Parasitism (social offense)

Social parasites is used since about the late 1970s pejorative buzzword for an individual or a group of people who would (for example, a welfare state or a community of solidarity ) " exploit " another social group. Initially, the term was used in connection with so-called " bogus asylum seekers ", after the restriction of asylum law in 1993 also in the debate about welfare recipients and other groups.

Occasionally, the term is polemical generally expanded in media and political debates on the unemployed, welfare recipients, long-term students, asylum seekers, without children or many children. Are rarer, as indicated in 1995 in the title story The Sweet Life of social parasites of the magazine Focus and the people as " social parasites " that are necessarily such as for health reasons, due to high age or persecution dependent on social assistance. Similarly, people or companies or claimed to be unjustified government transfers received commit (power abuse or welfare abuse) or undeclared work and tax evasion and avoidance, so designated.

In 2001 in Germany the term as part of the so-called " laziness debate" (Gerhard Schröder: "There is no right to laziness in our society " ) in the context of the Hartz legislation used. Even in earlier years politicians or social groups according to published studies of Oschmiansky 2001, Kull and Schmid ( Science Center Berlin for Social Research ) initiated such discussions, especially with rising unemployment or before elections as in the years 1975, 1993 and 2001.

Critics accuse some media to foment by media reports on individual cases moods and generate social envy as in parts of the public as well as to discredit the welfare state. " Social parasites " will assume that they used the strategy of parasitism on the social fabric, that is, to feed at the expense of a " host ", without necessarily being dependent on it. Analogies such as these, by critics as Biologism.