Welfare Conditionality Research Articles

The Politics of Free Movement of People in the United Kingdom: Beyond Securitization and De‐securitization?

AbstractIn the decade after 2007 eurosceptic actors in the UK successfully deployed securitizing narratives to portray the free movement of people (FMoP) and EU citizens as a threat to the ‘ontological security’ of national citizens. The ensuing exclusionary policies (up to and beyond the end of FMoP) were normatively problematic, particularly given the absence of evidence in support of those narratives. However, the paper argues that a response aimed at de‐securitizing the issue—in this case, a return to the status‐quo‐ante – is not without its own normative problems. Indeed, the permissive pre‐2007 New Labour government's approach to FMoP was not inclusive of all EU citizens. In valorizing EU citizens as ‘independent post‐national entrepreneurs’, the marginalization of economically vulnerable EU citizens, particularly via tough welfare conditionality, was legitimated. The paper concludes by reflecting on the theoretical and political implications of the argument.

Co‐design or top‐down welfare conditionality? An analysis of the impact of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander submissions to six parliamentary inquiries into the Cashless Debit Card

AbstractThe former Coalition Commonwealth Government consistently asserted that representative Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter Indigenous) organisations supported the introduction of the Cashless Debit Card (CDC) in multiple trial sites. Consequently, they depicted the CDC policy as an alleged exemplar of a co‐designed policy model based on partnership with Indigenous community groups. This article examines the validity of this argument by analysing the views expressed by Indigenous organisations via written and oral submissions to the six parliamentary inquiries into the CDC from 2015 to 2020. Our findings suggest that with the exception of the first inquiry, most Indigenous submissions opposed the introduction or the expansion of the CDC. Yet, these critical views received only limited acknowledgement in the inquiry reports, and seem to have little or no impact on government policy concerning the CDC. It appears that the CDC policy is more accurately identified as a top‐down policy imposed by government on local Aboriginal communities which, with some exceptions, neither requested nor consented to the policy.

A More Welcoming Climate: How Basic Income found better Traction in Holyrood than in Westminster

Basic income has moved tentatively on to the UK agenda since 2015, but it has struggled to find a foothold in Westminster, where the dominant view of poverty is as the result of failure in the labour market, and the response remains coercive welfare conditionality. In Scotland, government-funded research into the feasibility of basic income pilots has drawn on health and well-being priorities and civic and local authority involvement, while making an explicit connection between poverty, agency, health and wealth. This article draws on literature and semi-expert interviews to argue that the nature of Scottish political institutions and culture, allied to a Nationalist party government keen to differentiate itself from Westminster, with independence as short-term or long-term goal, has created an unusual policy space that provides the conditions for basic income as a pivoting reform. While implementation of a Basic Income may be impossible without full independence, Scotland is creating an ideational climate where – unlike south of the border – it at least looks feasible.

Dedication to work: social workers in a Norwegian activation work context

ABSTRACT Dedication to work is about enthusiasm for the job and feelings of pride and inspiration from one’s work, which is important due to its influence on work performance. We have surveyed dedication to work among 1347 trained social workers and street-level bureaucrats with other educational backgrounds in the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration. By using the Job Demand–Control–Support model, we examined the relationship between perceived working conditions and dedication to work. The results revealed rather high levels of dedication to work among street-level bureaucrats in an activation work context, and highest among those who most strongly supported welfare conditionality measures. Whereas perceptions of demand were negatively associated with dedication, perceptions of control and support yielded positive relationships, with the latter variable being the most salient predictor of dedication to work. Educational background seems to be less important, and minor differences in the prediction of dedication were found between educational groups.

Conditionality and contentment: Universal Credit and UK welfare benefit recipients’ life satisfaction

AbstractIntroduced in the United Kingdom in 2012, Universal Credit (UC) is a welfare benefit that replaces six working-age ‘legacy’ benefits for out-of-work and low-income people. Designed with the aim of simplifying benefits and incentivising paid work, UC represents a deepening of conditionality in the British welfare state. Considering these developments, this paper quantitatively investigates the effect of UC on recipients’ life satisfaction. Data from the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study is analysed, primarily using a fixed-effects regression approach. Results reveal a significantly negative effect of UC recipience on life satisfaction. Robustness checks and alternative model specifications, including difference-in-differences and inverse probability weighting, confirm this finding. Additionally, mediation models give credence to the idea that UC also negatively affects life satisfaction indirectly by increasing psychological distress. Heterogeneity tests indicate that UC has a less negative effect on single parents’ life satisfaction compared to non-parents. Meanwhile, UC has a significantly more negative effect on the life satisfaction of people not in paid work (for reasons other than unemployment) than those in paid work. Discussion focuses on the potential effect of welfare conditionality specifically, and implications for future research and policy are explored.

