Remaking the relations of work and welfare

6 A short biography of Mandy: comparing theories about work and welfare

7 Workfare lives: evaluating theories

7.1 Introduction

The theoretical interpretations in Section 6 of how NDYP ‘met’ Mandy's life offer important insights, but none provides a definitive interpretation – and all require evaluation that looks critically at their epistemological bases, internal coherence, resilience to contrary evidence and robustness against other theoretical positions. In this section, we can embark only on the briefest of evaluations, by taking the starting-points of each theory in turn and offering a critical voice from other theories.