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Welfare Law, Welfare Fraud and the Moral Regulation of the 'Never Deserving' Poor
Abstract
The dismantling and restructuring of Keynesian social security programmes have impacted disproportionately on women, especially lone parent mothers, and shifted public discourse and social images from welfare fraud to welfare as fraud, thereby linking poverty, welfare and crime. This article analyzes the current, inordinate focus on 'welfare cheats'. The criminalization of poverty raises theoretical and empirical questions related to regulation, control, and the relationship between them at particular historical moments. Moral regulation scholars working within post-structuralist and post-modern frameworks have developed an influential approach to these issues;however, we situate ourselves in a different stream of critical socio-legal studies that takes as its point of departure the efficacy, contradictions and inherently social nature of law in a given social formation. With reference to the historical treatment of poor women on welfare, we develop three themes in our critical review of the moral regulation concept: the conceptualization of welfare and welfare law, as illustrated by welfare fraud; the relationship between social and moral with respect to the role of law; and changing forms of the relationship between state and non-state institutions and agencies. We conclude with comments on the utility of a 'materialist' concept of moral regulation for feminist theorizing.
... In brief, I delineate three 'phases' of penal nationalism, which should be understood as ideal types, rather than hermetically sealed models. These phases are; the Confederation era of explicit white supremacy 2 and the use of criminal punishment to isolate, segregate, and displace 'others' so as to institutionalize settler sovereignty (Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, 2016); the post WWII era of official pluralism and the use of criminal rehabilitation to compel assimilation into white cultural norms (Bohaker and Iacovetta, 2009;Mackey, 1999); and finally, the neoliberal period of abstract individualism which sought to define citizenship as a lack of state reliance and, subsequently, criminality as an excess of state dependence (Gavigan and Chunn, 2004;Moore and Hannah-Moffat, 2005). In analyzing each period, I point to three key elements of penal nationalism: the use of penal policy to (re)define social solidarities during crises of state legitimacy; the strategic use of penal policy to define a 'good' citizen in a racially coded manner; and the conflation of non-conformity to the ideal model of citizenship with threat to the nation, legitimizing the detention, isolation and often violent treatment of the 'other'. ...
... Similarly, the 'War on Poverty' manifest in a public hysteria over so-called welfare fraudsters (Gavigan and Chunn, 2004;Mosher and Brockman, 2010). ...
... The conditions under which one could be charged with welfare fraud, of course, were very easy to meet given extensive historical record-keeping and documentation were required as proof of legitimacy (difficult burdens of proof when we account for refugee status, language barriers, and poverty itself). Coupled with the fact that fraud under five thousand was punishable with a prison sentence, the War on Poverty served to mark as criminal and 'outsider' those who did not 'choose' to seize upon the 'opportunities' of the market and instead relied on state support (Gavigan and Chunn, 2004;Maynard, 2017). Once again, these trends in penal policy contributed to and buttressed growing populist nationalism. ...
The summer of 2020 was one of unprecedented mass protest and a growing critical awareness around the racist operation of criminal justice systems in North America. Consequently, criminal justice systems have been placed squarely at the forefront of struggles for racial equality and social change. While activists, critical researchers, and legal experts have argued racial justice requires a diversion of communities and resources away from criminal justice systems, the focus in mainstream policy, media, and academic circles has been on reform. In Canada, a focus on reformist responses to this racial violence has been justified through a distorted view of Canada’s criminal justice system. Drawing on the concept of penal nationalism, I argue that Canadian carceral practices must be understood as constitutive of the settler-colonial state and its ideological, material and institutional mooring in racial whiteness as the locus of settler power and sovereignty. To this end, it is not enough to reform specific penal practices, while leaving intact the legitimacy of the criminal justice system in general. What is at stake is the very definition and protection of a national identity, which in the settler colony is predicated on colonial whiteness, Indigenous erasure, and racialized exploitation.
... Lacey 2013; Wilcock 2019; Hörnqvist 2020), neoliberal logics and policies often serve as the overarching analytical frame in which these developments are understood (see e.g. Chunn and Gavigan 2004;Ericson 2007;Waquant 2009). Accordingly, welfare retrenchment and the neoliberal distrust of the welfare state is reshaping the provision of welfare services and turning criminalization and policing into seminal tools in the management of welfare recipients. ...
