Social citizenship as theoretical lens

Social citizenship is fundamentally about inclusion and exclusion, about who is and who is not included in the citizenry and on what basis (Lister, Reference Lister2003; Dwyer, Reference Dwyer2010). It focuses attention on questions of membership and belonging, rights and responsibilities, what is expected for those granted the status of citizen, and what can be expected from them in return. In seeking to better understand experiences of welfare reform, social citizenship can serve as a valuable theoretical lens to direct attention to whether and how reforms affect both the citizenship in/exclusion of those directly affected and the level of security and protection provided by social rights.

While republican theories of citizenship focus on citizenship as a practice, which brings with it particular obligations and expectations concerning how to live the life of a ‘good citizen’, liberal theories conceive of citizenship as a status, to which is attached a bundle of rights and responsibilities (Dwyer, Reference Dwyer2010). In this article, both liberal and republican understandings of citizenship are drawn upon in tandem, reflecting the ways in which recent governments’ articulations of citizenship adopt both approaches to describe not only the rights and responsibilities, but also the expected practice(s) of citizens (Patrick, Reference Patrick2015). Political pronouncements frequently draw upon contractual, liberal ideas of citizenship as a status, which brings with it particular rights and responsibilities, with work-related conditionality a policy approach which explicitly ties the ‘right’ to state support to the responsibility to take steps to return to paid employment (Crabb, Reference Crabb2016, cf. Cameron, Reference Cameron2011). At the same time, there is often an associated and underlying emphasis on republican notions of citizenship as a practice, here narrowly conceived as engagement with and participation in the formal labour market (Patrick, Reference Patrick2015).

In theorising social citizenship, it is valuable to draw a distinction between citizenship as it is constructed and articulated from above, and citizenship as it is lived and experienced from below, a distinction which is also sometimes conceptualised as between top-down and bottom-up approaches to citizenship (Lister, Reference Lister2003; Clarke et al., Reference Clarke, Coll, Dagnino and Neveu2014). This directs analytical attention to how dominant political narratives conceptualise and operate ideas and ideals of social citizenship as well as to how this dominant narrative is experienced in the ‘everyday world’ of citizenship (Desforges et al., 2005, cited in Lister, Reference Lister2007: 58). There is particular scope to explore the extent of any disjuncture between conceptualisations from above and below (Patrick, Reference Patrick2015), in an effort to better understand what Duffy (Reference Duffy2016) describes as ‘everyday citizenship’.

Social citizenship from above

The dominant citizenship narrative from above situates engagement in paid employment as the marker of the dutiful, responsible citizen (Lister, Reference Lister, Holden, Kilkey and Ramia2011; Dwyer and Wright, Reference Dwyer and Wright2014). In defending welfare reforms that make social welfare eligibility increasingly conditional on taking steps to prepare for and enter the labour market, successive governments have argued that such reforms will deliver ‘social inclusion’ by supporting targeted individuals to become responsible, hard-working citizens (Levitas, Reference Levitas1998). In recent years, we have witnessed a substantive ratcheting up of welfare conditionality, which sits alongside measures in the Welfare Reform Act 2012 that reduce real levels of benefits (via changes to uprating rules), restrict eligibility (via changes to disability and housing benefits) as well as in some cases severing the link between need and entitlement (most notably, in the case of the Benefits Cap) (DWP, 2012; Dwyer and Wright, Reference Dwyer and Wright2014). Welfare conditionality has been both intensified and extended (McKay and Rowlingson, Reference McKay, Rowlingson and Bochel2011), such that it is now applied to many single parents and disabled people as well as to the traditional target group of jobseekers. Today, sanctions for non-compliance include the ‘ultimate’ sanction of three years without benefits for those who three times fail to fulfil the most serious of the work-related conditions (for a summary of recent welfare reforms see De Agostini et al., Reference De Agostini, Hills and Sutherland2015; Beatty and Fothergill, Reference Beatty and Fothergill2016).

