciprocity so-conceived is at best only a partial indicator of whether citizens are fulfilling their obligations to the community. I conclude that individualised reciprocity is an unethical basis on which to administer income support policy in Australia.