Search

Welfare decentralisations have increased the importance of local neighbourhoods as context for care. As welfare reforms largely rely on increased citizen participation, local infrastructures facilitating participation, especially in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, become a focal point for understanding neighbourhood care. We studied professional and citizen led forms of care in two low-income neighbourhoods in the Netherlands. Our analysis of collective care as practices of repair and maintenance highlights the collective losses that neighbourhoods suffer within an institutional context of care as self-management and individual responsibility. The sustenance of collective neighbourhood care as a context and practice of social work requires recognition of the epistemic and relational work carried out by citizens and professionals in maintaining and repairing local care infrastructures.

The Cashless Debit Card (‘the card’) is a stringent form of welfare quarantining targeting Aboriginal Australians. Select social security recipients have 80% of their fortnightly payments sequester...

Social policy represents a critical dimension of the governmental response to COVID-19. This article analyses the Australian response, which was radical in that it signalled an unprecedented policy turnaround towards welfare generosity and the almost total relaxation of conditionality. It was also surprising because it was introduced by a conservative, anti-welfarist government. The principal argument is that, though the generosity was temporary, it should be understood simultaneously by reference to institutional change and institutional tradition. The 'change' element was shaped by the urgency and scale of the crisis, which indicated an institutional 'critical juncture'. This provided a 'window of opportunity' for reform, which would otherwise be closed. 'Tradition' was reflected in the nation's federalist conventions, which partially steered the response. The central implication for other countries is that, amid the uncertainty of a crisis, governments need to consider change within the bounds of their traditional institutions when introducing welfare reform. © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.

In a decision which once again legitimates discriminatory welfare cuts, the UK Supreme Court has unanimously upheld the so-called ‘two-child limit’ for eligibility for child tax credit. The case co...

This research applied Bourdieusian field theory to explain the forms of resistance exercised by single mothers exposed to the cultural and economic domination of Australian welfare-to-work policy. The mothers were affected by policy changes that reduced their social security benefit income and brought them into the field of activation policies. Unlike other studies focusing on well-being effects, this study focused on understanding resistance, that is, how welfare subjects like single mothers exercise resistance in dominating contexts. Bourdieusian field theory was applied to explain these resistances as a reaction to a social policy reclassification and to identity the enabling resources for it. This article observes the conditions that enabled single mothers to convert individual forms of resistance into collective action. In this respect, Husu’s adaptation of Bourdieusian field theory to social movement studies provided insight into how dominating fields like those of activation policy, generate resistances and social movements.

\ud \ud This paper examines the impact of major social security reform on mental health claimants by analysing the transition to Personal Independence Payment in the UK. Personal Independence Payment was introduced in April 2013 replacing Disability Living Allowance as the main non-means tested disability benefit intended to assist with the additional costs associated with disability or long-term health conditions. It is important to gain a better understanding of how people with mental health problems have experienced this reform.\ud \ud Twelve service users were interviewed for this qualitative research. Analysis identified three main themes: problems with the Personal Independence Payment claims process; problems conveying mental health problems during the assessment process; and positive experiences associated with the transition to Personal Independence Payment. This research demonstrates that major changes in benefit policy are challenging for people with mental health problems, particularly when delivered in a climate of austerity.

We challenge the prevalent claim that courts can only influence policy by adjudicating disputes. Instead, we theorize the shadow effect of courts: policy makers preemptively altering policies in anticipation of possible judicial review. While American studies imply that preemptive reforms hinge on litigious interest groups pressuring policy makers who support judicial review, we advance a comparative theory that flips these presumptions. In less litigious and more hostile political contexts, policy makers may instead weaponize preemptive reforms to preclude bureaucratic conflicts from triggering judicial oversight and starve courts of the cases they need to build their authority. By allowing some preemptive judicial influence to resist direct judicial interference, recalcitrant policy makers demonstrate that shadow effects are not an unqualified good for courts. We illustrate our theory by tracing how a major welfare reform in Norway was triggered by a conflict within its Ministry of Labor and a government resistance campaign targeting a little-known international court.

