Welfare Compliance Struggles: Symbolic Violence and the Reproduction of Poverty in Welfare Bureaucracies

Persistent poverty often intertwines with humiliating encounters in welfare bureaucracies. This article examines how strict compliance demands can inflict symbolic violence and thereby reproduce poverty. Drawing on 216 in-depth interviews with long-term low-income individuals in the Netherlands, we use abductive qualitative analysis to explore experiences of welfare surveillance and stigma. We find that compliance is frequently experienced as humiliation, leading claimants to withdraw, self-exclude, and suffer relational disempowerment. Bureaucratic practices—through street-level discretion, compliance regimes, and exclusion—impose a demeaning “undeserving” identity on clients. This symbolic violence undermines claimants’ self-worth, discourages benefit take-up, and strains their relationship with the state. The article advances social policy theory by linking welfare compliance struggles to Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence and highlights the need for policy reforms to mitigate stigma and empower welfare recipients. These findings carry important implications for improving the dignity and effectiveness of welfare provision, in the Netherlands and beyond.