... In addition, and as researchers (O'Malley 2010; Lacey 2013; Wilcock 2019; Hörnqvist 2020) also point out, neoliberal rationalities and policies are often linked to growing levels of criminalization, policing and repression (see e.g. Chunn and Gavigan 2004;Ericson 2007;Waquant 2009;Gustafson 2011). However, this general and programmatic account of the neoliberal political rationality has also been questioned on a number of points. ...
... In other contexts, previous work has generally outlined how such changes-often painted against the neoliberal backdrop-pushed the criminalization of welfare to the front of the political agenda (e.g. Chunn and Gavigan 2004;Ericson 2007;Wacquant 2009;Gustafson 2011;Wilcock 2019). What I would argue is intriguing with the Swedish case, however, is the effects that criminalization had at the administrative level; that is to say, Sweden's vision of how insurance should be administered and social justice delivered. ...
The criminalization of welfare and policing has often been analysed as being indicative of the global rise of a neoliberal political agenda. The current paper examines how governmental power is organized to govern investigators responsible for policing welfare in Sweden. Using empirical illustrations from the Swedish case, it shows how multiple governmental logics are enacted in the context of a broader political will to crack down on welfare fraud. Specifically, it demonstrates how so-called control investigators are tasked to realize a neoconservative agenda. To this end, these investigators are themselves governed using an amalgam of neoliberal and bureaucratic rationalities and technologies. The paper argues that examinations of the articulation of multiple governmental rationalities offer one route for thinking intelligibly about power and criminalization and by extension about the limits of neoliberal rule.
... Ten of these decisions revoked the municipal decision to terminate social benefits. The inclusion of material from NSAB is important as it has been decisive for the policy development and represents a type of material which is often overlooked (see Chunn &Gavigan, 2004, andCrookshanks, 2012, for comparable approaches). ...
... Ten of these decisions revoked the municipal decision to terminate social benefits. The inclusion of material from NSAB is important as it has been decisive for the policy development and represents a type of material which is often overlooked (see Chunn &Gavigan, 2004, andCrookshanks, 2012, for comparable approaches). ...
... Policy target groups are not static entities but may change over time and context. The category of single mothers/solo-support mothers has historically changed from being one of the 'most' deserving groups to being depicted as undeserving (Chunn & Gavigan, 2004;Crookshanks, 2012). Deserving groups always face the risk of falling into the undeserving category. ...
The article explores how categories of deserving and undeserving groups are established in policy designs and how social target groups are constructed according to such distinctions. Institutionalised systems of exclusion and inclusion have a profound impact on citizenship and substantial democracy. Neoliberalist political ideas and attitudes have strengthened the focus on deserving and undeserving groups over the last years and spurred a popular belief that welfare fraud is rampant. This tendency has led to a retrenchment of established rights and increasing use of illiberal means to further punish the undeserving. This article discusses these issues further by looking at the position of lone mothers in Denmark and how they constitute a social target group defined by their class, gender, ethnic, and religious differences. Categories of deservingness are also framed in national narratives and politics of belonging.
... Like the US and the UK the prosecution of welfare recipients in Australia has a wider public spectacle within print media reporting of fraud and punishment [12,53]. With sensationalist headlines like 'Blowtorch on Benefit Fraudsters' [85], 'Grandmother Jailed' [91] and 'Millionaire's Wife Centrelink Fraud' [90], reporting of social security prosecutions is a regular feature, particularly within the regional newspapers 5 The framing elements of these reports are quite stable; the recipient's actions are presented as outrageous and reprehensible and the punishment as just and fair. ...
... This is a pathetic excuse for an app. 12 There is much going on in this hastily written response. At one level it sounds like the angry retort of the powerless given voice. ...
... On the use by the Department of the term 'customers' see[38,39].12 Apple iTunes/App Store comment titled 'Shocking Service' by Courting Mac posted 7 July 2016[25]. ...
This paper examines the forms of life established through the visual governance of the Australian social security mobile app (application)—the Express Plus Centrelink app. It is argued that the app exceeds established accounts of juridical and administrative power. The app involves a seeing that is not public, a responding that is not writing and a de-materialisation of an institution and its disciplinary apparatus. It is argued that the app creates proto-literate subjects that are required to respond to a real-time sequence of images in a highly structured and circumscribed manner to become complicit in the digitalisation of their life.