Welfare Conditionality, Ethics and Social Care for Older People in the UK: From Civic Rights to Abandonment?

Abstract Welfare systems are becoming ever more conditional, with access to state support increasingly rationed via a legion of legally-defined and financially-driven restrictions and rules. Civic protection and economic rights for older citizens within Western policy systems are subsequently diminishing and continue to give way to neoliberal discursive practices which prioritise welfare activation, autonomy, participation, asset-based yet precarious self-care, the aversion of health-centred risks, and much higher levels of eligibility for support. This article looks at welfare conditionality and its relationship to older people, ethics and governance within social care. By using three examples of welfare conditional reforms from the UK, it is highlighted that strains typically persist between the altruistic components of some ethical frameworks and the everyday experiences of many older people. The relative gatekeeping powers of welfare professionals and expectations placed on family members and carers have also increased, especially upon older people with higher needs and who may lack economic and cultural capital. This is despite rhetorical policy-led claims of increasing choice and control, and allowing support to be more asset-based and personalised.

Keeping a distance but heading in the same direction: formal rules on unemployment benefit sanctions and social assistance benefit sanctions in Poland, 1989–2014

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the development of welfare conditionality and especially benefit sanctions in Central and Eastern Europe (the CEE) and to develop a methodology by implementing Institutional Grammar (IG) for studying rules on benefit sanctions relying only on legal text.Design/methodology/approachIG was used as a tool for analyzing legal regulations on benefit sanctions. It was incorporated into a social rights framework that provided a theoretical background for the study.FindingsThe paper shows the dynamic development of rules on benefit sanctions in Poland in social assistance and unemployment services. Both the harshness and strictness of these rules have increased. Simultaneously, the rules of benefit sanctions in social assistance remain more liberal than those associated with unemployment services.Originality/valueThe study presents the first comprehensive and concise overview of benefit sanctions development in the CEE and the first long-term comparison of these types of sanctions in two safety net systems operating in one country. The study also used IG for the first time in social policy research.

Responsibility for homelessness: Lived experience perspectives and their alignment with neoliberal discourse

AbstractIn a context of increasing welfare conditionality, governmental responses to homelessness in Australia continue to be influenced by neoliberal discourses of personal responsibility. This is reflected in their emphasis on individualised interventions and lack of attention to structural drivers of homelessness. Research examining these issues has primarily focused on policies and practices aiming to responsibilise individuals’ conduct, and less so on how those with lived experiences view and apportion responsibility for homelessness. In recognition of this gap, this paper reports findings from a qualitative study examining the views of responsibility expressed by nine individuals with lived experiences of homelessness. Findings demonstrate that participants recognised their own responsibilities, yet also highlighted significant constraints on individual agency associated with being homeless and emphasised unmet responsibilities of governments. Our analysis demonstrates how participants’ views contrast with neoliberal discourses of personal responsibility, and problematise notions of “fair reciprocity” on which they are premised. We argue their views can be interpreted as supporting alternative notions of shared responsibility for homelessness. These findings have implications for policy and practice and highlight the need to further engage with lived experience perspectives to advance more effective and socially just responses to homelessness in Australia.

From Working Tax Credit to Universal Credit: is the older workforce ready? Perspectives from employees and employers in Northern Ireland

Universal Credit (UC) entails an unprecedented expansion of welfare conditionality to those in work. Working-age adults (16–66) in the United Kingdom who are working part-time and on a low income will be subject to work related requirements until they earn the equivalent of 35 hours per week at national living wage. It is estimated that workers aged 50 to 66 will account for nearly a quarter of those claimants subject to in-work conditionality. A small-scale qualitative study was carried out with workers aged over 50 in receipt of Working Tax Credit (WTC) who are set to be migrated to UC. The researchers also interviewed employers who have people over 50 in their workforce. The findings show that there was limited awareness of UC and little support for in-work conditionality.

Moral framings in the Australian parliamentary debate on drug testing of welfare recipients

AbstractAround the world an expanding array of behavioural conditions are being attached to social security payments. This paper offers empirical evidence of the various moral frames used in the welfare conditionality debate, by its supporters and detractors. We systematically analyse the debates in the Australian federal parliament in 2017 and 2018 on two bills attempting to introduce drug testing of working‐age welfare recipients, each of which resulted in stalemate. We find that proponents of welfare conditionality primarily employed consequentialist and paternalist arguments, supplemented by social justice, contractualism and communitarianism whilst opponents primarily employed consequentialist and social justice arguments. We explore how proponents and opponents anticipated and engaged with each other's preferred moral frames. By investigating the normative lenses that underpin arguments made for and against the drug‐testing proposal, we shed light on how the debate on drug testing might be moved beyond its current impasse.