During Cameron's time in office, these welfare reforms have been justified on the basis of the need to deliver ‘fairness’ in the benefits system, and to reinvigorate social citizenship by ensuring that there is an equitable contract between those who receive social welfare support, and those who fund it through the taxation system (Osborne, Reference Osborne2010). Here, there is a shift from viewing the core relationship as between the state and its citizens to a crude focus on the obligations which the ‘hard-working majority’ can reasonably demand from ‘welfare dependants’. In this account, we can begin to see the unpicking of assumptions about the equal treatment and status of all citizens and instead the construction of differentiated contractual relationships both between individuals and the state, but crucially also among sub-groups of citizens. In this way, those in receipt of out-of-work benefits start to be seen as having responsibilities not just to the state, but also to their fellow citizens; those characterised as hard-working taxpayers whose engagement in paid employment funds out-of-work benefit recipients. These differentiated contractual relationships can extend the exclusionary potential of social citizenship, as well as increasing the scope for tensions between and among citizens.

At the same time, we have also seen what the Conservatives describe as a new approach to poverty (DWP and Department for Education, 2011), which focuses much less on income measurements and fiscal redistribution, and concentrates instead on addressing what are described as the behavioural pathways to poverty. Notably, one of the presumed pathways to poverty (which sit alongside family breakup, addiction, debt and poor educational attainment) is worklessness (DWP and Department for Education, 2011), meaning that the policy response to poverty becomes predicated upon the welfare-to-work effort, a focus that is retained despite the persistence of widespread in-work poverty. In this way, narratives of citizenship, poverty and welfare reform are closely intertwined, all rooted in a valorisation of ‘work’, which is conceptualised as bringing with it societal inclusion and financial rewards – premises that are often undermined by lived experiences of poverty and paid employment (Bailey, Reference Bailey2016; Shildrick et al., Reference Shildrick, MacDonald, Webster and Garthwaite2012).

The lived experiences of welfare reform study

In seeking to understand how the dominant citizenship narrative is experienced from below, this article presents findings from a qualitative longitudinal study that explored the lived experiences of welfare reform. In qualitative longitudinal research, time becomes both a vehicle and object of study (Henwood et al., Reference Henwood, Neale and Holland2012), and there was invaluable scope in this instance to track both the presence and absence of change as welfare reforms took effect. Working with two gatekeeper organisations and employing purposive sampling, an initial sample of twenty-two individuals were interviewed in 2011, all of whom were affected by welfare reforms introduced by the 2010–15 Westminster Coalition. The sample was selected to include twelve disabled people being migrated from Incapacity Benefit onto Employment and Support Allowance, five single parents affected by a lowering of the age of youngest child at which parents are migrated from Income Support onto Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA), and five young jobseekers engaging with the reformed conditionality and sanctions regime.

The study was based in Leeds, a post-industrial city with areas of high deprivation as well as areas of considerable wealth. Of the twenty-two participants initially interviewed, a smaller sample of fifteen was selected to follow longitudinally on the basis of those most likely to experience welfare reforms during the research period. These fifteen were interviewed a further two times between 2011 and 2013. Of the fifteen followed over time, contact was lost with just one participant between the second and third interviews. Ethical approval for the study was granted by the University of Leeds. Anonymity and informed consent were prioritised, with a ‘refresh and remind’ approach taken such that consent was re-sought at each new research encounter, when the key elements of the study were re-introduced (Neale and Hanna, Reference Neale, Hanna, Neale and Henwood2012). Further, the study featured participatory elements, including the Dole Animators film project (see Dole Animators, 2013). The commitment to including a participatory dimension was seen as an ethical decision that was tied to ensuring that some of the outputs from the study had meaning and relevance for the participants themselves. The interview data were analysed thematically and by cases, with cross-sectional analysis of overarching themes, and longitudinal analysis of individual participants, as well as an analysis of the iteration between the two. The research generated rich, thick description regarding lived experiences of welfare reform – it is to a discussion of these findings that this article now turns.

