Refusal to Work Without Work? Neurodivergence, Loss of Purpose, and Institutional Violence in Germany's Welfare-to-Work Regime (Bürgergeldsystem)

The concept of “refusal to work” (Arbeitsverweigerung) plays a central role in the German welfare-to-work system (Bürgergeldpraxis / Grundsicherung). However, it serves less to describe actual refusal of employment than to function as a normative marker of administrative failure. This article argues that a substantial proportion of long-term benefit recipients classified as “unwilling to work” (arbeitsunwillig) are, with high probability, neurodivergent—particularly autistic or affected by ADHD—and systematically fail within an administrative logic oriented toward tactical compliance, ritualized activation, and formal cooperation.
Based on a conceptual analysis of the notion of violence within German social and compensation law, particularly in light of an official statement by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales, BMAS), the article demonstrates that institutional, gradual, and purposeless forms of violence remain conceptually unrecognized, despite producing foreseeable health-related harm. These forms of violence affect neurodivergent individuals in particularly destructive ways, yet remain legally and administratively invisible.
Drawing on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention, UN-BRK), the article argues that social policy measures which, over extended periods, fail to serve any genuine integrative purpose while simultaneously producing existential dependency and psychological harm are incompatible with the Convention’s duties of protection and prevention. An exemplary case analysis is employed not for the purpose of generalization, but as a structural test to render systemic contradictions visible. The article concludes with the thesis that the absence of empirical data on neurodivergence within the German welfare-to-work system must itself be understood as an expression of epistemic failure.