Welfare Conditionality Research Articles

In-work Universal Credit: Claimant Experiences of Conditionality Mismatches and Counterproductive Benefit Sanctions

AbstractUniversal Credit is the UK’s globally innovative social security reform that replaces six means tested benefits with one monthly payment for working age claimants - combining social security and tax credit systems. Universal Credit expands welfare conditionality via mandatory job search conditions to enhance ‘progression’ amongst working claimants by requiring extra working hours or multiple jobs. This exposes low paid workers to tough benefit sanctions for non-compliance, which could remove essential income indefinitely or for fixed periods of up to three years. Our unique contribution is to establish how this new regime is experienced at micro level by in-work claimants over time. We present findings from Qualitative Longitudinal Research (141 interviews with 58 claimants, 2014-17), to demonstrate how UC impacts on in-work recipients and how conditionality produces a new coerced worker-claimant model of social support. We identify a series of welfare conditionality mismatches and conclude that conditionality for in-work claimants is largely counterproductive. This implies a redesign of the UK system and serves as an international warning to potential policy emulators.

The Social Harms Outweigh the Benefits: A Study of Compulsory Income Management in Greater Shepparton and Playford

ABSTRACT Welfare conditionality, where income support payments are tied to prescribed activities or alternatively good behaviour, has intensified in recent years. The toughest form of conditional welfare is arguably compulsory income management (IM), which involves the quarantining of between 50 and 90 per cent of a participant’s benefit payment for spending on food, rent, and other essential items in order to reduce substance abuse, and enhance socially responsible behaviour particularly around the care of children. This qualitative study examines the views of IM participants and community stakeholders in the BasicsCard sites of Greater Shepparton and Playford. Findings are presented regarding practical experiences of IM, including financial management; the socio-emotional impacts of IM; and whether IM has addressed key program objectives. It is concluded that the social harms of IM outweigh any perceived benefits and may particularly disadvantage already vulnerable groups such as women and Indigenous Australians. IMPLICATIONS Compulsory IM contains significant hidden harms, including social stigma and shame, and does not seem to be an effective means of addressing chronic social problems. A voluntary targeted IM scheme may have more utility, particularly if allied with a suite of complementary holistic support services.

Structural Injustice and the Human Rights of Workers

Abstract An increasing number of jobs are precarious, making workers vulnerable to various forms of ill-treatment and exploitation. The UK Government’s main approach has been to criminalise the actions of unscrupulous employers who seek to exploit these. This approach, however, has been ineffective, partly because it ignores the broader socio-economic structures that place workers in conditions of vulnerability. This article develops an alternative solution, seeking to identify structures that force and trap workers in conditions of exploitation. It focuses specifically on what I call ‘state-mediated structural injustice', where legislative schemes that promote otherwise legitimate aims create vulnerabilities that force and trap workers in conditions of exploitation. I use examples such as restrictive visa regimes, prison work and work in immigration detention, welfare conditionality programmes, and zero-hour contracts to illustrate the unjust structures. I finally assess whether these legal structures are compatible with human rights, such as the right to private life, the prohibition of slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour, and the right to fair and just working conditions.

The moral maze of food bank use

The foodbank symbolises a changing landscape of social insecurity and welfare conditionality. Attending to decision making within the foodbank system, this article argues that foodbanks, and their referral-system creates a bureaucratic ‘moral maze’ identifying people as ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’ of help. Maintaining a moral distance, organised religious foodbanks are reliant upon a complex outsourcing of moral decisions and walk a fine balance between supply (donations) and demand (use). Within this article, we argue that the foodbank landscape is akin to navigating a moral maze, and that this creates, and justifies decisions of deservingness.

Young EU migrant citizens’ access to financial independence in conditions of precarious work: A tripartite approach to welfare conditionality

Young EU citizens are encouraged to enhance their ‘employability’ by taking advantage of intra-EU mobility, but, for many, moving to another EU country can instead generate disadvantages in the labour market. Drawing on a qualitative study on the experiences of university-educated young Nordics and southern Europeans working in precarious jobs in Brussels, we examine how their access to income support in the context of mobility shapes their access to financial independence. We argue that the variation in European welfare models regarding young peoples’ social entitlements impacts this access in multiple and complex ways. The article advances a tripartite approach that looks at the regulation and enforcement of conditionality of social entitlements on the levels of EU, their country of origin and their country of destination. The analysis shows how, in Belgium, precarious EU migrant citizens are denied access to income support due to the interplay between general welfare conditionality for all claimants and recently reinforced conditionality affecting EU migrant citizens in particular. In these situations, the de-familialising Nordic welfare models showed an aptitude for shielding their young citizens. The young southern Europeans, on the other hand, often had no access to income support in any country, which forced them to choose between family dependency and unfiltered exposure to precarity.