Social rights of citizenship re-examined

T. H. Marshall defined the social rights of citizenship in both maximalist and minimalist terms as:

In this study, it was possible to explore what ‘getting by’ on benefits entailed and the social rights provided to those in receipt of out-of-work benefits. What was particularly notable was the extent to which those living on out-of-work benefits were forced to actively manage on very low-incomes. ‘Going without’ and having to make difficult choices (such as to heat or eat) were very common, something which is frequently found in the wider empirical research evidence (Daly and Kelly, Reference Daly and Kelly2015; Lansley and Mack, Reference Lansley and Mack2015). A narrative of going without and making do was a central theme of the interviews undertaken (Patrick, Reference Patrick2015). As Cath reported:

The parents in the study frequently spoke of going without so that their children could be well cared for, and there were also instances of participants shoplifting for basic necessities.

Following people longitudinally, as welfare reforms took effect, it was possible to track the struggle to get by over time, and to observe how a continued effort to manage on a very low-income sometimes had a negative effect on individuals’ mental health and capacity to cope with a day-to-day life of poverty. Chloe, a single parent who was migrated onto JSA and then sanctioned, reflected on the impact of her ongoing experience of poverty and welfare reform:

Individuals described a chronic state of insecurity and uncertainty linked to ongoing welfare reform, as well as an associated fear about what the future might bring in terms of further benefit changes. This was particularly marked for those in receipt of disability benefits, who were often waiting for the outcomes of benefit reassessments, or anticipating a future reassessment, which often came soon after their eligibility had been decided.

The consequences of the extended welfare conditionality regime and the increased length and severity of sanctions meant that some individuals were having their social rights of citizenship completely curtailed, when they are assessed as failing to comply with the conditions of social welfare receipt. This was a common occurrence for Adrian, who was sanctioned several times during the course of the study. While often disputing the reasons for his sanctions, or being unclear as to why a sanction had been deemed appropriate, Adrian vividly illustrated the negative impacts of the loss of income. He described how being unable to eat properly left him ‘skinny and everything, [I] look proper ill’ (W1), and, in his second interview, after being on a sanction for three months explained:

In an effort to manage while being sanctioned, Adrian would visit food banks, occasionally shoplift food and volunteer at a homeless hostel where he was provided with free meals. Reflecting on the impact of sanctions, Adrian concluded:

The lived experiences for the individuals interviewed suggest that many of those whom poverty and welfare reform directly affect are being denied even Marshall's more minimalist definition of social rights, a ‘modicum of economic welfare and security’ (1950: 8). Changes to the benefits system are routinely causing entrenched and severe poverty (Oxfam, 2012), which has both negative material and symbolic impacts.

Experiencing chronic poverty undermines individuals’ capacity to participate in everyday life and society, with a lack of income serving as a direct barrier to various forms of engagement and participation (Dean and Melrose, Reference Dean and Melrose1999; Gaventa, Reference Gaventa2002). Cath described how she felt unable to attend a mental health support group as it met at the local museum café:

Family occasions, meals out and Christmas were often associated with dread, anxiety and worry, given the extra expenditure they entailed. Participants often viewed Christmas and birthdays as particular flash points, when the pressure to buy presents and cook special meals became unmanageable:

For the individuals in this study, social rights of citizenship provided relatively little in terms of financial security, making it increasingly difficult for them to obtain an ‘equality of status’ with their fellow citizens. The growth in voluntary, charitable forms of welfare provision, such as food banks (Garthwaite, Reference Garthwaite2016), is indicative of the extent to which formal social rights today fail to provide the basic necessities for so many of Britain's citizens. The social rights of citizenship are – of course – today also increasingly conditional on state-defined activities.

Welfare conditionality and conditioning

Over recent years, welfare conditionality has become the policy tool to encourage, enable and ultimately compel individuals to behave as responsible, hard-working citizens – most often by engaging in the formal labour market. The participants in this study lived with the day-to-day consequences of ‘ubiquitous conditionality’ (Dwyer and Wright, Reference Dwyer and Wright2014), and experienced the impact of particular welfare reforms designed to incorporate more and more of the ‘inactive welfare dependant’ population into the conditionality regime. While the full range of responses to conditionality cannot be reported here, it is vital to highlight key themes of particular relevance to social citizenship and questions of in/exclusion. Importantly, for many of the participants, conditionality was experienced as a controlling, paternalistic intervention, which left them feeling dehumanised, with their own societal contributions devalued and undermined.