... Due to the negative economic and societal impacts of homelessness, Canada has attempted to address homelessness using different policies (10,(83)(84)(85)(86)(87). In Canada, the current worsening homelessness situation is a result of policy changes that occurred in the 1980's and 1990's. ...
... In Canada, the current worsening homelessness situation is a result of policy changes that occurred in the 1980's and 1990's. These policy changes include deinstitutionalization and the dismantling of federal social housing funds, affecting the number of affordable housing units today (10,83). In Canada, deinstitutionalization was a movement in psychiatry where patients were transferred from psychiatric institutions to more or less reliable community-based supports starting in the 1960s (88,89). ...
Background. Housing First (HF) provides rent supplements and supports to help homeless individuals with mental illness obtain stable housing. A 2015 literature review reported that HF was associated with cost offsets, however, they tended to be less than the cost of the intervention. Since then, additional studies, including the finalized cost-effectiveness analyzes of the At Home/Chez Soi (AHCS) trial, have been published.
AHCS recruited participants in 5 Canadian cities from October 2009 to June 2011 and followed them for up to 24 months. At baseline, participants were classified as high-needs (HN) or moderate-needs (MN). HN participants were randomized to receive either HF with Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) or Treatment as Usual (TAU), while MN participants were randomized to receive either HF with Intensive Case Management (ICM) or TAU, until at least March 2013. In Montreal , HF services were reduced after March 2013. Participants' use of services over 6 months 4 years after baseline was collected between February 2014 and March 2015.
Objectives. The goals of this thesis were to (1) provide an updated review of the economic impacts of HF and (2) evaluate the cost-effectiveness of HF in Montreal 48 months post-baseline.
Methods. (1) A systematic review was performed on MEDLINE, Google, and the Homeless Hub repository, from January 2007 to December 2022. Study characteristics and results were extracted from selected studies; (2) Effectiveness was measured using the number of days of stable housing and days in one's own apartment. The cost-effectiveness of HF with ACT compared to TAU and HF with ICM compared to TAU were evaluated.
Results. (1) Twenty-one studies were retained. Shelter, emergency department, and inpatient costs decreased with HF, while impacts on other health and justice costs were inconsistent. Among studies that reported the cost of the intervention, 2 of the 3 pre–post studies reported a decrease in net costs with HF. The 3 quasi-experimental studies with a comparison group reported an increase in net costs. Four of 5 experimental studies reported an increase in net costs, while one, conducted in France, reported cost offsets equal to the cost of the intervention. Two modeling studies projected that HF would be associated with decreased or marginally higher net costs over 10- and 35-year horizons.
(2) 362 participants were included. At 43-48 months, in the HF with ACT group, 34.6% of participants received rent supplements, 7.1% received ACT, and 25.6% received both services. Corresponding percentages for the HF with ICM group were all 17.7%. The average cost for the HF with ACT group (52,300, 67,448 (42,894 (32,900, 44,600) vs 33,400, 873 per day of stable housing (undefined, 356). When the measure of effectiveness was changed to days in an apartment, the ICER was 2,842) for HF with ACT, while HF with ICM remained dominant (undefined, 250 per day of stable housing, HF with ACT had a 40% chance of being cost-effective, vs 96% for HF with ICM.
Conclusion. The updated literature review, like the previous one, suggests that over a 2-year horizon, HF leads to significant cost offsets that are usually less than but may equal the intervention cost. The results appear to vary according to context. The results of the cost-effectiveness analysis suggest that HF can be cost saving and remain more effective following a reduction of services at 43-48 months for MN participants. A greater proportion of HN participants may require continuation of HF for the intervention to remain cost-effective.
Alternate abstract:
Background. Housing First (HF) is an intervention that provides rent supplements and support to people experiencing homelessness and mental illness. A 2015 literature review found that HF was associated with cost offsets, but these were generally less than the cost of the intervention. No updates have been made since, despite the publication of several studies, including the final results of the At Home/Chez Soi (AHCS) study.
The AHCS study recruited participants in five Canadian cities between October 2009 and June 2011 and followed them for 21 to 24 months. At baseline, participants were classified as high-need (HN) or moderate-need (MN). HN participants were randomized to receive either LA with intensive follow-up (IF) or usual services (USS), while moderate-need (MN) participants were randomized to receive either LA with variable-intensity support (VIS) or USS, until at least March 2013. In Montreal, LA services were reduced after March 2013. Participants' service use in the 6 months prior to 4 years after study entry was collected between February 2014 and October 2015.
