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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 paper presents findings from a qualitative longitudinal study into the lived experiences of welfare reform in the UK. The study set out to explore how individuals directly affected by changes to the benefits system experienced and responded to these reforms. A small group of out-of-work benefits claimants were interviewed three times between 2011 and 2013. The research found that ‘getting by’ on benefits often entailed substantial hard ‘work’, which was frequently time intensive, with many participants also engaged in other forms of socially valuable contribution such as caring and volunteering. A strong orientation towards paid employment was evident across most of the sample and fluid movements in and out of work, characteristic of the ‘low-pay, no-pay’ cycle, was quite common. Alongside a discussion of these findings, this paper considers the (mis)match between the government rhetoric of benefits as a ‘lifestyle choice’ and individual lived experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]