Purpose This paper aims to explore Joint couple payments under Universal Credit which tend to privilege male partners. This may entrap women in abusive relationships, foster poverty which are indicative of gendered structural abuse. Design/methodology/approach Through a critical review of the literature and qualitative interviews with third sector support workers, the authors explore the impacts that Universal Credit has on women, especially those in abusive partnerships. Findings Current welfare processes reinforce patriarchal assumptions and are indicative of the structural abuse of women. This has increased during the lockdowns imposed to tackle COVID-19. Practical implications Changes are needed in the ways in which welfare benefits are disbursed. Gendered structural abuses should be explicitly considered when working with women who experience domestic violence and abuse. Originality/value This paper argues that there needs to be a wider a recognition of gender power relations and the concept of structural abuse in policy formation and implementation.

This article, inspired by the epistemology of critical realism and its approach to assessing social and institutional change, elaborates on the impact of past welfare reform agendas in Europe, taking Italy and Germany as examples. Reading welfare state change through the lens of the concept of empowerment, it argues that such agendas should be studied by considering the nexus of different (coinciding) policies, the transformation of organisational settlements, and the reforms' fit with encultured social expectations. Illustrating how a reform agenda containing a potential to enhance self-determination in the area of work and family life may simultaneously contribute to disempowerment, the article shows how a multidimensional 'proto-evaluative' endeavour may help develop a more holistic understanding of past welfare state change up to the outbreak of the Corona19 pandemic. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of European Societies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

O ensaio pretende mostrar algumas implicações da racionalidade neoliberal na seguridade social brasileira (especificamente a partir de um dos seus elementos ideológicos, o individualismo), dentre as quais a afetação das bases de sustentação da sociabilidade. Para tal, utilizou-se uma metodologia de pesquisa básica e bibliográfica. O trabalho se inicia com um comentário a respeito da conjuntura de crises e os afetos que esta mobiliza, sob a ótica espinosana, para então construir o agenciamento com o “individualismo feroz” neoliberal. Feito isso, alcança-se o núcleo do ensaio, quando é analisada a influência desta racionalidade individualista na Reforma da Previdência de 2019 e o potencial que ela carrega de minar os afetos que permitem a vida em sociedade e os engajamentos em atividades coletivas. Por fim, investigaram-se as possíveis estratégias de mobilização, pontuando que a construção e o desenvolvimento de uma “multidão global” pode ser uma saída para o enfrentamento destas crises.

Empirical studies have not previously related people's work attitudes to their chances of being unemployed for a substantial proportion of their lives. This study uses 1958 and 1970 British birth cohorts to show that responses to attitude questions offering a choice between an unattractive or disliked job and joblessness rival established unemployment risk variables as predictors of time spent unemployed between ages 16 and 46. The findings may help justify the provisions of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 for compelling unemployed benefit claimants to apply for, and subsequently retain, jobs they would otherwise have ruled out.

This article provides a critical commentary on Irish activation policy. It is framed with reference to the point made in Pathways to Work 2016–2020 that a key purpose of activation is ‘to help ensure a supply of labour at competitive rates’. It looks at how a tougher work-first activation regime can be situated within the wider landscape of reform and retrenchment in the social protection system following the 2008 financial crisis. Broadly utilising Pierson’s concepts of programmatic and systemic retrenchment, it situates the roll-out of activation within shifts toward greater reliance on means-tested benefits for the unemployed, and toward work first, with varying degrees of compulsion, for other working-age adults in the social protection system. Suggesting that this results in a hierarchy of ‘welfare sacrifice’ for the sake of the competitiveness of the Irish economy, it also looks briefly at how some of these ‘sacrifices’ are experienced by different groups both in and out of the labour market. The article concludes by noting that the Covid-19 pandemic has temporarily transformed state–market relations such as these; however, whether this offers the opportunity to forge a more supportive turn in activation policy post-pandemic remains an open question.

