Voices of the Poor: Negotiations of Social Rights in Denmark, 1849–1891

Abstract

This chapter investigates negotiations of social rights in Denmark, from the first democratic constitution in 1849 to the social reforms of the 1890s. By drawing on newer citizenship studies and key studies on pauper agency, it focuses on the everyday practice of citizenship and the actions and experiences of those citizens who relied on public support in the city of Aarhus. Through the examination of applications written by the poor to the municipality, the chapter shows how the poor themselves played an active role in shaping the local poor relief system. These local negotiations in turn shaped the content of national citizenship, which indicates that the municipalities preceded the national legislation, functioning as a point of reference for the social reforms of the 1890s.

Introduction

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Denmark enacted three social reforms, which made it possible for people to receive unstigmatized public support. These reforms also supported preventive initiatives to eradicate poverty. As such, existing welfare state research has highlighted these reforms as lines of continuation between nineteenth-century poor relief and the twentieth-century welfare state. This research has emphasized political parties and collective class struggles as decisive factors in shaping the new social policy.¹ In doing so, these studies inevitably prioritized institutional considerations over those of their users, as well as organized social movements over non-organized citizen’s interactions with the state. Thus, the agency and experiences of the people who depended on the public poor relief system were left out of the equation. This is due mainly to the fact that recipients of poor relief had no formal political organization or official spokespersons, and they were deprived of both key civil and political rights, such as the right to vote.²

Drawing on studies within the fields of citizenship and pauper agency, I wish to demonstrate the ways in which ordinary citizens, armed with pencil and paper, were entering new territory as they questioned the existing social order and pushed for change. My main argument is that the everyday interactions between the actual users of welfare and the people in power played a role in the evolution of social practice. These interactions contained important citizenship negotiations, which questioned the content and the extent of social rights. However, these negotiations can easily be overlooked because they are more subtle and less visible than, for example, public strikes or parliamentary debates. To access them, we must turn our focus toward the municipalities, who were responsible for managing the poor law. My analysis is based on the municipality of Aarhus, where different types of applications provide us with an insight into the lived experiences of the poor and their dealings with the local authorities.

From Poor Relief to Welfare State

The question of who and what were the driving forces behind the welfare state depends on the definition of what constitutes a welfare state, as does the question of when to date the welfare state. Thus, it is natural to place the emergence of the Danish welfare state in the postwar period, if one operates with an all-encompassing definition of a welfare state in which the state ensures the social security of its citizens and strives for full employment and economic growth.³ In the postwar period, characteristic welfare benefits—such as the national pension and state-subsidized child-care institutions—saw the light of day.⁴ Scholars who have focused their attention on this period often highlight the workers’ movement and the Social Democrats as the main driving forces.⁵

Other scholars, who operate with a narrower understanding of what constitutes a welfare state, have turned their attention to specific qualitative features, such as state-funded benefits or preventive initiatives. In their desire to trace the history of these features, they have found it meaningful to look further back in time, especially to the time around the turn of the century. In 1891, a new poor law and old-age compensation act were enacted. These laws made it possible to receive support during childbirth and old age, along with support for doctors’ visits, funerals, and disabled children without the loss of rights. The following year, a law regarding state-subsidized sickness funds followed.⁶ Several scholars have highlighted that the tax-funded old-age compensation can be seen as an expression of universalism and solidarity, and thus a small step toward the welfare state that would emerge in the twentieth century.⁷ Some have emphasized how the sickness fund laid the foundation for the so-called flexicurity system, a labor market model that combines flexibility for employers and security for workers.⁸ Others have pointed out that the new poor law is the first sign of the emergence of a caring and ameliorative social policy.⁹ Here, forces such as the agrarian movement, the Liberal Party (Venstre), and increasing industrialization have been stressed as key factors in this development.¹⁰

