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Long-term benefit receipt is a profound problem within the German minimum income scheme. Interventions increasingly focus on the individual beneficiary. The study shows that individualised policies are ridden with prerequisites mainly impeding long-term beneficiaries´ efforts to exit entitlement by means of the minimum income scheme.

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Against the background of a high incidence of long-term benefit receipt and an increasing focus of interventions on the individual beneficiary, this study shows how individualised policies within the German minimum income scheme serve long-term beneficiaries as a way out of benefit receipt. By applying a qualitative research design, the link between individual appropriations of policies and individual life planning is reconstructed in the form of an empirically grounded typology. The analysis shows that individualised policies are ridden with prerequisites. Beneficiaries, that are not able to expertly appropriate them and to plan in the long-term, face unintended consequences like a limitation of life planning, a separation from the scheme or an establishment within entitlement.

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Individualisation of minimum income schemes´ policies - Institutional context of the German minimum income scheme - Individual perspectives on the German minimum income scheme as institutional context and biographical situation - Long-term beneficiaries´ appropriations of the German minimum income scheme and their life planning regarding benefit receipt.

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Norbert Petzold was research fellow at the Department of Social Sciences at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany. His research interests are social inclusion, minimum income protection, and activation.

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