How do governors’ reelection motives affect policy experimentation? We develop a theoretical model of this situation, and then test the predictions in data on US state-level welfare reforms from 1978 to 2007. This period marked the most dramatic shift in social policy since the New Deal. Our findings indicate that governors with strong electoral support are less likely to experiment than governors with little support. Yet, governors who cannot be reelected actually experiment more than governors striving for reelection. These findings are robust to controlling for ideology, preferences for redistribution, the state legislature, and cross-state learning. (JEL D72, H75, I32, I38)

This article examines lived experiences of food insecurity in the United Kingdom as a\ud liminal phenomenon. Our research is set within the context of austerity measures, welfare\ud reform and the precarity experienced by increasing numbers of individuals. Drawing on\ud original qualitative data, we highlight diverse food insecurity experiences as transitional,\ud oscillating between phases of everyday food access to requiring supplementary food, which\ud are both empowering and reinforcing of food insecurity. We make three original\ud contributions to existing research on food insecurity. First, we expand the scope of empirical\ud research by conceptualising food insecurity as liminal. Second, we illuminate shared social\ud processes and practices that intersect individual agency and structure, co-constructing\ud people’s experiences of food insecurity. Third, we extend liminality theory by\ud conceptualising paraliminality, a hybrid of liminal and liminoid phenomena that co-generates\ud a persistent liminal state. Finally, we highlight policy implications that go beyond short-term\ud emergency food access measures.

This article argues that shared problematizations—shared political and public ways of thinking—legitimize policies and their outcomes. To support this argument, it examines the legitimation of gendered welfare reform in the recent U.K. context. Drawing on focus groups with the public, it provides evidence that the public’s problematization of welfare, specifically that reform was necessary to “make work pay” and “restore fairness”, aligned with that of politicians. It argues that the assumptions and silences underpinning this shared problematization, especially silences relating to the value and necessity of care, have allowed for welfare policies that have disadvantaged women.

Between 2010–2015, the Coalition’s pursuit of a radical austerity programme saw Britain’s Jobcentre Plus experience some of the most punitive reforms and budget cuts in its history. Focusing on the outcomes of these reforms, a growing body of research has found that claiming processes became a more ‘institutionally violent’ and injurious experience for out-of-work benefit claimants. The present article draws upon ideas, developed by Bauman (1989), which focus on the processes that facilitate ‘institutional violence’. We use this framework to analyse ten interviews with front-line workers and managers in public/contractor employment services. In doing so, we expose an array of policy tools and hidden managerial methods used during the Coalition administration which encouraged front-line staff to deliver services in ways that led to a range of harmful outcomes for benefit claimants.

The global spread of gender quotas has led to a burgeoning literature examining gender differences in the responsiveness of national representatives. In this study, I shifted the attention from nat ...

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.

Employment had risen to historically high levels in Britain before the coronavirus crisis, however, whereas work is traditionally conceptualised as a route out of poverty this is no longer necessarily the case. Participation in non-standard or low-income work such as zero-hour contracts, involuntary part-time work and self-employment is increasingly a feature of the labour market and in-work benefits which top-up low incomes have been pared back. This case study undertaken in the period before the coronavirus crisis takes a multi-disciplinary approach in relation to three key questions: are working women resorting to food bank use in times of financial hardship?; to what extent is this a function of non-standard working practices?; and is welfare reform a contributing factor? A three-strand approach is taken: a synthesis of literature, an analysis of national data, and in-depth interviews with stakeholders involved with referrals to or delivery of emergency food provision within northern Britain. The findings highlight a growth in precarious employment models since the 2008/2009 recession and how this intersects with increasing conditionality in welfare policy. We contribute to the debate by arguing that ideological driven policy fails to acknowledge structural deficiencies in labour market demand and misattributes responsibility for managing precarious working patterns onto individuals who are already struggling to get by.

Helping people move to independence is often cited as a primary goal of public assistance policies in the United States. Over the past several decades, welfare reform efforts in the US have promoted the idea of a work-first approach. Research shows that this approach has discouraged or at least made it harder for some students to attend college while meeting the work requirements for aid. How can those students who need public assistance increase their chances of finding a sustainable job and thus not need to rely on the public support system after high school? To address this question, this study used a sample of 3,384 student responses from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and a recursive bivariate probit model to analyze the association between advanced math course-taking in high school and the probability of subsequent receipt of public assistance. The empirical results suggest that taking advanced math courses in high school is associated with a lower probability of receiving public assistance for recent graduates. These findings are particularly important for school social workers who work in conjunction with teachers and school counselors to help at-risk students improve their chances of future financial independence.