Little and large: methodological reflections from two qualitative longitudinal policy studies on welfare conditionality

This article brings together methodological insight from two policy-focused studies centrally concerned with understanding experiences of, and responses to, rapidly expanding welfare conditionality (that is, making claimants’ eligibility to social welfare rights dependent on engagement with mandatory behavioural responsibilities under threat of sanction for non-compliance), in the UK context. Qualitative longitudinal approaches are ideally suited to seeking a better understanding of the efficacy and consequences of welfare conditionality and enabling an exploration of how the policy assumptions underpinning this approach intersect with (and often contradict) lived experiences. In this article, we detail the approaches we have taken in employing qualitative longitudinal methodologies and explore the similarities and distinctive features of two policy studies with which the authors were involved (Patrick, 2017; WelCond, 2018). Drawing on data from our two studies, we highlight how a focus on time can deepen our understanding of policy changes and their impact on people’s past, present and future lives. We consider the difference in scale of the two studies and the respective possibilities and challenges in working with quite small and very large sample sizes, including the analytical challenge particular to qualitative longitudinal research. Further, we highlight the value of qualitative longitudinal methods for research that seeks to comprehend the varied effects of welfare conditionality on the lives and behaviour of social security benefit recipients over time. Finally, we reflect on the merits of qualitative longitudinal studies for social policy research more broadly.

Book Review: Peter Dwyer (ed.) Dealing with Welfare Conditionality: Implementation and Effects

Book Review: Peter Dwyer (ed.) Dealing with Welfare Conditionality: Implementation and Effects

Political discourse and gendered welfare reform: a case study of the UK Coalition government

ABSTRACT In the UK, as in many other countries, welfare reform in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis has had a detrimental effect on gender equality. Between 2010 and 2015 the UK Coalition government initiated far-reaching cuts to public spending, as well as an increase in welfare conditionality. These reforms have hit women harder than men as women are more likely to rely on welfare benefits and services due to unpaid care responsibilities. Many have suggested that the way in which issues are represented by policymakers can limit what can be conceived as appropriate policy solutions. In line with this, Bacchi’s What’s the problem represented to be? (WPR) approach is used in this article to interrogate the way in which welfare was problematized by the UK Coalition government. Findings suggest that the Coalition represented reform as necessary to make work pay, with “work” promoted as paid work and unpaid care work (predominantly undertaken by women) ignored. It also highlights the ways in which the Coalition’s promotion of paid work silenced the necessity and value of care, allowing for the implementation of welfare reforms which have disproportionately disadvantaged women and exacerbated gender inequality.

We have our dignity, yeah? Scrutiny under suspicion: Experiences of welfare conditionality in the Irish social protection system

AbstractConditionality has arguably always been part of welfare and poor relief regimes dating at least as far back as the poor laws and the condition of less eligibility. Nevertheless, there has arguably been a more pronounced turn towards welfare conditionality in the latter part of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries and this appears to be continuing across jurisdictions largely unabated and despite the fact that large amounts of evidence continue to suggest the ineffectiveness of welfare conditionality as means of promoting re‐ entry to the workforce for those experiencing unemployment. Alongside this, much evidence also points to the ultimately deleterious effects of welfare conditionality on those at whom it is targeted. This is an area which has seen an abundance of recent contributions in the context of the UK and further afield but that has arguably suffered from a lack of cognate data that sheds light on the Irish example. In attempting to begin to remedy this, this article presents data from a series of interviews carried out with welfare recipients in Ireland in 2018. The purpose of this article is to shed light on experiences of conditionality in the contemporary Irish welfare state and to attempt to nuance further what conditionality can mean. In doing so, this article takes the approach of allowing the data to “speak for itself” in order to best showcase the experiences of those most affected by welfare conditionality.

Introduction to the special issue on welfare conditionality in Australia

AbstractConditionality in Australia’s welfare state has sustained a significant academic critique, including the critique published in this journal. In this Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Social Issues, we contribute to the existing critical literature on welfare conditionality. This Special Issue aimed to provide empirical scrutiny into welfare reform and conditionality in Australia. The articles extend our understanding of welfare conditionality’s underpinnings and its lived effects. These case studies illuminate the aspects of welfare conditionality that have not received enough attention: the role of technology, the question of mobility, the relationship with housing and the little thought given to the state’s role in mutual obligation. What is clear is that the individualisation of structural problems is not just a theoretical and political misstep ripe for critique, but leads to the formulation of policies that impact marginalised people’s capacity to shape life on their own terms. Through different empirical foci, all papers in this Special Issue demonstrate how welfare conditionality is put forward as a solution to address the consequences of structural disadvantage.

