Abstract
In a contemporary evolution of the tutelary state, welfare reform in the United Kingdom has been characterised by moves towards greater conditionality and sanctioning. This is influenced by the attributing responsibility for poverty and unemployment to the behaviour of marginalised individuals. Mead (1992) has argued that the poor are dependants who ought to receive support on condition of certain restrictions imposed by a protective state that will incentivise engagement with support mechanisms. This article examines how the contemporary tutelary and therapeutic state has responded to new forms of social marginality. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews conducted with welfare claimants with an offending background in England and Scotland, the article examines their encounters with the welfare system and argues that alienation, rather than engagement with support, increasingly characterises their experiences.
Highlights
United Kingdom (UK) welfare reform has been characterised by the increasing use of conditionality, in which eligibility for welfare provision across a range of social policy areas has been tightened and there is a growing use of fiscal sanctions to incentivise welfare recipients to behave in particular ways
The present research suggests that rather than fostering engagement with assistance, welfare conditionality deepens the profound sense of alienation that many exoffenders feel towards state support and the notion that it is an engine of social progression
This article defines alienation as the experience of isolation resulting from powerlessness and argues that welfare reform has transformed a long-standing antipathy into alienation from front-line staff providing employment support, statutory employment support agencies and work that provides a meaningful stake in society
Summary
United Kingdom (UK) welfare reform has been characterised by the increasing use of conditionality, in which eligibility for welfare provision across a range of social policy areas has been tightened and there is a growing use of fiscal sanctions to incentivise welfare recipients to behave in particular ways. Individuals were interviewed on three separate occasions over a two-year period, focusing on their experiences of support and sanctions within the welfare system and their perceptions of the impacts and ethics of new forms of conditionality.
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