Unemployment insurance systems are designed to provide income security for those who drop out of work temporarily. This form of social protection is particularly relevant for foreign-born workers who are, on average, more likely to become unemployed during layoffs. The article explores how the social protection of immigrants differs in cases where payments are tied to voluntary rather than mandatory contributions. This is done by focusing on a recent welfare reform in Sweden which led to both a sharp increase in costs and a decline in benefit generosity overnight. It is argued that migrants lost their social protection at a disproportionate rate over the course of the reform. Both their status on the labour market and position as newcomers to the norms and rules of society are expected to impede on their decision to obtain or prolong insurance membership, leading to a decline in eligibility to income security. Difference-in-difference estimates with administrative data from all unemployment insurance funds show that the share of benefit recipients with earnings-related payments decreased at a higher rate among the foreign-born as expected, especially if they had arrived in the country only recently.

Over the past quarter century, Recovery has become the hegemonic model guiding mental health policy. Advocates presented Recovery as a radical departure from the past, with the promise of dramatically improved outcomes for those with serious mental illness. This article looks at the implementation of Recovery-based policies in California from the 1990s to the present and interrogates the ways these policies emerged out of and reinforced many of the problems they were intended to solve. Against the backdrop of welfare reform, managed care, and a growing belief in market forces and individual responsibility, California policymakers pivoted from rigorously studied pilot programs that were intended to provide intensive, long-term treatment to Recovery-oriented programs that, while initially intensive, promised to "flow" increasingly independent and self-sufficient patients to less-intensive services. Moreover, these new programs promised to produce cost savings by reducing homelessness, hospitalization, and incarceration. Reported outcomes from these programs have been overwhelmingly positive but are based on flawed evaluations that lean more heavily on belief than on evidence. While proclaiming a comprehensive, patient-centered approach, Recovery's embrace of independence over long-term care and social supports has justified a system of care that systematically fails the sickest patients by abandoning them to the streets and jails.

The article is the result of a research that analyzed the "Nova previdencia" (New Welfare) advertisement produced and disclosed by the Brazilian government. Its objective was to identify the ideological aspects and the intentionalities present in the government's campaign on welfare reform. The epistemological basis included Althusser (1970), who lends the concepts of state ideological apparatuses for the data analysis. This is a qualitative, exploratory, and bibliographical research. The analysis technique is of content, taking Bardin (2004) as the basis for the rationale of the categories of analysis. Therefore, it was possible to ascertain that the publicity piece "Nova previdencia" is a government propaganda that uses ideological resources, such as social class neutrality and the idea of patriotism, in order to produce, in the citizens, a feeling of support for the reform.

Since 2009, homelessness has been on the rise, with growing evidence that welfare reforms are a key driver of this increase. However, does this mean that welfare reform has failed? In this paper, we use policy failure as a lens through which to critically examine welfare reform and homelessness in England. Drawing on McConnell’s definition of failure, which seeks to bridge the gap between objective definitions of policy failure (where failure is understood as the gap between policy objectives and actual outcomes) and subjective definitions (where failure is understood as actors’ perceptions), we examine welfare reform and homelessness to understand whether, how and by whom policy in this area might be considered to have failed.

Researchers have demonstrated that legislators did not explicitly recognize mothers’ parenting as an important citizenship duty in the 1994–1996 welfare reform debate. Despite this, some supportive parenting programs emerged from the debate, such as expanded child care. This study examined how legislators successfully supported some assistive programs within a predominantly punitive political discourse. Did legislators rather imply the citizenship value of mothering through allusions to rights and duties of citizenship? A critical discourse analysis of the entire welfare reform debate was conducted to determine if parenting as an important citizenship activity was implied by legislators through allusions to rights and obligations. All 66 relevant welfare reform debates and hearings of 1994–1996 were analyzed using a combination of grounded theory methods and content analysis within a critical discourse analysis framework. Legislators’ articulations of rights and benefits related to parenting were often favorable. Themes included that the government should support parenting, parenting is an important activity, and that no behavioral obligations should be placed upon parents to receive benefits. Including all themes, favorable parenting discourse was nearly 50%. However, legislators also used implicit citizenship messaging to diminish value and importance of parenting with themes related to gender order, parenting as non-work, and poor mothers’ parenting as dangerous. In the discourse, legislators overtly endorsed the personal responsibility ideology while often tacitly supporting poor mothers. The authors caution politically liberal legislators to carefully weigh policy gains won through implicit discourse against the overall costs to poor mothers’ citizenship construction.