Objectives. The objectives of this thesis were to (1) update the literature on the economic impacts of LA and (2) evaluate the cost-effectiveness of LA in Montreal 48 months after the baseline date.
Approach. (1) We conducted a systematic review using MEDLINE, Google, and the Rond-point de l'itinérance, from January 2007 to December 2022. Data extracted included study design, economic perspective, sample size, population, duration, service utilization, cost compensation, and nature of the intervention; (2) Effectiveness was measured by the number of days of stable housing and the number of days spent in one's own apartment. The cost-effectiveness of LA with SI versus SH and LA with SIV versus SH was assessed.
Results. (1) The study selected twenty-one articles. Costs related to accommodation, emergency services, and hospitalization decreased with LA, while impacts on other health and justice costs were inconsistent. Among studies that reported the cost of the intervention, 2 of the 3 pre-post studies found a net decrease in total costs related to LA. Three quasi-experimental studies with a comparison group found a net increase in total costs. Four of the five experimental studies found a net increase in total costs, while one of them, conducted in France, found a cost offset equal to the cost of the intervention. Modeling studies predict that HF would be associated with a marginal decrease or increase in net costs over 10- and 35-year horizons; (2) 362 participants were included. At 43-48 months, in the LA with SI group, 34.6% of participants received rent supplements, 7.1% received SI, and 25.6% received both services. The corresponding percentages for the LA with SIV group were all 17.7%. The mean cost for the LA with SI group (52,300, 67,448 (45,000, 84,900)) and effectiveness was similar (200 (155, 237) vs 195 (151, 240)) when using days of stable housing for BÉ participants. However, for BM participants, the mean cost was lower for the LA with SIV group than for the SH group (32,900, 44,301 (33,400, 48,800)) while effectiveness was greater (274 (253, 293) vs. 225 (190, 257)). Effectiveness measured in number of days in an apartment was higher for the LA group for both levels of need. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) was 3,150) per day of stable housing for the LA with SI, while the LA with SIV was dominant (undefined, 54 (undefined, 71). At $250 per stable housing day, the cost-effectiveness ratio of the LA with SI program had a 40% chance of being cost-effective, compared with a 96% chance for the LA with SIV.
Conclusion. The updated literature review, as well as the previous one, suggests that over a two-year horizon, LA leads to significant cost offsets that are generally less than, but can be equal to, the cost of the intervention. Results appear to vary by context. Results from the cost-effectiveness analysis suggest that LA may reduce total costs and remain more effective after a reduction in services at 43–48 months for BM participants. A larger proportion of BE participants may require continuation of LA for the intervention to remain cost-effective.
... Further, this logic lends itself to the pathologization of mad bodies who fail to perform the moral duty of the self-sufficient neoliberal citizen. This idea of citizenship is called into question when we consider the social capital and systemic advantages (Gavigan & Chunn, 2004) that empower some more than others. In my analysis I lean on what Michael Rembis describes as a "'mad' approach" (Rembis, 2014, p. 142) to analyzing carceral systems that disproportionately impact mad people. ...
... And we appear to be caught in a loop: the "healthy" public fears learning more about homelessness lest it shake their faith in contemporary neoliberal logicwhich blames the individual for their situation-and force them to criticize the structures that continue to privilege them (Belcher & DeForge, 2012). 3 Consider the irony of the ongoing public perception that too many people are on welfare (Abramovitz, 1983(Abramovitz, , 2001) paired with the fact that poor people are often more likely to resist or refuse government aid (Desmond, 2021;Gavigan & Chunn, 2004;Jan, 2019;Minton & Giannarelli, 2019). 4 I agree with Belcher and DeForge (2012) who argue that this work must be concerned with education-brought about by a commitment to lessening stigma through relational contact. ...
