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Reconfiguring Rights in Austerity Britain: Boundaries, Behaviours and Contestable Margins

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2018

LYDIA MORRIS
LYDIA MORRIS*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK email: ldmorris@essex.ac.uk
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Abstract

This paper addresses policy change in Britain since 2010 across the three fields of domestic welfare, migration and asylum, and analyses the association between welfare, conditionality and control through the lens of civic stratification. Drawing on the work of Richard Munch and Mary Douglas, it moves beyond existing literature in this area to show that the more complex the classification in play, and the more severe its boundary implications, the more likely the emergence of contestable margins. Informed by Munch's ‘battlefield’ approach, it provides a discussion of contestable margins in each of the three policy fields and outlines the nature and source of challenges that emerge within the ‘institutional battlefield’. A concluding section reflects on what is revealed by viewing welfare, migration and asylum within the same conceptual frame, identifying an emergent welfare paradigm that displays recurrent problems across all three fields.

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Type
Article
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , April 2019 , pp. 271 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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