This article seeks to examine an emerging model of social policy governance during the COVID-19 crisis. Our observation indicates although positive welfare model reform that leads to protective-dev...

Objectives Low‐income families receiving public benefits in the United States are often subject to asset limits for eligibility, which some argue to be counterproductive to their long‐term economic stability. Previous research suggests that families were more likely to save when asset limits increased after welfare reform in 1996. The current study builds upon this work for the years before and after the Great Recession. Methods This study utilized data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Assets and bank account ownership of low‐income female‐headed households were compared to multiple control groups for the years 2003–2013 using a difference‐in‐difference analytical approach. Results Results suggest that wealth is associated with race and income, but not with asset limit policies. Bank account ownership was similarly unaffected by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) policy. Conclusions It is likely that TANF policies are only one of the many barriers to asset accumulation faced by low‐income families, especially in a period of recession.

This article reviews the recommodification of social policy in the context of financialised austerity capitalism and post-crisis welfare states. It sets out an understanding of recommodification as a multiple set of processes that involve the state in labour market-making, by shaping labour’s ‘saleability’. Under conditions of finance-dominated austerity capitalism, the article argues that recent dynamics of recommodification complicate the long established Piersonian observations. For Pierson, recommodification signifies how elements of the welfare state that shelter individuals from market pressures are dismantled and replaced with measures which buffer their labour market participation. This article examines ways in which recent policy trends in recommodification, whether by incentivising or coercive means, increase exposure to labour market risks and connect with the growing inequalities between capital and labour under post-crisis re/financialised austerity capitalism. This analysis is paired with a synoptic review of recent labour market trends and reforms across the European Union. As recommodification evolves, the insecurity it institutes raises fundamental questions about the underlying nature of social citizenship which are also addressed.

The care for disabled people in Flanders is currently undergoing a major social policy reform under the introduction of a personal budget scheme. Disability services in Flanders are explicitly expe...

This article examines the impact of magistrates on one of the most critical areas of local government, the English welfare system. It does this by employing a micro-political survey of Gloucestershire parishes who implemented one specific welfare reform, Gilbert’s Act 1782. It focuses on the interplay between parishes and particular local magistrates to illuminate the diverse impact justices had on welfare practice. This approach shows how the input of magistrates was highly variable and individualized. Magisterial intervention did not ensure strict compliance to statute, but rather application of relief reflected their ‘discretion’ in the implementation of the poor law, where they deigned to participate with it. By demonstrating magisterial influence was strategically and operationally applied, this article also suggests that the impact of justices was more pervasive than previously acknowledged and highlights the need for further research to reappraise understanding of the justices’ role in Georgian society.

Establishing public cash assistance as a time-limited benefit was a key and controversial feature of the 1996 welfare reform legislation. Many advocates and practitioners consider the forma...

This article explores implications of such social divisions as race, class, as well as gender in politics in the United States during the 1990s and sheds new light on Bill Clinton’s rationale for welfare reform. The present study is an attempt to figure out to what extent racism, classism, and sexism influenced Bill Clinton’s decision to sign Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996. In our analysis, we draw upon primary sources, written documents, or records such as President Bill Clinton’s autobiographical memoir My Life, his book with Al Gore Putting People First, and other texts from his political speeches. Our paper endeavors to fill gaps in the existing literature on welfare reform concerning implications of race, gender, and class issues in welfare reform legislation in 1996.

