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The discourse of deservingness has been mobilised against certain groups in the UK society navigating UK labour markets, among them refugees and asylum seekers. These discourses, leading to the stigmatisation of the unemployed are coupled with an emphasis on the importance of individuals taking responsibility to develop their 'employability'. Little attention has been paid to scrutinise the contrast between the deservingness rhetoric and policy making with the actual conditions newcomers, and in particular refugees and asylum seekers, are confronted with when seeking employment. Our paper fills such a gap by indicating key contradictions at the heart of labour market integration in the UK. On the one hand, the emphasis on deservingness is coupled with policy discourses that construct an environment shaped by welfare and labour market chauvinism. On the other hand, the policy architecture is fundamentally flawed in a number of ways in terms of the support mechanisms necessary to ensure that newcomers can successfully integrate into the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines UK newspaper coverage during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic March-August 2020. A qualitative framing analysis of public messaging on age in five high circulation newspapers provides a detailed account of who is deemed to be at risk of dying from COVID-19. Newspapers represent older people as most at risk, with disability as a secondary factor. Reports on who is responsible, who is at risk, and who is to blame for deaths from COVID-19 are framed as issues of public health and generational fairness, with individual responsibility occupying a prominent role. We also find two counter-frames. First, in letters to the editor, older people's pleas for freedom are framed as a fight for their civil liberties. Second, newspapers praise 99-year-old Captain Tom Moore and frame his behaviour as a source of national pride. We identify this as positive ageism. We conclude that reporting across progressive and conservative newspapers reflects age-based stereotypes and paternalism towards older people. Public figures are represented as scapegoats or heroes, offering distraction from the less newsworthy fact that long-term under-investment in social care increased the risk of dying amongst the old and disabled during the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the labour market, high rates of working age poverty, major welfare reforms and more recently the Covid-19 pandemic have drawn renewed attention to income security. Existing research has identified the important role of relational support in helping people cope with low income, but less is known about the role of support for those coping with the potentially destabilising effects of income change which can affect people over relatively short periods of time. This article focuses on how relational coping strategies are utilised by those experiencing such income change. The data are drawn from a qualitative longitudinal study of the experience of income change and insecurity in 15 low-income households in the UK which included repeated in-depth interviews and weekly financial diaries completed in periods of up to five months. The article explores the relational strategies adopted by participants to 'get by' as well as examining how strategies are adopted by those on different levels of low income and with differing networks. The article argues that these strategies illuminate the importance of income change in the experience of low-income households, develop the concept of income insecurity, and provide lessons for policy in providing flexible and responsive support when income changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]