Framing Welfare Recipients in Political Discourse

"Lenka Kissová's book is clearly written and carefully researched. Her interdisciplinary insight and discursive analysis of parliamentary debates on Slovak "workfare" policies illustrates the deliberate, precise and politicized colocation of Roma marginalization and economic disadvantage, in a manner that starkly illustrates systemic racism dressed up as morally necessary regulatory reform. Moreover, her research has broader comparative and methodological relevance given how she layers in and utilizes governmentality, securitization and legitimation theory, unmasking how neoliberal economic assumptions and dog whistle politics, woven into the speech of politicians, works to demonize recipients as real or potential cheats and criminals, enact further social exclusion and heighten inequality and fear while not-so-subtly promoting existing prejudices. Her overarching metaphor-that of parliamentarians engaging in "political farming" where their ideas seed and take root in fertile soil of the national landscape resulting in regulatory "products"-effectively demonstrates how social reality generally and state regulation specifically can be constructed divorced from actual evidence, a process beyond her specific case and critically relevant to our times."

- Barbara J. Falk, Professor, Department of Defence Studies, Canadian Forces College/Royal Military College of Canada, Fellow, Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, University of Toronto, Canada