‘Without the Right Support Network I'd Probably Be Either Dead or in the Prison System’: The Role of Support in Helping Offenders on their Journey to Desistance

AbstractReforms designed to enhance the delivery of flexible and holistic support to offenders were introduced in 2013, with a clear focus on addressing ‘broader life management issues’ to enable behaviour change. Data are drawn from total of 117 semi‐structured interviews undertaken with 57 offenders as part of the Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions support and behaviour change project. The article specifically highlights the significance of long‐term support in successfully helping offenders to change their behaviour. It emphasises the importance of long‐term engagement, together with strengths‐based approaches in helping offenders to progress personal development and create a new prosocial identity whereby they can become invested in society.

Punitive benefit sanctions, welfare conditionality, and the social abuse of unemployed people in Britain: Transforming claimants into offenders?

AbstractA defining feature of U.K. welfare reform since 2010 has been the concerted move towards greater compulsion and sanctioning, which has been interpreted by some social policy scholars as punitive and cruel. In this article, we borrow concepts from criminology and sociology to develop new interpretations of welfare conditionality. Based on data from a major Economic and Social Research Council‐funded qualitative longitudinal study (2014–2019), we document the suffering that unemployed claimants experienced because of harsh conditionality. We find that punitive welfare conditionality often caused symbolic and material suffering and sometimes had life‐threatening effects. We argue that a wide range of suffering induced by welfare conditionality can be understood as ‘social abuse’, including the demoralisation of the futile job‐search treadwheel and the self‐administered surveillance of the Universal Jobmatch panopticon. We identify a range of active claimant responses to state perpetrated harm, including acquiescence, adaptation, resistance, and disengagement. We conclude that punitive post‐2010 unemployment correction can be seen as a reinvention of failed historic forms of punishment for offenders.

Is it because you can’t, or don’t want to? The implementation of frontline sanctions in Norwegian social assistance

ABSTRACT Welfare conditionality, particularly stringent benefit sanctions, has become increasingly prevalent in Western welfare states in recent decades. Although mandatory activation has received great attention in research, the need for further studies on the implementation of frontline sanctions has become evident, mainly where enabling measures are concerned. This article contributes to frontline and deservingness literature, examining how caseworkers cope with non-compliance cases and which deservingness assessments they invoke, in the Norwegian social assistance. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with caseworkers at a Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) office, this study shows how caseworkers informally construct a typology of non-compliance cases: ‘unreachable’, ‘incapable’ and ‘unwilling’. The way caseworkers perceive the client’s attitude, level of need and control over neediness seem to be decisive in distinguishing between cases. Caseworkers display a tendency to attribute non-compliance to incapability, which leads them to renegotiate activation requirements. As such, caseworkers’ deservingness assessments seem to shape sanctioning practices. Based on these findings, this article argues for a more nuanced understanding of frontline sanctions.

Australia’s remote workfare policy: Rhetoric versus reality of ‘community’ empowerment

In 1977, Jones (in Bryson and Mowbray, 1981: 255) described the term ‘community’ as ‘the aerosol word of the 1970s because of the hopeful way it is sprayed over deteriorating institutions.’ They argued that the term is used to give the impression of community ownership over policymaking processes and outputs when the reality can be far different. This article discusses one of Australia’s current workfare programs, the Community Development Programme (CDP), which operates in remote parts of the country as new welfare conditionality architecture for moving (mainly Indigenous) remote unemployed people off welfare and into work. It argues that, despite political rhetoric to the contrary, ‘community’ is marginalised in the program’s design and implementation. Instead, CDP can be best conceptualised as a manifestation of neoliberal paternalism, whereby the governance practices of the state work through community organisations to enforce market principles and ‘train’ unemployed and poor people into pursuing ‘freedom’ within the bounds of market rationality. Through these modes of governing, Indigenous communities are instead strategically disempowered.