Considerably less attention has been paid to investigating the poor as driving forces. This of course has to do with the judicial and social stigmatization that the recipients of poor relief were placed under. Up until 1891, the legislation on public poor relief in Denmark was based on the Poor Law of 1803, which had been subjected to several alterations during the first half of the century. Some of these alterations deprived the poor relief recipients of key civil rights, for example, the right to marry and the right to private ownership.¹¹ The judicial degradation was further increased with the enactment of the first democratic constitution in 1849. Even though this constitution secured social citizenship, making the right to receive public support a constitutional right, it also excluded recipients of poor relief from political citizenship, along with women and servants.¹² At the same time, poor- and workhouses became increasingly popular in Danish municipalities from the 1860s. In fact, Denmark had the highest number of poor- and workhouses among the Nordic countries. These institutions supported people in need by subjecting them to surveillance, discipline, and control.¹³

So far, existing studies on poor relief in nineteenth-century Denmark have highlighted that the correlation between the constitutional allocation of rights and the municipal administration of the national poor law, with its use of poor- and workhouses, resulted in humiliation, infringement, and an overall stigmatization of recipients of public poor relief.¹⁴ In addition, several studies have stressed that the political exclusion demoted recipients of poor relief to second-class citizens. Thus, the users of the early welfare state are portrayed as passive victims in an unloving system.¹⁵

However, in several recent citizenship studies, scholars have stressed that citizenship should be viewed not only as something that is allocated, but also something that is done, and thus something that can be done differently. Similarly, studies within the field of pauper agency have stressed the importance of investigating local practice. Even though welfare policies were formally set at the national level, studies have shown how these policies were enacted at the local level, and the ways in which face-to-face negotiations determined their impact.¹⁶ All in all, these studies call for an investigation of the early welfare state that looks beyond the formal status of citizenship and national legislation. What is needed is an investigation that considers the everyday practice of citizenship and the actions and experiences of those citizens who turned to the local administrators in need of help, an investigation that provides a more nuanced understanding of how social benefits were introduced and established.

Citizenship and Pauper Agency

In his seminal essay Citizenship and Social Class (1949), T. H. Marshall defines citizenship as a “status bestowed on those who are full members of a community.”¹⁷ It is a status that includes civil, political, and social rights and obligations. However, since the 1990s, several citizenship studies have stressed that citizenship should not only be viewed solely as a formal status, as Marshall defines it, but also as a social practice. For instance, Ruth Lister draws a distinction between two formulations: “to be a citizen” and “to act as a citizen.” To be a citizen means enjoying the formal status of citizenship, while to act as a citizen involves fulfilling the full potential of that status. For Lister, this distinction is key in deconstructing the conception of women as passive victims, while also acknowledging the discriminatory and oppressive male-dominated institutions that denied them full citizenship.¹⁸

Likewise, Canning and Rose emphasize citizenship as both a judicial status and a set of social practices. By combining the discursive and experiential dimensions of citizenship, Canning and Rose highlight how citizenship functions as a multidimensional discursive framework that provided citizens with the languages, rhetoric, and formal categories for claims-making. Like Lister, Canning and Rose are interested in the ways in which gender has shaped claims-making activities, pointing out that women, along with minorities on the margins of citizenship, often had a leading role in striking these claims.¹⁹

Similarly, Isin describes citizenship as a subject position in constant flux. According to Isin, citizenship can be defined as a “dynamic (political, legal, social and cultural but perhaps also sexual, aesthetic and ethical) institution of domination and empowerment that governs who citizens (insiders), subjects (strangers, outsiders) and abjects (aliens) are and how these actors are to govern themselves and each other in a given body politic.”²⁰ If one operates with this definition, citizenship is not just performed and enacted by citizens, but also by non-citizens. In his effort to uncover the dynamic and porous nature of citizenship, Isin has introduced the concept of acts of citizenship,²¹ which “requires a focus on those moments when, regardless of status or substance, subjects constitute themselves as citizens—or, better still, as those to whom the right to have rights is due.”²²

