Welfare Clients’ Relational Legal Consciousness: An Empirical Perspective from the Netherlands

In recent years, the Netherlands has increasingly become a punitive welfare state. This chapter analyses how this development affects Dutch welfare clients’ commonsense understandings of the law. Based on a survey among more than a thousand welfare clients, this study points to the relational character of their legal consciousness. Welfare clients’ critical legal consciousness is shaped by their views on the harsh and cold way that welfare officials understand and apply the law. Although most welfare clients are law-abiding, welfare officials routinely treat them as potential fraudsters. In response to this attitude, clients start to question the legitimacy of welfare law.