Abstract
AbstractThis article offers a street‐level perspective on welfare conditionality as it was practiced in contracted‐out UK activation programs between 2008 and 2015. Drawing on observation and in‐depth interviews, the article illustrates the ways that behavioral conditionality provided street‐level workers with the means to intensify or moderate activation for particular claimants. Responding to arguments about the curtailment of street‐level discretion, the article argues that in the particular context of target‐driven, work‐first, and otherwise highly constrained services, discretion resided in the ability to intensify or moderate conditionality and its coercive potential—in decisions about how, on whom, and to what extent it would be applied. The article argues that attending to this form of discretion provides an alternative frame through which to view the differentiated treatment typically understood as “creaming” and “parking.” In so doing, the article problematizes accounts that draw clear lines between calculative, normative, and dispositional forms of street‐level reason and practice. It shows how advisors' responses to the “street‐level calculus of choice” were articulated in terms of expectation, where attempts at future‐oriented calculation necessarily entailed making other forms of speculative and normative judgement about claimants and their situations. The article thus contributes to an understanding of both the causes and meaning of differentiated treatment in conditional welfare services.
Highlights
Behavioral conditionality is a ubiquitous feature of the British welfare state (Dwyer, 2004; Dwyer & Wright, 2014)
The findings presented in this article are based on Economic and Social Research Council-funded doctoral research, the aim of which was to explore the everyday dynamics, practices, and experiences of “activation” and “behavioral conditionality” from a street-level perspective—that is, from the perspective of street-level workers and service users
By exploring advisors' accounts of caseload management, sanctions, and expectation setting, it has argued that the form of discretion in such services is closely associated with the coercive potential of conditionality
Summary
Behavioral conditionality is a ubiquitous feature of the British welfare state (Dwyer, 2004; Dwyer & Wright, 2014). The need to chase outcome targets exacerbates inherent pressures to focus resources on those service users who are most likely to produce short-term job outcomes (“creaming”) at the expense of people with more difficulties finding paid work, who are neglected (“parking”) This dynamic is widely associated with a loss of discretion and either assumes or is explicitly attributed to the rational choices of street-level workers in response to the situational incentives—or “street-level calculus” (Brodkin, 2011)—produced by narrowly defined and highly consequential outcome targets. This article focuses on the street-level practice of conditionality and asks whether discretion has been diminished or, instead, displaced; and if the latter, to where, and in what form?
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