My study builds on these thoughts on citizenship, acknowledging that formal citizenship is not a prerequisite for a political voice. Even though recipients of poor relief did not enjoy the full status of citizenship, I treat them as political actors and investigate the agency that the poor, though stigmatized and degraded, did attain. This aim also corresponds with the research field of pauper agency. Studies within this field have highlighted the local and relational aspects of poor relief and emphasized the different ways that the poor handled and negotiated their poverty, especially during the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.²³ For example, Lynn Lees argues that poor relief should be viewed as an active, negotiating process between the poor and the administrator.²⁴ In a similar vein, Marco van Leeuwen stresses the mutual strategic interaction between the recipient and the allocator of relief as defining the ways in which poor relief was distributed. Key to many studies within the field of pauper agency are ego-documents, such as letters, complaints, and applications, which give us an insight into not only the actions of the poor, but also their experiences of being poor.

Applications in Aarhus

Along with other studies on pauper agency, this study is based on ego-documents, in the form of applications written by the poor to the municipality of Aarhus. Aarhus is located on the east coast of the Jutland peninsula and was at the beginning of the nineteenth century a small provincial town. After the expansion of the harbor from 1841 to 1861 and the opening of the railroad in 1862, the city experienced significant economic growth. The population increased from 11,000 inhabitants in 1860 to 52,000 in 1901, and Aarhus became the fastest growing provincial city in Denmark. People moved from the surrounding rural areas to the city center in hopes of finding a job. However, toward the end of the century, the city was increasingly marked by social problems, such as unemployment and pressure on the housing market, and many had to turn to the public poor relief system for help.²⁵

The public poor relief system was managed by the local poor committee. The committee was a part of the elected City Council and provided a mixture of indoor and outdoor relief, in the form of pecuniary and food assistance. The applications, which are at the heart of this study, were addressed either to the poor committee or directly to the City Council. The applications vary considerably in form and content. Some are executed beautifully, and are well structured and well written. Others are made in straightforward and informal language, without punctuation and with random capital letters. It is reasonable to assume that at least some of the applications may not have been written by the applicant himself, but either by professional scribes or the people in his personal network, for example, an employer, landlord, or local pastor. As such, it is a type of source material that is entangled in questions of authenticity, authorship, writing skills, performativity, and factuality. While it is important to keep these considerations in mind, the applications still hold significant value in that they provide us with an insight into the strategies put forth by the poor. Even though some may not have been written by the person who signed the application and others consist of some amount of “make-up,” they still show us how the poor used their network to further their position, as well as the intentional performances of the poor.

Regaining Lost Rights

While the constitution of 1849 excluded recipients from political citizenship, it also contained the possibility to have one’s relief canceled and thus regain the lost rights.²⁶ But up until 1891, the national poor legislation did not set any official rules or criteria regulating this paragraph. Instead, it was left to each municipality to decide who should be deemed worthy of having his debt canceled and on what grounds. In Aarhus, recipients of poor relief would send written applications for debt cancellation to the municipality. These types of applications appear frequently from the 1880s onwards. The applications were addressed directly to the City Council, who would usually forward them to the poor committee to give recommendations as to whether the applicant should have his debt canceled. The poor committee then undertook a general investigation of the accounts that were put forward in the applications. Often the poor committee would pay a visit to the applicant’s home and conduct an examination, which also ensures some amount of credibility to the applications.

In July 1890, the City Council received an application for debt cancellation from a factory worker, Martinus Vissing.²⁷ His application is as follows:Verse

