Social parasites

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Social parasite is a pejorative catchphrase that has been used since the late 1970s for an individual or group of people who are accused by other members of society of claiming social benefits and thus another social group (e.g. a welfare state or a solidarity community ) "exploit". Initially, the term was used in connection with so-called “ bogus asylum seekers ”, and after the restriction of the right to asylum in 1993 also in the debate about welfare recipients and other groups.

Occasionally the term is polemically expanded in the media and political debates in general to the unemployed , welfare recipients , long-term students , asylum seekers , or even large numbers of children . Less often, as in 1995 in the cover story The sweet life of social parasites in Focus magazine , people are also referred to as “social parasites” who are necessarily dependent on social help, for health reasons, due to old age or persecution. Likewise, people or companies who allegedly or actually receive unjustified state transfer payments ( abuse of benefits or social welfare ) or who commit undeclared work and tax evasion and avoidance are so designated.

In 2001, the term was used in Germany in the course of the so-called " laziness debate " ( Gerhard Schröder : "There is no right to be lazy in our society" ) within the framework of the Hartz legislation . Studies by Oschmiansky, Kull and Schmid ( Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung ) also initiated such debates in earlier years after 2001 , especially when unemployment rose or before elections such as in 1975, 1993 and 2001.

Critics accuse some of the media to stir up moods through media reports on individual cases and thus to generate social envy in parts of the public and to discredit the welfare state . "Social parasites" are assumed to be applying the strategy of parasitism to the social fabric, i. That is, to feed oneself at the expense of a " host " without necessarily having to rely on it. The Biologism is flawed in two ways, as parasitism exclusively on the yields of other species is related.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christoph Butterwegge : Crisis and Future of the Welfare State , pp. 97/98.
  2. ↑ Thomas Hirschboeck: Abuse of social welfare in Germany from a legal perspective , p. 1.
  3. ↑ a b Political Sociology, Volume 11: Sociology as Crisis Science , p. 144.
  4. ↑ Focus: No. 43 of October 23, 1995
  5. ^ Social parasites: Prison sentences for illegal workers , Stern, October 10, 2005.
  6. ^ Social parasites with numbered accounts , Die Zeit from February 1, 2010.
  7. ↑ Social parasitism at a high level Frankfurter Rundschau from July 1, 2013.
  8. ↑ Lazy unemployed? Political conjunctions of a debate (PDF; 731 kB)
  9. ^ The daily newspaper : taz: The denounced welfare state
  10. ↑ Telepolis: The biologization of the social

literature

  • Katrin Lehnert: »Work, no thanks« !? - The image of the social parasite in the activating welfare state , Utz, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-8316-0866-9 (= Munich ethnographic writings , volume 3, also a master's thesis at the Humboldt University Berlin 2006).
  • Tatiana Lastovka: Refusal to work (tunejadstvo) in the Soviet Union 1961-1991: legal theory, social practice and cultural representation . Printer University of Zurich, Zurich 2012 ( Dissertation No. 4058 at the University of St. Gallen 2012 217 pages, online, PDF, 217 pages, 3.9 MB in Russian , short version in German / English ).
  • Eva Maria Gajek, Christoph Lorke (Ed.): Aiming at social inequality, perception and interpretation of poverty and wealth since 1945. Proceedings, Münster (Westphalia) 2014, Campus, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-359-350472- 8 (in particular chapter: Tatjana Hofmann: Tunejadstvo in the Soviet Union. Time autonomy between state repression and individual design claims. Pages pp. 231–249).