The Cape York Welfare Reform (CYWR) initiative aims to reduce ‘passive dependence’ on welfare and restore ‘positive social norms’ to revitalise cultural and social networks and support economic engagement in Indigenous communities in the Cape York Region of Australia. Critics of the initiative and, in particular, its income management (IM) policies have associated it with a broader neoliberal reform agenda that delineates social ‘problems’ from their historical and structural context. This paper discusses key qualitative findings from a strategic review of CYWR, paying particular attention to the ways in which Cape York IM (CYIM) straddles both Indigenous and settler social norms, while perpetuating neoliberal conceptualisations of welfare ‘dependency’. We situate these findings within the existing literature on Australia's other IM models and also consider them in relation to subsequent government responses to the review and associated policies. We argue that CYIM represents a unique initiative, the subtle nuances of which have been largely ignored or misunderstood by critics. Further, we conclude that any extension or revision of this initiative should be considered with respect to deep and wide‐ranging consultation of the Indigenous communities subject to CYWR. However, such consultation has not been the standard practice in Australian contexts.

Anchored on the global welfare regime literature, this article discusses three key themes: welfare regime change, the drivers of change and the implication of the regime change toward insecurity in Southeast Asia. This article focuses on welfare regimes in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand mainly because these countries experienced high economic growth and were correspondingly affected by the 1997-Asian financial crisis. However, their response to the crisis differed due to their distinctive historical-colonial legacies. The article argues that the regimes shifted from productivist to a more inclusive regime partly as public health programmes reached citizens previously uncovered. However, the timing, pace and direction of welfare reform met social unrest, and fundamentally brought into the fore questions of ‘ontological security’. The article concludes that the three regimes cannot substantiate a shift towards ‘secure’ welfare regimes as they continue to rely heavily on family and community for welfare provision to overcome social risk.

Since 2010, UK governments have intensified conditionality as part of a programme of ‘welfare reform’. Social scientists have undertaken much critical analysis but less attention has been paid to possible historical parallels. This article sheds new light on welfare reform through comparison with the depression of the 1930s. It undertakes a documentary analysis of policy in the 1930s informed by a governmentality perspective. In both periods, governments committed to liberal orthodoxies and feared the unemployed would become vulnerable to ‘demoralization’ and ‘dependency’; their behaviour and character were determinant of their rights to support. However, there are notable differences in what interventions have been considered appropriate. The article assesses the significance of continuities and contrasts, and argues in particular that the severity and ubiquity of behavioural regulation employed today is even greater than that seen in the ‘dark decade’ of the great depression.

This paper examines a factor affecting why the interests of the older electorate often prevail in politics in developed countries with aging populations, namely the difference in issue salience related to governmental programs for the elderly. Analysis of data collected with a national electoral survey in Japan conducted at every national election between 1972 and 2016 (28 surveys) revealed that elderly voters have been far more attentive—and more consistently attentive—to the welfare issue than the younger electorate when making voting choices. Moreover, the gap has grown in recent years as the population ages and the welfare program matures, probably due to policy feedback. This gap would enhance the influence of the elderly over the issue beyond their numbers and higher turnout, as discussed in previous studies. This result explains why welfare reform for the elderly has been very difficult, at least in Japan, despite (or, indeed, because of) considerable intergenerational inequality under the current system. At the same time, this result also shows that issue salience is not static but responds to media coverage, especially among young voters who would, otherwise, show less interest in the issue. In other words, lively public debate of the issue, covered by news media, can decrease the salience gap between the youth and the elderly.

Internationally, policymakers assume that sanctioning claimants of unemployment benefits will engender both improved employment outcomes and wider positive effects. A growing evidence‐base challenges these expectations, though additional insight is needed from large‐scale longitudinal research. This article contributes by conducting a quantitative investigation into the mental health impacts of benefit sanctions. To do so, it focuses on a recent period in UK sanctions policy in which rates of sanctions varied markedly and their length was substantially increased. Using quarterly panel data for local authorities in England (Q3 2010–Q4 2014) and fixed effects models that control for important confounders, the analysis provides robust evidence that Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) sanctions lead to increases in self‐reported anxiety and depression. Evidence of this adverse impact is particularly clear following the increase in the length of sanctions in October 2012. The results have important implications for contemporary social security policy, which is underpinned by a similarly punitive sanctions regime. Whilst additional individual‐level research is needed to fully consider the causal relationships in operation, the findings support a precautionary approach that should seek to minimise the harm associated with sanctions. This implies taking steps to reduce both the severity and frequency of applied sanctions.