Verse As originating from a poor and ill-fated home, I was hospitalized at Aarhus Hospital on 8 September 1880 and later 3 times with different intervals so that my total debt amounts to 175 DKr. and 60ø. The first time I became a burden on the public system, I was only 19 years old, and I had no idea at the time that I had a moral obligation to repay the sickness benefits or that I by not doing it would lose basic human rights. This became clear to me at a later stage, but partly because of the sickness—which every time has been rheumatic fever—I have a chronic heart disease that will follow me the rest of my life, which means that I am not always able to work, and partly because I have a poor and blind father, whom I occasionally support, it has so far been impossible for me to repay my debt. In recent years, I have tried to put aside a small amount of money in order get the debt repaid but so far in vain—The sum is too big for me—it is insurmountable; In order for me to once again regain my lost social rights, I hereby allow myself with great reverence to address the high council in petition for it to give me its assistance by willingly cancelling two thirds of my debt. I allow myself to think that this is also in the best interest of the city. A third part of the total amount of 58 Dkr. 53 ø, I can, by continued good health, be able to repay within a shorter or longer period of time—the full amount, on the other hand, probably never. Aarhus, July 15, 1890, Respectfully, Martinus Vissing Factory-worker.Footnote

Aarhus City Archive, journal number 271–1890.

In this application, I believe two important factors are at play. First, Vissing argues that his poverty was not the result of a lack of character, but that, through no fault of his own, he was in financial hardship: He describes how as a young man he fell ill and later came to realize his moral obligation to pay back the received relief, but it was now too late. By sharing his personal experiences of sickness and poverty with the local authorities, Vissing tried to make these experiences a matter of public interest. By passing on these personal details to the City Council, the application reflects the underlining notion that the municipality should care about his personal experiences and take them into consideration. Second, Vissing uses the language and laws of citizenship repeatedly throughout his application. This is especially evident in phrases such as “I had no idea at the time that I had a moral obligation to repay the sickness benefits or that I by not doing it would lose basic human rights” and “in order for me to once again regain my lost social rights.” It is clear that Vissing sees himself as a political being “with basic human rights,” and that he was able to articulate these rights.

Several other applicants also referenced the constitution and their citizenship rights. In 1888, weaver Christian Petersen wrote that he would like the City Council to cancel his debt of 24 Kr. because, as he noted, “the loss of civil rights is weighing on me.”²⁹ It should be pointed out that the term civil rights in these applications refers to the Marshallian concept of both civil and political rights. The same line of reasoning is reflected in shoemaker J. Jensen’s application from 1889, in which he stated that he would like the City Council to cancel his debt of 14 Dkr, “since I rather not lose my civil rights.”³⁰ Worker Carl Petersen used a similar phrasing in his applications from 1888. Because of an infection in his knee, Petersen had been hospitalized and was left with a debt of 30.40 Dkr. He applied for the cancellation of this debt by stressing that he was not yet able to work, and thus did not see himself as capable of paying back the money he owed, but that he would “rather not lose his civil rights.”³¹ Worker Rasmus Nielsen referred more directly to his voting rights in his application from 1891. Here he explained that due to his wife’s sickness, he now owed the municipality 10 Dkr, but that he wanted his debt canceled because, as he put it, “I would rather not henceforth lose my right to vote.”³²

Based on these applications to the City Council, all five men got either all or parts of their debt canceled. The applications show us that recipients of poor relief were able to use the rhetoric of citizenship to position themselves as political beings. They knew which words to use and how to argue for their rights. By doing so, the applicants used the concept of political citizenship as a steppingstone to request the cancellation of paid relief. A similar dynamic was also at play in other types of applications.

Allotments and Active Citizens

As mentioned above, the city of Aarhus offered both indoor and outdoor relief. A part of the city’s outdoor relief consisted of allotment gardens—small pieces of land that offered aid to the urban poor by providing them with the opportunity to supplement their otherwise sparse income with fruit and vegetables. In 1836, the city owned approximately 36 allotments. By 1884, the number had increased to 140, and by 1891 there were 228 allotments. The allotments were administered by the poor committee and were apportioned free of charge.³³ As the growing number of allotments suggests, these plots of land were very popular. Their popularity stemmed from the fact that the allotments—unlike other types of public poor relief—did not result in any loss of rights, even though the allotments were aimed at helping family fathers, who usually had to give up their political rights in order to receive public support. That the allotments allowed male citizens to exercise both social and political rights is an interesting feature from a citizenship perspective.