This article seeks to articulate how neoliberal thinking perceives—and conflates—the homeless and mad subject in opposition to the middle class “productive” citizen. I engage in a narrative analysis of two cultural artifacts: James Burns’s documentary film, Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Mental Healthcare in Rural America and CTV’s coverage of the Housing First approach as a viable response to homelessness. Using an analysis of neoliberal rationality coupled with a Critical Mad Studies approach, I examine the ways documentary filmmaking engenders particular ways of witnessing the housing crisis. The housing crisis is a direct result of the rise of neoliberal restructuring, yet homelessness is often presented as an individualized failure. Documentary filmmaking can exacerbate these (mis)understandings, even while particular voices offer powerful cultural critique in the form of counternarratives. Counterhegemonic representations of dehousing and madness must emerge from within the consumer/survivor/ex- patient community if they are to offer a reflexive, nuanced, and decisive departure from middle class orientations of health and recovery. I provide recommendations for producers and consumers of media representations of the housing crisis. Film based representation must be grounded in authentic personal encounters, attention to structural violence, and the desire to precipitate critical dialogue. By doing so filmmakers can elicit a response to homelessness that enhances political solidarity, relies on peer-led research, and confronts neoliberal thinking in the contemporary media landscape.
... These concessions are not without prejudice, self-interest, or coercive intent. Chunn and Gavigan (2004) assert, Bwelfare policy has always been premised on the separation of the 'deserving' from the 'undeserving' poor.^Simultaneously, Blekesaune and Quadagno (2003) argue that public support for concessions was related to the size of the problem and breadth of populace who were impacted by the social problem. ...
... After all, a problem of great size has a greater chance of affecting anyone. Finally, Chunn and Gavigan (2004) contend that public support for concessions demands that allotted benefits must remain beneath the benefits of work, thereby mediating the conflict between the market economy and the demands for continual sources of labor (Abramovitz and Bardill 1993). ...
Adherence to an authentic person-in-environment perspective remains a challenge. Advocating for increased institutional resources to meet basic needs is at odds with an ideological environment that insists upon exceptionalism, individualism, and personal responsibility. Social work practice must reconsider the power of community organizing frames as a practice of commanding public attention in public arenas. Employing qualitative research methods, this paper identifies the diverse framing arguments employed to demand effective interventions for returning citizens and argues that the frames identified in this study reflect the biases of prevailing neoliberal narratives of free market participation but neglect prevailing nationalist and populist tensions. We recommend uniting frames to build linkages across broader stakeholder groups to increase recognition in organizing efforts.
... Lower subsidies and lower quality of rental housing available to one-person LINS households may reflect implicit biases and ideologies about who is "deserving" and who is a "good" tenant, with related implications about moral character (see Chunn and Gavigan 2004;Harding 2016). Even the most "deserving" poor must constantly prove their moral worthiness and dedication to work (Little 1998;Bashevkin 2002;Chunn and Gavigan 2004), and the "undeserving" are often unable to secure support at all. ...
... Lower subsidies and lower quality of rental housing available to one-person LINS households may reflect implicit biases and ideologies about who is "deserving" and who is a "good" tenant, with related implications about moral character (see Chunn and Gavigan 2004;Harding 2016). Even the most "deserving" poor must constantly prove their moral worthiness and dedication to work (Little 1998;Bashevkin 2002;Chunn and Gavigan 2004), and the "undeserving" are often unable to secure support at all. As stated earlier, housing assistance and social welfare more broadly were historically structured around the norm of a nuclear family with a wage-earning, able-bodied male head of household. ...
... Those who do not live up to normalized expectations are held personally responsible for their social failures. Borrowing from critical poverty scholarship (Allen, 2000;Chunn & Gavigan, 2004;Katz, 2013), I argue that homeless men and women feel compelled to exhibit "shame" in order to demonstrate their sincerity and worthiness to receive assistance and to access scarce services, including mental health, treatment, and housing resources. Participating in these services demonstrates their commitment to becoming economically and socially self-sufficient (Elias, 1978). ...
... Empowerment strategies reinforce double standards and the shamed poor subjectivity by distinguishing between those who are and are not deserving of assistance (Chunn & Gavigan, 2004;Katz, 2013). Only those individuals who adhere to dominant norms (including the individualization of social problems) are permitted to access the few community resources available. ...
Psychocentrism is a governing neoliberal rationality that pathologizes human problems and frames individuals as responsible for socially structured inequalities. The homeless community provides an important case study to examine the ways psychocentrism manifests among an excluded population. This paper explores the paradox whereby homeless individuals are simultaneously pathologized and responsibilized through psychocentric discourses in which their status as economically poor becomes individualized as a symptom of mental illness and/or addiction. Although medicalized understandings of mental and emotional distress pervade the homeless industry, the obligations of freedom in the neoliberal era mean that individuals alone are held responsible for their failures. The paper examines the ways individuals experiencing homelessness are compelled to embark on an entrepreneurial project of the self that requires them to accept blame for their social precariousness. Further, it deconstructs the narratives that regard social explanations as an excuse and a failure of individual accountability. I argue that the "shamed poor" adopt empowerment discourses touted by the homeless industry, which paradoxically encourage individuals to find strength in their personal failures and to work toward self-governance, devoid of historical, social, and cultural context.
