“Bedürftigkeit” and Cohesion in the Activating Welfare State

Abstract

This article deals with a central German welfare category, “Bedürftigkeit”, which determines whether a person is eligible to receive welfare assistance. The article examines its oscillation between a socio-statistical category, a societal category, and as an element of the basic constitution of human being. Based on a study on non-request of social benefits, it explains how the rise of activation policies successively replaced the figure of the social state citizen with that of an active citizen, one who can circumvent Bedürftigkeit by own efforts—if they only want it enough.