The Evolution of Active Welfare Policies as a Solution to Social Exclusion in Britain

Abstract

Since the election of the new Labour government in 1997, there has been a concerted effort in the UK to promote social inclusion. To achieve this, numerous work and welfare policies have been introduced. Their central tenet is to insert people into employment based upon the belief employment equals social inclusion and unemployment equates with social exclusion. Informal work, meanwhile, is already seen to be successfully operating as a mechanism for promoting social inclusion. This paper, however, evaluates critically this belief-system in two fundamental ways. On the one hand, it examines the fastest growing type of employment in the UK ‐ part-time work ‐ and evaluates critically whether and how this flexible form of employment leads to social inclusion for its participants. On the other hand, it reveals that informal work is currently reinforcing, rather than mitigating, the plight of those excluded from employment in terms of their social inclusion and exclusion in contemporary Britain. Based on these findings, the paper argues for a range of complementary social inclusion policies to be adopted to tackle the forms of inclusion/exclusion beyond employment.