The main reason why recipients of poor relief were excluded from political citizenship in 1849 was that the ability to support oneself was seen as a precondition for suffrage. This meant that political citizenship was not only male-gendered but also built around a particular form of masculine ideal. This allocation of rights placed ultimate authority and responsibility on the male head of the household and made passive social citizenship incompatible with active political rights.³⁴ Since the allocation of allotments did not cause any loss of rights, the act of applying for an allotment can be treated as an “act of citizenship,” because this act called into question the formally defined distinction between social and political rights.

The applications for allotments are interesting because the applicants used the notion of the male political citizen in order to get the opportunity to be both a recipient of poor relief and a political citizen at the same time. This meant presenting yourself as independent and responsible, which is why many also stressed their role as providers. For example, worker Vilhelm Petersen wrote in his application from 1883: “I, in my position as provider for a wife and 6 children, could benefit from the help such a plot of land would be able to give me.”³⁵ In the attached testimony (which all applicants were required to present), Petersen’s former employer also emphasized his ability to provide: “Vilhelm Petersen (…) is a nice and decent, sober and diligent man, who arguably will make sure to get something out of it, if the requested allotment is allocated him, and since he has a large family to support, he needs such an additional income.”³⁶

Key words such as “sober,” “hard-working,” “diligent,” “trustworthy,” “industrious,” “respectable,” “conscientious,” “polite,” “independent,” “rational,” “sensible,” and “careful” are repeatedly used to characterize the applicants, either by themselves or by the person giving the testimony.³⁷ These words were all characteristics associated with the role of being a provider and connected to the ideal of the male, political citizen. In the national parliament, the exact same words were being used to describe the deserving poor, who—as many politicians argued—should not be deprived of their political rights. Words such as “lazy” and “drunken” are, on the other hand, used in descriptions of the underserving poor, who were not deemed worthy of political participation.³⁸ By emphasizing their willingness to work and their position as the male head of the household, the applicants deliberately presented themselves as men striving for their family’s economic survival and respectability. Through the display of character traits such as being independent and industrious, which was inevitably linked to the conception of political citizenship, the applicants used the ideal of the good citizen as a steppingstone for exercising both their social and political citizenship. This again underlines how citizenship functioned as a discursive framework to make claims about rights.³⁹

In addition, the applications show us that many people applied several times in order to procure an allotment. One of these applicants was worker Søren Møller. The first testimony from Møller is dated May 26, 1879. However, in this testimony it appears that Møller had previously been in contact with the municipality:

Dear Mayor Schmidten,

Three years ago, I addressed head master Kraiberg with the respect of acquiring an allotment if such became available, since it would be a great help for me and my family and after his request, I submitted briefly thereafter an application with Mr. Editor Mørk’s recommendation and signature, and a year ago I submitted once again information on where I lived, but now I have obtained nothing and I have been made known from what I deem a reliable source that last year quite a few plots were available.⁴⁰

Applications such as this demonstrate how industrious, active, and proactive the poor were in their dealings with the local authorities. Møller’s arguments, which appear to be well formulated and well founded, display a kind of self-confidence. In addition, his applications show us that he knew how to use his network: Niels Kraiberg, whom Møller mentions he had been in contact with, was a City Council member and part of the poor committee, while Johannes Mørk, from whom Møller had obtained a recommendation, was the editor of the local newspaper and member of the City Council. Thus, Møller showed he was in contact with some of the city’s most prominent men. He also showed courage in addressing the mayor in person, while also stating that he knew that the City Council had had the opportunity to give him an allotment but had so far not done so. However, Møller was not allocated an allotment in 1879, and three years later applied again:

Since I have 3 times before applied to be considered for the distribution of allotments and my requests have not yet been successful, and it has now come to my knowledge that there will be a few plots available this spring, I ask to be considered at this distribution.⁴¹

Even though Møller met the formal criteria for the allocation of an allotment, he did not receive one in 1882. Still without an allotment, Møller applied again the following year:

Since there are some plots of allotments for the use and cultivation of poor people who have not received poor relief available, I would like to ask the Honorable Poor Committee to obtain such a plot as I have a large Family and it would be a big help to me. I have 4 children, the oldest is 11 years old and the next 6 years old and one at 4 years old and one at 2 years old—I am 43 years old and my wife is 40 years old so I believe that there are many who are younger than me who have had a plot for many years.⁴²

Attached to the application were three recommendations in which Møller was described as a “hard-working man who seeks to support his family in the best possible way” and as a “sober, and extremely decent, hard-working and reliable man.” Although Møller, who categorized himself as a “poor worker,” belonged to the lowest rung of society, he did not submit to the decision put forward by the municipality, but had the courage to challenge it. By doing so, Møller performed an “act of citizenship,” which involved an attempt to exercise his social rights not at the expense of but by virtue of his political rights. This also emphasizes that the functioning of poor relief was dependent on cooperation between the elites and the poor, and even though poor relief can be seen as a control strategy, it also presented the poor with a survival strategy.⁴³

A Laboratory of Modernity

By putting into words how poverty and sickness was felt and experienced, and how public support could help them be good and independent citizens, these applicants contested the constitutional distinction between social and civil rights on the one hand and political rights on the other. As “acts of citizenship,” these contestations shaped the local modality of citizenship, making it more caring and humane than what the national legislation would have us believe.

As mentioned above, the allotment gardens were very popular among the citizens of Aarhus. In 1888, the head of the public poor relief system wrote to the City Council: “it does not go unnoticed, that the population greatly appreciates these gardens, and that every year a number of people apply, of which only a few obtain what is applied for.”⁴⁴ The City Council continuously discussed the possibility of creating new areas with allotment gardens.⁴⁵ In connection with one of these discussions in 1896, the poor committee carried out a study on the functions of the allotment gardens. Here too, the popularity of the gardens was pointed out: “There is a great demand for these gardens, and even qualified applicants must, as a rule, apply for several years before obtaining a garden.”⁴⁶ At the same time, the poor committee emphasized that they had opportunity to see:

…with what interest the allotments are usually cared for, and that many families spend their spare time there. The thing is, that after all it is not just the pecuniary income that has meaning for the family, but also the feeling that it has a place that is its own. The committee must therefore state that these allotment gardens are a good institution.⁴⁷

The quote shows that the municipality recognized that the allotment gardens had a value that extended beyond the tangible material value. The allotment gardens also facilitated a connectedness to the city and its soil. At the same time, working on the allotments and cultivating the land of the city was seen as a fulfilment of an obligation toward Aarhus. In an article published in the local newspaper in 1839, the allotments are linked to the image of the city: “for allotment gardens, the city has laid out plots of land whose users are obliged to improve the appearance of these plots by planting.”⁴⁸ What the article indicates is that, in addition to fulfilling a social purpose, the allotments also served an aesthetic purpose, thereby forming a reciprocal relationship between the city and the citizen. The allotment tenants not only benefited from the city in terms of food crops, but also “gave something back” to the city by cultivating its land and, thereby, improving the city’s image. In the signing of the allotment contracts, the recipient of poor relief—tangibly and figuratively—entered an agreement binding the city and citizen, and, in line with national citizenship, this contract consisted of both rights and obligations.

By focusing on the allotment gardens as a type of public poor relief, it becomes clear that the municipality did not only subject the recipients of poor relief to surveillance, discipline, and control. The municipality also adjusted the public poor system in light of the demands put forth by the poor. By continuously laying out new areas with allotment gardens, the municipality appears responsive and concerned. What also becomes clear is that while the dichotomies of dependency versus independency and passive versus active were central to the notion of male political citizenship at the national level, these dichotomies were negotiated and shaped at the local level. As opposed to the national legislation, the boundaries between social and political rights remained fluid and contested in Aarhus through the second half of the nineteenth century. Since the integration of social and political rights was only partially recognized at the national level with the social reforms of the 1890s, the practice in Aarhus indicates that the local level preceded the national legislation in important aspects. In some cases, it also directly influenced it.