... Indeed, according to the BICN [12] survey, 28% of the respondents had enrolled in a postsecondary educational or training program, 11% had started or expanded a business, and 59% had improved housing arrangements as a result of participating in the OBIP. For many, then, the end of the OBIP required that they abandon these plans and/or arrangements, and for some, it also meant a bitter return to the rigid monitoring of expenditures, dehumanizing indignities, and fundamental inadequacy of social assistance programming (see [10,14,15]). Te cancelation thus threw into chaos many of the lives of the 4000 OBIP participants who had been counting on three years of stable income and destroyed the execution of a rigorous evaluation plan intended to provide evidence of the pilot project's efcacy. Indeed, information about the full sample, study details (e.g., attrition rates), and evaluation data were not published by the government, and the third-party team appointed to evaluate the OBIP was disbanded before it could begin the data collection and analysis [3]. ...
Introduction: In 2017, a provincial Liberal government launched the Ontario Basic Income Pilot (OBIP) to assess a promising approach to poverty reduction in Ontario, Canada. It was prematurely canceled by a subsequent Conservative government, despite election promises assuring that it would continue. The cancelation affected 4000 OBIP recipients.
Objective: This study explored how participants’ lives were on the OBIP compared to their lives before and after the pilot project using the social determinants of mental health (SDoMH) as a key lens.
Study Design and Data Collection: Semistructured interview data, gathered in 2019, were collected from a sample of 46 OBIP participants from three study sites, viewed through the lenses of structural violence and the SDoMH, and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Findings: We identified eight themes from the data, all of which pointed to the positive impacts of the OBIP on the SDoMH of participants. These included expanded opportunities for education and employment, improved housing stability, enhanced social inclusion (including an escape from the denigrations of receiving charity), improved sense of security and mental health, the wherewithal to eschew “crappy foods” in favor of healthier options, and the freedom to live one’s life as one chooses. All these positive impacts were threatened or reversed by the Pilot’s cancelation.
Conclusions and Implications: The discontinuation of the OBIP, a benefit that appeared to be improving the mental health and well-being of OBIP participants, can be viewed as an act of structural violence by government leaders. This study contributes to the growing evidence showing that cash transfer programs, such as a basic income, can alleviate psychological distress and improve mental well-being for people living in poverty. A groundswell of mobilized citizens, and public health and mental health practitioners specifically, must hold governments accountable for acts of structural violence that can readily be addressed through policies that eradicate poverty.
... Intended to 'reform' individuals -specifically, 'welfare cheats', 'frauds', and 'abusers' of the system -welfare reforms not only significantly reduced benefit allocations, but also afforded government workers immense power to regulate recipients' intimate and familial relationships, work and reproductive activities, and time and resources (Chunn and Gavigan, 2004). Yet concerns over welfare misuse are largely misplaced (Mosher and Hermer, 2010;Johnson and Nettle, 2020). ...
In 2018, British Columbia (BC), Canada’s third most populous province, announced the creation of an Expert Panel to explore the feasibility of introducing a basic income in BC. The Expert Panel on Basic Income prepared the policy report, Covering All the Basics: Reforms for a More Just Society , that responded to this task. Our research applies a critical policy studies approach to explore the ideologies, discursive strategies, and discourses embedded in and emanating from the report. In so doing, we find that the report reproduces problematic discourses about self-sufficiency, welfare dependency, and (poor) choice(s). Rather than discarding a basic income for the working-age population based on flawed assumptions and problematic beliefs, we invite policymakers to consider a more transformative vision that recognises the systemic roots of financial hardship, and embraces a basic income as a key building block of income security for BC and all of Canada.
... The detection and sanctioning of irregularities is not infrequently equated with an attack on citizens' social rights, with the stigmatisation of disadvantaged groups, and with the criminalisation of poverty (Swan et al., 2008). Critics also emphasise the lack of economic efficiency of such activities, contrasting the amount of expenditure (financial, human resources) involved with the benefits obtained (Chunn and Gavigan, 2004). ...