Classed and gendered transitions in youth activation: the case of Finnish youth employment services

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of youth activation in reproducing classed and gendered youth transitions. A large body of research on transitions examines how structural conditions continue to pattern youth transitions in the context of detraditionalization and individualisation. What is often missing from these analyses, is the role of institutional actors and youth policies. Based on a multi-sited ethnographic research in employment services in Helsinki, Finland, this article explores the role of youth activation and welfare conditionality in NEET young people's transitions. Youth activation refers to a complex mix of employment services, prevention of social exclusion, active labour market policies and welfare conditionality. The article shows how the seemingly supportive practices provided by youth employment services channel young people to a limited number of occupational tracks at the lower end of the labour market in a gendered manner. This channelling is institutionalised in the services’ organisational structures and practices, and strengthened by welfare conditionality. The consequence is a powerful institutional pattern that structures and restricts youths’ transition paths.

Frontline managers' perceptions and justifications of behavioural conditionality

AbstractThe debate on behavioural conditionality is characterised by abundant controversies. Frontline managers have a particularly important role in implementing these policies because their interpretation of the welfare policies regulates the frameworks of street‐level bureaucrat's discretionary powers. A nationwide survey among frontline managers in the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration revealed that 86% of the managers expressed strong normative support towards welfare conditionality. With this as a backdrop, this paper develops a better understanding of managers' perceptions and justifications of the Norwegian type of behavioural conditionality. Analysis of focus group interview data showed that the managers adopted a broad definition of conditionality, meaning promotion of an overall (re)integration of the client into the society as opposed to the narrow definition focusing solely on labour market integration. Furthermore, the implementation of welfare conditionality primarily was perceived as mild and client sensitive. The managers mainly justified welfare conditionality in terms of care and paternalistic defences, arguing that requirement of work and activities are in the client's best interest, understood in terms of social democratic values.

Соціальна обумовленість встановлення кримінальної відповідальності за приховування злочину (ст. 396 ККУ)

Соціальна обумовленість встановлення кримінальної відповідальності за приховування злочину (ст. 396 ККУ)

Making welfare conditional: A street‐level perspective

AbstractThis article looks at how welfare conditionality is delivered at the street level. It argues that the street‐level delivery of welfare conditionality is structured by policies, the governance context in which workers deliver welfare conditionality, the organization in which they work, and the occupation they are part of. Characteristics of these contexts present street‐level workers with a variety of signals and incentives that direct their decision making. The article elaborates on this proposition on the basis of a review of academic studies analysing the street‐level delivery of various aspects of welfare conditionality: the use of sanctions, service personalization, and the treatment of vulnerable clients. The review shows that context characteristics together have a significant impact on the street‐level transformation of welfare conditionality policies into practices. Street‐level decision making concerning the use of sanctions is far more complex than can be captured by a perspective on street‐level workers as merely policy implementers. Sanctioning practices are sometimes harsher, sometimes more lenient than policies lead us to expect. The “soft” side of welfare conditionality—represented by service personalization—is often under pressure at the street level, potentially strengthening welfare conditionality's tough side. This affects vulnerable jobseekers most: Street‐level studies show that the balance between disciplining and enabling aspects of welfare‐to‐work is most at risk for more vulnerable groups. The article concludes that the contextual pressures street‐level workers have to deal with in their daily work hardly reflect the “delicate equilibrium” that they need to deliver welfare conditionality in a professional, responsive, and responsible way.

Frontline implementation of welfare conditionality in Norway: A maternalistic practice

AbstractWelfare conditionality is both ambitious and ambiguous for the frontline workers who put policy into practice. Since January 2017, the Norwegian frontline service should require social assistance benefit recipients under the age of 30 to participate in some sort of work‐related activation, so‐called mandatory activation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with frontline workers at local offices in the Norwegian Public Welfare Service (NAV), we investigate how the requirement is implemented in a context of a professionalised social welfare service. Mandatory activation is arguably a paternalistic measure. Drawing on Bernardo Zacka's concept of moral dispositions and Laura Specker Sullivan's concepts of maternalism, our findings indicate that at the frontline, mandatory activation policies are implemented by maternalistic decision making, emphasising the interpersonal relation between trained caseworkers and clients. The caseworkers use their discretionary powers in the implementation of conditionality and sanctions by emphasising care and support as embedded in the strict rules.

New welfare conditionality in Australia: recent developments

The receipt of social security payments, and other forms of social welfare, has always been subject to conditions, and whilst some argue that welfare should be «universal», most people agree that the imposition of certain conditions limiting eligibility or payment amount is appropriate. However, objections are being raised by commentators in Australia at the present time because the conditions being placed on social security recipients are becoming increasingly «behavioural» and racialised in...