Recent article: A hand up or a slap down
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Recent article: A hand up or a slap down
I found this article which may be of interest (I have not read it all myself yet saving for later )
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0261018317726622
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0261018317726622
Del Roy Fletcher and Sharon Wright wrote:British policy-makers have increasingly sought to intensify and extend welfare conditionality. A distinctly more punitive turn was taken in 2012 to re-orientate the whole social security and employment services system to combine harsh sanctions with minimal mandatory support in order to prioritise moving individuals ‘off benefit and into work’ with the primary aim of reducing costs. This article questions the extent to which these changes can be explained by Wacquant’s (2009) theory of the ‘centaur state’ (a neoliberal head on an authoritarian body), which sees poverty criminalised via the advance of workfare. We present evidence of an authoritarian approach to unemployment, involving dramatic use of strategies of surveillance (via new paternalist tools like the Claimant Commitment and the Universal Jobmatch panopticon), sanction and deterrence. This shift has replaced job match support with mandatory digital self-help, coercion and punishment. In relation to Work Programme providers, there is a contrasting liberal approach permitting high discretion in service design. This article makes a significant original contribution to the field by demonstrating that Wacquant’s analysis of ‘workfare’ is broadly applicable to the British case and its reliance on a centralised model of state action is truer in the British case than the US. However, we establish that the character of British reform is somewhat different: less ‘new’ (challenging the time-tethered interpretation that welfare reform is a uniquely neoliberal product of late modernity) and more broadly applied to ‘core’ workers, including working-class white men with earned entitlement, rather than peripheral workers.
Caker- Posts : 1813
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Re: Recent article: A hand up or a slap down
A very interesting read. Thanks for linking to it. This part stands out:
Under UC, the period for which a sanction applies is, in effect, more than doubled because sanctions are consecutive, rather than concurrent, and Hardship Payments must be repaid (Webster, 2017: 4). These severe financial penalties are disproportionate, far outweighing the minor infringements for which they are applied and out of alignment with financial penalties for comparable civil and criminal offences (Adler,2016).
Absolut- Posts : 1054
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Re: Recent article: A hand up or a slap down
for whats on here id like to add another reference to involving dramatic use of strategies of surveillance
such sites like
Work Programme Provider Avanta has created a clone of Universal Jobmatch
welfare2work.co.uk
controversial MyWorkSearch that integrates with Universal Jobmatch
such sites like
Work Programme Provider Avanta has created a clone of Universal Jobmatch
welfare2work.co.uk
controversial MyWorkSearch that integrates with Universal Jobmatch
Re: Recent article: A hand up or a slap down
Indeed, the criminalisation of poverty is a trend that come in tandem with the success of neoliberalism ( see for instance "Punishing the Poor". and it is a universal trend in the Western nations (The punitive regulation of poverty in the neoliberal age and Comparing workfare regimes: similarities, differences, and exceptions).
As a rule of thumb, the more neoliberal leaning are the elites controlling a State, the more punitive and controlling, is the legislation involving the poor. In the UK we are nearly at the bottom (The ‘Criminalization’ of Social Security Law: Towards a Punitive Welfare State? or Today’s Britain: where the poor are forced to steal or beg from food banks and
Criminal Justice in the United Kingdom, 2010 to 2015: 'Criminalising' Poverty ).
Of interest also "Austerity The Demolition of the Welfare State and the Rise of the Zombie Economy" (downloadable from my site)
Untill the grip of the most fundamentalist neoliberal is broken I cannot see the trend reversing.
Brutus- Posts : 394
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Re: Recent article: A hand up or a slap down
Brutus wrote:Austerity The Demolition of the Welfare State and the Rise of the Zombie Economy
Thank you for this. Another interesting read.
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