This article addresses how the use of the Spanish paternity leave from 2008 until 2018 was conditioned by the social and economic context. In particular, we focus on how economic and institutional changes may have contributed to an increase in fathers’ uptake rates and to an alteration in social patterns of uptake. In 2007, Spain introduced a 2-week non-transferable paternity leave with 100% wage replacement. Despite the Great Recession, this leave has been widely used, although differently according to fathers’ socio-economic background. The objective is to analyse how the economic recovery and the subsequent extension of paternity leave to 4/5 weeks have impacted on the social gaps in uptake. Using a representative sample of 10,171 employed fathers with children 3 months or younger, obtained from a pool of 44 quarters of the Spanish Labour Force Survey, logistic regression models are estimated to analyse by fathers’ socio-economic backgrounds the impact of three historical moments on the likelihood of leave being used. Results show that the economic recovery did not change social gaps in leave uptake, but extension of leave has been the decisive event. It has narrowed or reversed the gaps in terms of social class, type of worker, type of contract and education. We conclude that the Spanish ‘daddy month’ has become a social norm for 80% of employed fathers, because of its design. Social gaps in uptake have changed because the new legislation has legitimised men using leave, and not because of lower opportunity costs during economic recovery.

A key aim of Universal Credit is to simplify the social security system. While several aspects of its introduction have received critical attention, this overarching aim continues to receive acceptance and support. Drawing on two empirical studies involving means-tested benefit claimants, we aim to deconstruct the idea of ‘simplicity’ as a feature of social security design and argue that it is contingent on perspective. We suggest that claims of simplicity can often be justified from an administrative perspective but are not experienced as such from the perspective of claimants, who instead can face greater responsibility for managing complexity.

Narratives of self‐responsibility are pervasive in neoliberally oriented contexts, and have been found to engender feelings of shame and failure amongst those affected by poverty. Here, we use findings from research in two low‐income communities in south‐west England to examine how these narratives become embodied within people's daily lives when they intersect with systems of welfare support and the current political drive to upscale treatment for common mental health conditions. Drawing on Bourdieu's notion of symbolic violence, we examine how narratives of self‐responsibility and associated welfare reform strategies impact on the mental health of people living in economic hardship. The data show how such narratives inflict, sustain and exacerbate mental distress and suffering, and how they become naturalised and normalised by individuals themselves. We demonstrate how this situation pushes people to seek support from General Practitioners, and how clinical interactions can normalise, and in turn, medicalise, poverty‐related distress. Whilst some people actively resist dominant narratives around self‐responsibility, we argue that this is insufficient under broader sociocultural and political circumstances, to free themselves from the harms perpetuated by symbolic violence.

This article deals with the ‘quota 100ʹ early retirement option and the “citizenship income” (Reddito di cittadinanza) social assistance scheme introduced by the Conte government early in 2019. The...

In the context of a perfect storm of measures – welfare reform, precarious work, stagnating wages – increasing numbers of households find themselves in complex webs of debt. This paper addresses the lived experience of debt in the UK, tracing some affective contours of indebtedness that are often overlooked in debt research. Focusing on domestic settings and emotional routines, the paper explores how the everyday experience of indebted life seeps into relationships, frames life projects, and mediates hopes for one’s children. The paper argues that the affective architecture of debt operates just as much through moments of intensity – the letter of default, the pressure cooker of an advice session – as through a background hum in which individuals are engaged in ongoing practices of self-assessment, despair, desire and satisfaction. Drawing on in-depth interviews with indebted subjects, this paper investigates contemporary financial subjectivities through such forms of affective modulation that “run in the background”. In addition to those moments of intensity, it argues that indebted lives are composed through low-level affective states that include hypervigilance, dissociation and anxiety. It examines the deep entanglements of people, technologies and objects that produce these affective states, highlighting relations of obligation and codependency, and the forms of vigilance and anxiety these relations create. In doing so, the paper troubles understandings of debt as a binary relationship between creditor and debtor and argues for a perspective that considers the complex affective entanglements of indebted lives and the imbrication of indebtedness, financial subjectivity, love and care in the making of life projects.