... This includes developing guidelines for mandatory legal education for practicing lawyers to ensure that they stay up to date with legal developments. (Chunn & Gavigan, 2004). ...
This paper provides an analysis of legal education in Pakistan with that of the United Kingdom (UK), the United States (US), and Australia. The main objective of the study was focused on examining the similarities and variations in curriculum, teaching strategies, faculty credentials, assessment and evaluation, professional training certification, and continuing education. The study found that legal education in Pakistan places more emphasis on theoretical knowledge, with limited opportunities for practical training, while legal education in the UK, US, and Australia places a strong emphasis on practical training, critical thinking, and professional development. The paper emphasises the value of practical training and professional development in legal education therefore it is recommended that Pakistan's legal education system could benefit from incorporating these elements into its curriculum to prepare graduates in the field of social sciences for legal practices in Pakistan and internationally.
... Here, the fluidity and mutability of impairment are not recognized (Vick, 2012), leaving many 'not disabled enough' to receive assistance (Lightman et al., 2009 Research on social assistance in Ontario reveals similar criticisms of the ODSP as those directed at its workfare counterpart, OW. Both OW and ODSP offer inadequate income benefits (OW: Lightman et al., 2008;ODSP: Chouinard & Crooks, 2005); reflect significant administrative complexity and bureaucratic discretion (OW: Collins, 2016; ODSP: Smith-Carrier et al., 2020) that recurrently subject participants to onerous rules and surveillance mechanisms (OW: Chunn & Gavigan, 2004;ODSP: Smith-Carrier et al., 2017); and do little to promote the well-being and dignity of participants (OW: Collins, 2004;ODSP: Smith-Carrier et al., 2020). The ODSP is also rife with disincentives, such as perverse income exemptions (i.e., on ODSP, after the first $300 earned in a month, all additional income is subject to a 75 per cent government claw-back) such that work does not pay (see Lightman et al., 2009). ...
... They helped fuel moral panics both over purported fraud and abuse in the welfare system, and increased crime, social disorder and delinquency by the young unemployed across the Euro-Atlantic sphere in the late 1970s (Golding and Middelton 1982;Hall et al. 2013). Such panics often took racialised or gendered forms, focusing on lone parents, migrants, or other minority groups (Golding and Middelton 1982;Bullock et al. 2001;Chunn and Gavigan 2004;Lundström 2013). Moran (2006) argues that these 'underclass' discourses are more codified in Ireland than other Anglophone countries thanks to their intertwining with 'social exclusion' discourses [Section 3.4.2]. ...
... Academically, benefit fraud is primarily studied as a crime or from a sociological behavioural perspective. International literature on benefit fraud is consequently organized around legal aspects of benefit fraud (Gustafson, 2011;Prenzler, 2010;Walsh & Bull, 2011), the reasons and types of clients who cheat the public system (Chunn & Gavigan, 2004;Regev-Messalem, 2014) or general attitudes towards benefit fraud (Kallio & Kouvo, 2015;KMD, 2011;Varma & Ward, 2014). No studies look directly at how the responsibility to report about benefit fraud affects the civil servants who work under the rules and regulations related to fraud control. ...
This article examines how civil servants react to the obligation to report suspicions of benefit fraud among the clients with whom they work. Benefit fraud has gained increas- ing attention in (welfare) states across the world, and reporting suspicions of benefit fraud has become an obligation for many civil servants. This new task contrasts with the tradi- tional role of many civil servants and this study examines how the new task is perceived. The theoretical concept of policy alienation is used to analyse the results of a question- naire sent to civil servants in a Danish municipality. A remarkable outcome of the study is a very high level of non-response. The unwillingness to participate in the study indicates significant policy alienation. The analysis further shows that the policy makes sense to civil servants on a societal level but not on an individual level. This conclusion is sup- ported by the fact that the department in which the civil servants are employed is highly influential in terms of how the civil servants view the task. This implies that the manage- ment and heads of departments can affect the level of policy alienation within their own departments and they consequently have a high impact on how civil servants implement new legislation.
