When Work Is Like a Gift

This article focuses on personal experiences of employment on special terms, particularly in the so-called flex jobs, which is a kind of subsidized jobs, that has been created as part of the “active” line in recent Danish social policy. These jobs are furthermore promoted through the Danish governmental programme concerning corporate social responsibility. This programme aims at integrating and retaining persons with a reduced working capacity on the labour market. However, the research on which the article is based indicates that flex job employees view their social and legal position as “betwixt and between” the field of social security and the labour market. The ambivalences around flex jobs are theorized in terms of cultural exchange theory, and the author argues that the social construction of flex jobs, not only economically but also socially and culturally, may be characterized as a kind of “gift”. This has consequences not only economically, but also socially for the possibilities of participating in “the labour market”.