As in other advanced industrial democracies, tax and welfare policies in Australia over the last few decades have tended to preserve benefits for some groups of citizens while the safety net for others is weakened. Young people, including children, are among those bearing increased social risks which tend to be exacerbated rather than ameliorated by redistributive policies. There is little evidence of discontent about the overall redistributive policy context, suggesting it broadly aligns with public opinion. The research described in this paper set out to explore the factors underpinning the attitudes of young adult and senior Australians towards redistributive policy, whether there were differences between the two age groups, and if there was any support for policy reform. The results suggest that the young participants’ habituation to neo-liberal policy settings, particularly their adherence to individualistic norms, made them less likely than the seniors to express negative attitudes towards existing policy settings or to advocate reform. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Conditionality 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.

The accounting processes of categorisation and classification are inherent in modern-day welfare systems, though little has been done to investigate the link these have to the social consequences for benefit claimants within these systems. This paper uses research from both primary and secondary sources to show how UK welfare reform has affected claimants and their inalienable human rights since its introduction in 2012. The data gathered for this work combine face-to-face interview data with press releases, and data and reports compiled and published both by the government and independent bodies. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with two illustrative participants, who were identified as being excellent examples of individuals with a close working knowledge of the welfare system. In addition to the primary data gathered, several sources of secondary data are used within the analysis to identify facts, figures and quotations from reliable government sources. Our analysis uncovers that the accounting processes inherent in the system have helped foster a culture of stigmatisation, food bank dependency and financial and emotional hardship for vulnerable welfare claimants in today’s society.

Summary Background Universal Credit, a welfare benefit reform in the UK, began to replace six existing benefit schemes in April, 2013, starting with the income-based Job Seekers Allowance. We aimed to determine the effects on mental health of the introduction of Universal Credit. Methods In this longitudinal controlled study, we linked 197 111 observations from 52 187 individuals of working age (16–64 years) in England, Wales, and Scotland who participated in the Understanding Society UK Longitudinal Household Panel Study between 2009 and 2018 with administrative data on the month when Universal Credit was introduced into the area in which each respondent lived. We included participants who had data on employment status, local authority area of residence, psychological distress, and confounding variables. We excluded individuals from Northern Ireland and people out of work with a disability. We used difference-in-differences analysis of this nationally representative, longitudinal, household survey and separated respondents into two groups: unemployed people who were eligible for Universal Credit (intervention group) and people who were not unemployed and therefore would not have generally been eligible for Universal Credit (comparison group). Using the phased roll-out of Universal Credit, we compared the change in psychological distress (self-reported via General Health Questionnaire-12) between the intervention group and the comparison group over time as the reform was introduced in the area in which each respondent lived. We defined clinically significant psychological distress as a score of greater than 3 on the General Health Questionnaire-12. We tested whether there were differential effects across subgroups (age, sex, and education). Findings The prevalence of psychological distress increased in the intervention group by 6·57 percentage points (95% CI 1·69–11·42) after the introduction of Universal Credit relative to the comparison group, after accounting for potential confounders. We estimate that between April 29, 2013, and Dec 31, 2018, an additional 63 674 (95% CI 10 042–117 307) unemployed people will have experienced levels of psychological distress that are clinically significant due to the introduction of Universal Credit; 21 760 of these individuals might reach the diagnostic threshold for depression. Interpretation Our findings suggest that the introduction of Universal Credit led to an increase in psychological distress, a measure of mental health difficulties, among those affected by the policy. Future changes to government welfare systems should be evaluated not only on a fiscal basis but on their potential to affect health and wellbeing. Funding Wellcome Trust, UK National Institute for Health Research, and Medical Research Council.

Financialisation has driven many transformations across advanced capitalist economies and their welfare systems have not been immune from such change. Finance works both as structural force in soci...