The parliamentary debates from the 1870s onwards show that the local practice of citizenship played a role in the drafting of the new Poor Law in 1891. It is important to note that the Right-Wing Party (Højre) was in power in Denmark in the second half of the nineteenth century, and that the parliament was strongly influenced by a constitutional struggle that was finally resolved in 1901, when the Liberal Party came to power. However, during the political negotiations regarding a new Poor Law, both right- and left-wing politicians stressed the importance of the municipal practice regarding the cancellation of paid poor relief. For instance, a member of the Liberal Party emphasized in 1889 that he had noticed that many municipalities—like Aarhus—had begun to cancel the debt of poor relief recipients if the applicant showed independence and trustworthiness. According to him, the problem was that some municipalities did not make use of this paragraph at all, so it was urgent to establish fixed national rules.⁴⁹ The same line of reasoning was expressed by the Right-Wing Party. However, they wanted fixed rules to prevent the municipalities from going too far in their dealings with the poor.⁵⁰ In the end, the Parliament agreed that all citizens had the right to have their debt canceled five years after the debt was incurred, thereby regaining their political citizenship.⁵¹

The political negotiation leading up to the enactment of the right to have one’s debt canceled confirms that the local practice played a key role in the way in which this right was motivated, articulated, and criticized. In addition, the local practice also made the issue a more pressing matter at the national level. Across the political spectrum, politicians agreed that they needed fixed guidelines because the municipalities had started practicing their right to cancel the debts of former poor relief recipients. At the same time, the reason why the municipalities had begun cancelling paid relief was that the poor themselves had expressed their wish to regain their civil and political rights. These contestations echoed from the local to the national level, which indicates that the municipalities also functioned as laboratories of modern citizenship and as a point of reference, shaping the content of national citizenship.

Conclusion

In this study, I have placed the agency and experiences of the poor as the focal point of my analysis. This group has usually been characterized as oppressed, stigmatized, and degraded. Above all, this group has been viewed as holding no responsibility in the enactment of the social reforms that were passed in the early 1890s. Building on newer citizenship studies, this study acknowledges that citizenship should not be treated as an either/or position, but as a dynamic and malleable relation. As Ruth Lister underlines, people “can be, at the same time, both the subordinate objects of hierarchical power and subjects who are agents in their own life, capable of exercising power in the ‘generative’ sense of self-actualization.”⁵² By acknowledging that the actors of citizenship are not necessarily those who held the formal status of citizenship, this study was conducted with the aim of tracing the agency of the users of welfare.

To investigate this type of agency, I turned my focus to the municipality and the local practices of claims-making. Through the analysis of applications for the cancellation of paid relief, as well as applications for allotments, the study has shown that the poor were able to assign meaning to the prescriptions of citizenship, thereby becoming subjects through their encounters with citizenship laws and practices. It shows us that the constitution did not only function as a force of exclusion, by depriving recipients of poor relief of their political rights. It also functioned as a force of inclusion by providing the poor with a language, a rhetoric, and formal categories for claims-making. Through the applications, we can see the poor as actors who were capable of appropriating a different subject position and, in doing so, redefining the boundaries of citizenship.

In sum, investigating how citizens expressed their experiences as well as the extent to which those experiences gained institutional recognition gives insight into the interactions and everyday negotiations between citizens and the public administration that helped shape a field of public responsibility. These findings indicate that the increased public responsibility and the changes in social citizenship enacted in the 1890s were not only the result of a top-down movement, but also of a bottom-up movement, in which the local administration preceded the national legislation in certain aspects. By focusing on acts and practice, rather than formal status, this study recognizes new forms of agency that have received little attention in earlier research on the development of the Danish welfare state. The chapter has provided an insight into the ways in which formally defined hierarchies were enacted and challenged on a daily basis, which in turn affected the content and the extent of national citizenship.