Susan, a single parent, described how she felt the benefit system operated:

Her emphasis on the social control implicit in the conditionality regime was shared by James:

For those in receipt of out-of-work benefits, state support is tied to a reduction in individual freedom and liberty, and the treatment of claimants as belonging to deficit populations whose behaviour is deemed to require paternalistic interventions, and social control and correction.

In this study, there were also occasions where the conditional obligations the government were seeking to impose on claimants interfered with and compromised the duty and obligations individuals felt as parents, with this a notable example of how conditionality can undermine individuals’ capacity to make their own choices about what being a ‘good citizen’ entails. James described being forced to attend the Work Programme, even when it clashed with legal appointments relating to his battle to become residential parent for his seven year old daughter:

However, at the same time as there was considerable resistance to conditionality, there were also instances where participants implicitly welcomed it, suggesting that the compulsion and support might help in their efforts to secure paid employment. Karen described how she felt both excited and frightened about being moved onto JSA and the extra conditions this would involve:

While conditionality was met with mixed reactions, what was often apparent was how far individuals were self-governing as they sought to secure paid employment, where it was a realistic objective. Indeed, participants frequently spoke about the efforts they were taking to find work, and how these efforts were framed by and partially driven by a desire to leave reliance on benefits behind and the stigma with which this was associated (Patrick, Reference Patrick2015). Participants often accepted exploitative and badly paid jobs, as they argued these were preferable to being on out-of-work benefits. Josh was employed at a corner shop on a fixed rate of pay of £80 per week for 35 hours work. He accepted this was substantially less than he was entitled to on the national minimum wage but reflected:

Showing an internalisation of the stigma of benefit receipt, Sam described how she was desperate to find a job so she could stop feeling like a ‘scrounger’ (Patrick, Reference Patrick2014). Sam described herself as a ‘scrounger’ in two of the three interviews, reflecting an internalisation of the dominant narrative that problematises ‘welfare’ and those who rely upon it. After the study had finished, Sam did manage to find a job in retail with just 12 hours’ work guaranteed per week. The income she received did not enable her to escape poverty, and she remained reliant on social welfare via Housing Benefit.

Arguably, there is emerging evidence of a shift from conditionality to conditioning (Dwyer and Ellison, Reference Dwyer, Ellison and Giugni2009), such that individuals are self-governing, even engaging in do-it-yourself social policy (Klein and Millar, Reference Klein and Millar1995), as they seek to fulfil the contemporary requirements of the dutiful citizen. Certainly, there was considerable evidence of individuals internalising the stigma of benefits receipt and then actively seeking to leave benefits and find paid employment, with the threat of sanctions and conditionality a perhaps unnecessary additional spur. This is perhaps symptomatic of a climate in which social problems and structural issues are increasingly conceptualised as individual problems, representative of individual failings and shortcomings, what Ferge (Reference Ferge1997) describes as an ‘individualization of the social’.

There is a need for more policy and academic attention directed towards the ways in which conditionality and conditioning mesh together, and there is scope to explore how far and in what ways benefits stigma is here actually operating as a tool of governance that promotes and encourages individuals to behave in ways that the state would like and has come to expect (Tyler, Reference Tyler2014). In particular, there is a need to explore whether the rationale for conditionality is undermined by the signs of a ‘welfare conditioning’ in how individuals themselves live with and respond to out-of-work benefits receipt. There is also scope for research which more fully engages with the ways in which conditionality can actually undermine individuals’ capacity to be self-governing individuals, given the narrow and strict conditions it so often imposes. Finally, it is important to try and locate the root of any such ‘welfare conditioning’ more precisely. This could include explorations of whether and how far individuals are orientating themselves towards paid employment because of the power and persuasiveness of government rhetoric and the stigma associated with benefits receipt, or whether instead this is simply reflective of their own work-related aspirations and the importance they themselves attach to engagement in the formal labour market.