Parents...Next: The Ongoing Neoliberalising of Australian Social Security

Over the last three decades, social security reform in Australia has increasingly moved to a model of welfare conditionality. A neoliberal agenda has led to Australian social security changing from a model of universal entitlement to mutual obligations. This has led to criticisms that Australian social security increasingly blames and penalises recipients for their economic marginalisation while deemphasising structural barriers obstructing labour market participation. ParentsNext, a compulsory pre-employment program for select Parenting Payment recipients, continues this trajectory. This article argues that ParentsNext has had, and will continue to have, a detrimental impact on recipients. The program through outsourcing, use of the Targeted Compliance Framework to penalise non-compliance and the program’s one-size-fits-all approach continues the neoliberalist agenda in Australian social security. Women with young children are ‘next.’ This article concludes that ParentsNext true purpose is ideological. Its actual effect is to punish and harm vulnerable women and children by subjecting them to the whims of private providers and the data producing requirements of the social security machine without any substantive attempt to overcome structure barriers to achieving economic security.

Administrative burden and the Cashless Debit Card: Stripping time, autonomy, and dignity from social security recipients

AbstractAlthough Western nations have long placed conditions on access to social security payments, many of the more recent conditions utilising technological tools have intensified surveillance and control of the poor and imposed weighty administrative burdens on social security recipients as they attempt to navigate these systems. The Cashless Debit Card (CDC) imposes additional administrative burdens – learning costs, compliance costs, and psychological costs – on people in receipt of social security as part of an overall welfare conditionality project that structures in disincentives to claim government income support. Cardholders experience heavy administrative burdens in securing essentials and managing their social security income via the CDC, seeking a reduction of their restricted payment portion, and seeking a well‐being exemption or a financial responsibility exit to regain their budgetary autonomy. Evidence suggests that numerous people in need of social security who have been forced on to the CDC could do with a reduction in burdensome processes – which would be facilitated by designing systems that are autonomy enhancing, respectful of the human dignity of claimants, and fairly easy to navigate.

Navigating indifference: Irish jobseekers’ experiences of welfare conditionality

Abstract This paper analyses the impact of the intensification of work-related conditionality on the lived experience of jobseekers in Ireland. Post-crisis Ireland has witnessed the emergence of a definitive policy trajectory which seeks to enable a lifelong attachment to the labour force through work-related conditionality buttressed by sanctions. This mode of governing unemployment attempts a restructuring of the caseworker–claimant relationship through increased engagement, claimant adherence to mandatory conditions, and surveillance underpinned by potential reduction, suspension or loss of benefit. The paper provides a qualitative investigation of the lived experience of this impact through a thematic analysis of forty-two interviews with jobseekers in a county in the east of Ireland. The focus on the agency of jobseekers illustrates a system based on superficial engagement in which conditionality primarily operates as bureaucratic formality. This is reflective of a systemic indifference to claimants’ needs and circumstances, producing a performance of feigned compliance in response.

Unpaid care, welfare conditionality and expropriation

AbstractWelfare conditionality where social security payments are conditional on recipients undertaking tasks such as training, submitting job applications and taking part in “work‐like” activities, is an enduring punitive feature of contemporary welfare provision in global North economics. In Australia, welfare conditionality or mutual obligation as it is commonly referred to, is continually targeted at specific groups such as single women and First Nations women. Drawing on fifteen in‐depth interviews with women put on a mutual obligation program in Australia called ParentsNext, I examine the relationship between mutual obligation and the expropriation of women's unpaid care work. I argue that welfare conditionality targeted at First Nations women and non‐First Nations women, reinforces and intensifies the expropriation of women's unpaid care work, as well as settler colonial expropriation. The expropriation of women's unpaid care work intensifies under ParentsNext in four notable ways–through punitive mutual obligation requirements, stigma, the privatization of community services and assisting ongoing settler colonial expropriation.

Empowering Lone Parents to Progress towards Employability

AbstractPolicymakers in liberal welfare states like the UK have prioritised extending the reach of compulsory activation to target vulnerable jobseeker groups, such as lone parents. However, such interventions – especially when combined with intensified welfare conditionality – appear to have had limited positive effects on lone parents’ employability, while often negatively impacting wellbeing. This article argues that the problem is a disconnect between the complex barriers to employability faced by lone parents (including their need to balance work and caring) and the content of ‘work-first’ activation favoured by successive UK Governments. We report positive findings from in-depth interviews with lone parents and key stakeholders involved in more person-centred, non-compulsory local employability services. Multi-agency service delivery, collaborative governance and a clear role for user voice in programme design were important facilitators of positive experiences. Our analysis points to the need for services that empower lone parents to make choices to progress towards employment while supporting family life.

