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Government is currently committed to radical reform of the welfare system underpinning social citizenship in Britain. Welfare rights and responsibilities is a response to this, focusing on welfare reform and citizenship. Specifically it explores three issues central to citizenship’s social element: provision, membership and the link between welfare rights and responsibilities(conditionality).
Part 1 discusses competing philosophical, political and academic perspectives on citizenship and welfare. Part 2 then moves discussions about social citizenship away from the purely theoretical level, allowing the practical concerns of citizens (particularly those at the sharp end of public provision) to become an integral part of current debates concerning citizenship and welfare. The author gives voice to the ‘ordinary’ citizens who actually make use of welfare services.
The book offers an accessible overview of contemporary debates about the contested concepts of citizenship and welfare, linking them to recent developments and discussions about the new welfare settlement and values that underpin it. It combines relevant debates within political philosophy, social policy and sociology that relate to social citizenship with recent policy developments.
Welfare rights and responsibilities allows the presently marginalised voices of welfare service users to become a valued element in contemporary debates about the extent of social citizenship and the reform of the welfare state. It is therefore important reading for students and teachers of social policy, sociology and politics. It will further appeal to a wider audience of policy makers and professional social workers with an interest in welfare reform/service users accounts.
This edited collection considers how conditional welfare policies and services are implemented and experienced by a diverse range of welfare service users across a range of UK policy domains including social security, homelessness, migration and criminal justice.
The book showcases the insights and findings of a series of distinct, independent studies undertaken by early career researchers associated with the ESRC funded Welfare Conditionality project. Each chapter presents a new empirical analysis of data generated in fieldwork conducted with practitioners charged with interpreting and delivering policy, and welfare service users who are at the sharp end of welfare services shaped by behavioural conditionality.
This book charts the development of mobility and welfare rights for those citizens exercising their right to move or return home on retirement under the Free Movement of Persons provisions and explores their experiences of international mobility. It is set within the context of ‘Citizenship of the Union’.
Senior citizenship? draws on substantial primary research material to:
combine detailed analysis of the framework of EU rights shaping social with in-depth qualitative interviews involving retired migrants across six member states (Greece, Portugal, Italy, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Ireland);
describe and evaluate an innovative approach to comparative enquiry that combines biographical interviews with legal and qualitative analysis;
highlight the diverse nature of retirement migration encompassing the experiences of returning workers, migrating retirees and post retirement returnees.
Topics are explored thematically in the context of comparative social policy, raising important and topical issues around the future of social citizenship and the implications of the exercise of agency, in an increasingly global and mobile world.
This chapter discusses the concepts of agency and dependency in relation to contemporary welfare reform. This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part discusses the ‘third way’ theory and its implications for future welfare provision. In this section, the notions of agency and dependency which are central to theorising are discussed. It is argued that the ways in which these ideas are used and controlled are flawed. The negative impact of welfare policy that over-prioritises the ‘active welfare subject’ while simultaneously understating the significance of continuing social divisions are also discussed in this section. The second part of the chapter draws on the two recently completed qualitative studies with different groups of welfare service users. It also considers the ways in which users themselves seek to legitimise their own claims to public welfare, while at the same time justifying the exclusion of other groups or individuals from collective support.
This chapter utilises the work of Hall (1993) and 6 and Peck (2004) to explore welfare conditionality under New Labour. Hall’s (1993) discussion of policy learning and paradigm shift is useful for analysing the wider importance of the conditional welfare state that has been mapped out by the Blair administrations. His discussion of three key policy variables (that is, goals, instruments, and settings) provides a useful way for considering the wider significance and long-term impact of New Labour’s welfare reforms. Likewise, consideration of 6 and Peck’s (2004) work highlights that several elements of New Labour’s ‘modernisation’ agenda are also relevant here.
This book explores some of the debates about citizenship and welfare. It analyses competing accounts of citizenship’s social element, at both social-scientific and more specifically welfare-service-user levels. To this end, the book draws heavily on a qualitative analysis of ten different focus groups that were purposively sampled according to a number of different criteria (including age, ethnicity, gender, and disability). By drawing extensively on service-user accounts, it hopes to further our understanding of how ordinary citizens view citizenship and welfare in contemporary Britain. Based on the linked concepts of citizenship and welfare, the book considers three key themes: welfare provision, conditionality, and membership. Part 1 examines some ongoing social-science debates concerning welfare and citizenship, including liberalism and communitarianism, while Part 2 discusses the perceptions, insights, and opinions of the respondents who shared their views in the focus groups that formed the empirical fieldwork element which is central to this study.
This chapter looks at the differing philosophical traditions of liberalism and communitarianism and explores how their conflicting views on the nature and importance of the ‘individual’ and ‘community’ affect their competing visions of citizenship. It discusses the individualism central to the liberal project and makes an important distinction between ‘libertarian’ liberals, who largely oppose collective welfare provisions, and their more ‘egalitarian’ counterparts, who envisage a citizenship that embraces a notion of ‘social justice’ and a system of recognised welfare rights. The chapter then highlights the communitarian approach and considers the concerns and criticisms about liberalism. It also examines Ferdinand Tonnies’ work, as his Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft offer insight into contrasting assumptions that underpin liberal and communitarian understandings of the concept of community. The chapter concludes by noting that, philosophically, within both liberalism and communitarianism, the extent, and in some cases the legitimacy, of the welfare element of citizenship continues to be a source of much debate.
This chapter explores in more detail five perspectives on citizenship and welfare that are of relevance in the contemporary British setting. It analyses each of the chosen perspectives in terms of the three key themes which are central to the study: welfare provision, conditionality, and membership. The first standpoint to be considered is the one outlined by T. H. Marshall in Citizenship and social class (1992). The chapter discusses his general theory of citizenship, with particular attention to the social-rights element. It then examines two very different approaches to citizenship and welfare, those of the New Right and the new communitarians. This is followed by an analysis of New Labour’s outlook with regard to the welfare element of citizenship. Finally, the chapter analyses welfare from an Islamic perspective and argues that the vision of citizenship outlined by Marshall has been superseded by a new welfare orthodoxy which stresses a reduced role for the state in the provision of welfare and increasingly conditional social rights.
This chapter tackles a question central to social citizenship: who/which agencies should be expected to provide welfare? It presents qualitative data related to the three areas of welfare chosen as the basis of the study: healthcare, housing, and social security. The chapter first explores the users’ views on the appropriate role(s) of the state, the individual, the market, and so on in terms of welfare provision. It then considers several allied issues that were often raised in the group discussions. In addition, the chapter investigates opinions and experiences concerning the adequacy or inadequacy of current provisions, the problem of stigma and state welfare, and the issue of financing welfare rights. Two key findings can be drawn from it: first, the respondents are unanimous in their agreement that social rights are a valid and valued part of the citizenship package; and second, most of the respondents also believe that it is important for the state to continue playing a major role in providing to meet their welfare needs in the future.
This chapter examines the views of welfare-service users on conditionality, which is concerned with the relationship between citizenship rights and responsibilities. It considers a ‘principle of conditionality’ within the three areas of welfare under discussion (healthcare, housing, and social security). The chapter also examines the related question of whether or not the respondents think it is reasonable for the state to use means tests (a form of financial conditionality) in order to limit access to public welfare, by looking at two issues: the provision of long-term residential care for older citizens and the ‘problem’ of personal savings. Furthermore, it considers the issue of an unconditional citizen’s income and also the possible extension of highly conditional welfare into the areas of fiscal and occupational benefits. The most significant finding of the chapter is that the degree to which the respondents see the imposition of a principle of conditionality as fair depends extensively on the area of welfare in which it is applied.
