The Ambivalence of Material Vulnerability as a Foundation for Welfare Dependency Attitudes: Social Distrust or Dissatisfaction with the System?

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-90
Author(s):  
Christian Staerklé ◽  
Jessica Gale ◽  
Emanuele Politi
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Dependency

Lone Mothers, Ethnicity and Welfare Dynamics

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTINA MOKHTAR ◽  
LUCINDA PLATT
Keyword(s):  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Welfare Dependency ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Administrative Records ◽  
Lone Parents ◽  
Lone Mothers ◽  
Minority Ethnic Groups ◽  
Policy Concern ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Minority Ethnic

AbstractThis article investigates the ethnic patterning of exit from means-tested benefits in a UK town. Lone parents in the UK face high risks of poverty and high rates of receipt of means-tested, out-of-work benefits. There has been extensive policy concern with lone parents' poverty and with potential ‘welfare dependency’. Investigation of welfare dynamics has unpacked the notion of welfare dependency, and has stimulated policy to better understand the factors associated with longer rather than shorter durations. However, within this analysis, there has been little attention paid to ethnicity. This is despite the fact that the extensive literature on the UK's minority ethnic groups has emphasised diversity in both rates of lone parenthood and risks of poverty. To date we have little understanding of ethnic variation in lone parents' welfare dynamics. Using a data set drawn from administrative records, this article analyses the chances of leaving means-tested benefit for a set of lone mothers in a single town, exploring whether there is variation by ethnic group. We find that, controlling for basic demographic characteristics, there is little evidence to suggest that ethnicity affects the chances of benefit exit, even between groups where rates of lone parenthood are very different.

Welfare Commonsense, Poverty Porn and Doxosophy

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracey Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Social World ◽  
Welfare Dependency ◽  
Television Content ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Perspectives

This article critically examine how Benefits Street - and the broader genre of poverty porn television - functions to embed new forms of ‘commonsense’ about welfare and worklessness. It argues that such television content and commentary crowds out critical perspectives with what Pierre Bourdieu (1999) called ‘doxa’, making the social world appear self-evident and requiring no interpretation, and creating new forms of neoliberal commonsense around welfare and social security. The article consider how consent for this commonsense is animated through poverty porn television and the apparently ‘spontaneous’ (in fact highly editorialized) media debate it generates: particularly via ‘the skiver’, a figure of social disgust who has re-animated ideas of welfare dependency and deception.

scholarly journals Myten om velferdsavhengighet

2018 ◽  
pp. 59-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristoffer Chelsom Vogt
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Life Course ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Life Course Perspective ◽  
Welfare Dependency ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Historical Developments

Title: The Myth of Welfare Dependency. Summary: The myth of welfare dependency has long historical roots and is influential in both policy and research. The central idea is that receiving welfare benefits decreases people’s motivation for work and fosters a culture of dependency. The myth originates in an Anglo-American context but is also evident in a Nordic context. Nordic welfare states, with their comparatively high levels of benefits, are presumably especially at risk of encouraging welfare dependency. This article questions the myth of welfare dependency, by presenting a life-course perspective that directs our attention to relations between historical developments and individual life-course processes. Viewed from a life-course perspective, it becomes clear that the myth of welfare dependency is based upon a number of problematic premises: an individualistic and static conception of lives and relationships, a narrowly defined concept of welfare, and on several misconceptions of how welfare state policies, especially of the Nordic variety, function in practice. The dichotomy of dependence and independence upon which the myth rests is untenable when confronted with empirical life-course research, and has highly-skewed implications in terms of both gender and social class.

‘Making Work Pay’ – Devising the Best Strategy for Lone Parents in Britain

2001 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNE GRAY
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Welfare Dependency ◽  
Lone Parents ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Family ◽  
Welfare Expenditures ◽  
Internal Coherence ◽  
Status Of Women

‘Making work pay’ is the keystone of New Labour's strategy to reduce welfare dependency. This strategy is especially directed at lone parents, through increased financial support for childcare, a specific ‘New Deal’ and reduced benefits for non-working lone parents. Reducing welfare dependency for lone parents has several possible objectives; minimising welfare expenditures, maximising the employment rate, improving the socioeconomic status of women, or improving conditions for their children. This article analyses the implications of each of these objectives for policy design, using evidence from other countries as well as the United Kingdom, and examines the internal coherence of New Labour's policy approach to lone parents and its coherence with other policies on the family and on lifelong learning. The potential effectiveness of ‘making work pay’ is examined through the findings of recent literature, leading to arguments for a carer's allowance.

No way home: the challenges of exiting homelessness in austere times

2020 ◽  
pp. 249-270
Author(s):  
Christina Carmichael
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Crisis Management ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Welfare Dependency ◽  
Additional Insight ◽  
Street Level ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Welfare Reforms

This chapter explores the ways in which austerity manifests at the ‘street level’ for a particularly poor and marginalised population, drawing on interviews with single homeless people and practitioners living and working in homelessness accommodation projects. While existing research has assessed the impact of recent housing and welfare reforms on those at risk of or transitioning into homelessness and those sleeping rough, the chapter offers additional insight by placing focus on the implications of austerity for transitions out of homelessness. The data presented reveals the ways in which austerity-driven policies are actively hindering service users' efforts to move beyond homelessness and leaving them increasingly susceptible to longer-term cycles of instability. Increases in benefit sanctioning and conditionality, combined with cuts to homelessness services over the last ten years, have resulted in overwhelmed practitioners increasingly forced to focus on crisis management, while little or no resources are left to invest in prevention and helping users to transition out of homelessness. Meanwhile, the interviews with homeless service users and practitioners suggest that contrary to the prevailing narrative of welfare dependency, insufficient funding has impaired transitions into work.

scholarly journals The Emotional Economy of Unemployment

SAGE Open ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 215824401666951
Author(s):  
Jane Elliott ◽  
Jon Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Welfare Dependency ◽  
Case Study Approach ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Narrative Case Study ◽  
Strong Orientation

Between May 1978 and December 1983, the sociologist Ray Pahl conducted seven extensive interviews with a couple from Sheppey that he called “Linda” and “Jim.” These not only informed a key chapter in Pahl’s classic book Divisions of Labour but also evolved into a uniquely intimate account of how a family used to “getting by” (though never “affluent”) coped with the hardships and indignities of long-term reliance on welfare benefits. Perhaps inevitably, fascinating aspects of Linda and Jim’s testimony were left unused in Divisions of Labour, primarily because they were marginal to Pahl’s principal aim of demonstrating how the state welfare system could trap a family in poverty. We deliberately retain the narrative, case study approach of Pahl’s treatment, but shift our focus to the strategies that Linda and Jim adopted to cope with the emotional and psychological challenges of life at the sharp end of the early 1980s recession. How they retained a strong orientation toward the future, how they resisted internalizing the stigmatization associated with welfare dependency in 1980s Britain, and how their determination to fight “the system” ultimately led them to make choices in harmony with the logic of the New Right’s free market agenda.

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