Examining the Consequences of Welfare Conditionality: A Case Study of Compulsory Income Management in the Regional Community of Ceduna, Australia

Welfare conditionality, whereby eligibility for income support payments is linked to prescribed forms of behaviour or values, is intended to encourage responsible behaviour in marginalised populations. However in practice, it may have consequences that worsen rather than improve their life chances. One of the most invasive forms of conditional welfare is income management (IM), involving the quarantining of up to 90 per cent of income that cannot be spent on excluded items in order to reduce substance abuse and gambling and enhance financial management and parenting capacity. This qualitative study examines the views of IM participants and community stakeholders in the regional community of Ceduna, Australia. Its findings are presented – pertaining to practical experiences of IM, the impact of IM on participant wellbeing, and community divisions around IM – and the study discusses whether or not it has advanced key program objectives. It is concluded that the negative effects of IM exceed any perceived benefits.

Welfare conditionality, sanctions and homelessness: meanings made by homeless support workers

Purpose This study aims to explore homeless-support workers’ perceptions of homeless welfare recipients and their experiences of navigating new conditions placed upon them by UK welfare reform. It examines support workers’ views of the most punitive feature of the welfare system, sanctions, on those recipients.In 2012, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition Government introduced the largest and most radical overhaul of the UK benefit system, significantly increasing the level of conditionality and sanctions for non-compliance, part of a shift in welfare, suggesting that rights must be balanced by responsibility and the “culture of worklessness” and “benefit dependency” should be addressed. Design/methodology/approach Welfare reforms in the UK and the increased use of sanctions as part of welfare conditionality are reviewed. Data are collected from eight semi-structured interviews taking place in five housing support groups in the South East and South West of England in 2019–2020. The interviews followed an approach from interpretive phenomenological analysis. Findings Findings from this study indicate that the government’s reforms serve as a disciplinary measure for the poor, reinforcing inequality and social marginalization. To mitigate the effects would require a comprehensive review of universal credit prior to its full rollout to claimants. Data are analyzed thematically. Originality/value Welfare conditionality and welfare reform is well-researched in the UK. There is also a significant volume of research concerning homelessness. This paper, however, fills a gap in research concerning the experiences of those working in housing support agencies working with homeless people in the UK.

In Their Own Best Interest. Is There a Paternalistic Case for Welfare Conditionality?

AbstractThis paper examines paternalism as a justification for welfare reforms making benefits conditional on participation in activation programs. We clarify different types of what we denote ‘throffer paternalism’ – a paternalism conjoining an offer with a threat – and ask whether there is a good case for any of them. We argue that hard but non-perfectionistic paternalism provides the most promising defense for mandatory activation but conclude that it does not give a convincing justification for this type of welfare policy.

Welfare conditionality and democratic citizenship in Norway

This article studies how welfare conditionality affects democratic citizenship. Scholars make diverging predictions because reforms can both impair and stimulate political action. So far, evidence from the US and the UK lends support to the negative claim that conditionality leads to political withdrawal. Whereas prior studies mostly have relied on cross-sectional data, this study offers a more thorough assessment of causality by utilizing a longitudinal design. I exploit local variation for data on policy implementation. Moreover, the study contributes by addressing other issues, such as context sensitivity and policy scope. In contrast to prior work, I study democratic citizenship in a context where the stated requirements and benefits granted in return are described as enabling, and sanctions considered to be lenient. Moreover, I move beyond personal welfare experiences and include welfare recipients’ family members. The analysis indicates that programme effects on political interest and political trust depend on the extent of conditional requirements. Programme effects are mainly negative among claimants and their family members, but the negative effect diminishes and eventually turns positive when conditions extend.

Co-Creation in an era of Welfare Conditionality – Lessons from Denmark

AbstractWelfare conditionality, and the underlying understanding of unemployment because of lack of motivation, has been widely criticized. This article analyses if and how more co-created services can be a pathway to address some of these challenges. As Denmark currently is moving towards a softening of welfare conditionality for the vulnerable unemployed, and local authorities try to develop models ‘in between’ welfare conditionality and genuine user involvement, this constitute a good case for analysing this question. The analysis build on comprehensive ethnographic data from a four-year research- and innovation project in six Danish municipalities. The employment services in the project have tried to design new strategies involving clients in the development and implementation of services. Among other things, this includes developing integrated services, qualifying the meeting and the talk between front-line workers and clients, engaging the employer side and NGO’s outside the public services and promoting other measures to ensure real involvement of the citizens in the processes. The analysis lists some of the potentials and pitfalls in these innovative processes and reflects upon the feasibility of such new type of co-created services.