... Jettisoning its more generous and relaxed welfare system offered under the Canada Assistance Plan, Canada moved to a block grant approach, in which the federal government, relegated to the role of funder, conferred responsibility to the provinces/territories for the administration of their own health and social welfare programs and services. In the 1990s and into the early 2000s, former Ontario Premier Mike Harris was quick to appropriate the workfare approach applied in Wisconsin ('Wisconsin Works') to create Ontario Works (Smith-Carrier 2011), and congruent with the United States' resolve to root out ostensible 'Welfare Queens' (Kohler-Hausmann 2015), Harris' Conservative government undertook a campaign to demonize those on social assistance, while making draconian cuts to benefit rates (Chunn and Gavigan 2004). At that time, social assistance was bifurcated into two streams: one for those deemed 'able-bodied' and therefore subject to workfare (Ontario Works), and those formerly dubbed 'permanently unemployable' (Stapleton 2020b), funnelled onto the Ontario Disability Support Program. ...
In 2020, the government of Ontario, Canada, introduced Building a Strong Foundation for Success: Reducing Poverty in Ontario (2020 Ontario. 2020. “Building a Strong Foundation for Success: Reducing Poverty in Ontario (2020-2025).” https://www.ontario.ca/page/building-strong-foundation-success-reducing-poverty-ontario-2020-2025 (accessed 4 May 2021). [Google Scholar]-2025), the province’s third poverty reduction strategy. This study employs Critical Discourse Analysis to explore the discourses that emerge in this strategy and examine instances of intertextuality between it and previous strategy iterations. Several discourses (re)emerge suggesting that people living in poverty, and disabled people specifically, must ‘realize their potential’ by becoming more ‘resilient’ and work towards ‘life stabilization’. The ‘self-sufficiency’ discourse in prior poverty reduction strategies, recast as ‘independence’ in this newest rendition, anchors the strategy to problematic understandings of ‘dependency’. The systemic causes of poverty are negated, as is a rights-based framework for poverty alleviation. The Ontario government does not define the poverty reduction strategy’s success in terms of poverty reduction, but as mere social assistance caseload reductions, and as such, has built ‘a strong foundation for its lackluster success’.
• Points of Interest
• In 2020, the government of Ontario, Canada released its third poverty strategy, entitled Building a Strong Foundation for Success: Reducing Poverty in Ontario (2020 Ontario. 2020. “Building a Strong Foundation for Success: Reducing Poverty in Ontario (2020-2025).” https://www.ontario.ca/page/building-strong-foundation-success-reducing-poverty-ontario-2020-2025 (accessed 4 May 2021). [Google Scholar]-2025).
• A way of doing research called Critical Discourse Analysis was adopted by the authors to explore how language was used in the poverty strategy to identify how people living in poverty, and disabled people specifically, should behave in order for them to be considered successful.
• We discuss several discourses (themes in the language of the poverty strategy) in our analysis related to the need for people on social assistance, including disabled people, to ‘realize their potential’ by becoming more ‘resilient’, ‘independent’, and work towards ‘life stabilization’
• Recent actions by the government to outsource its employment supports to private companies, and the hiring of fraud investigators to question the authenticity of people’s claims to disability income supports, are worrying trends.
... The rationale for the significant public financial restructuring largely had to do with the impenetrable belief that welfare creates dependency, and that poverty is a choice taken up by people of dubious character or weak work ethic (Author, 2011). Similar to the US, policy-makers in Canada railed against "welfare frauds," "liars," and "cheats," who they believed needed to be taught the value of work (Chunn & Gavigan, 2004). Yet, research that would cast doubt on these notions (e.g., a report that found that only 0.1% of investigated cases in the Ontario social assistance caseload in 2001-02 were subject to welfare fraud convictions; Mosher & Hermer, 2010) was seldom introduced in mainstream parlance. ...
The purpose of this research is to explore the representation of participants of the canceled Basic Income Pilot in Ontario, Canada. Applying social actor representation analysis and the Discourse-Historical Approach of Critical Discourse Analysis, we examined news articles and government Hansard records about the canceled Ontario Basic Income Pilot in 2018. A number of myths about poverty emerged in our analysis (e.g., “people are lazy, unmotivated, and need incentives to work”; “poor people are mentally ill and drug addicted”). We challenge the veracity of these myths, showing how they perpetuate an individual explanation of poverty, and are deeply flawed.
... Many scholars have tackled this matter from various angles. Since the alleged "crisis of the welfare state" in the 1980s (see for instance Alber 1988), social scientists have investigated the discursive evolution and justification patterns of the welfare state and captured it as an ever evolving moral system (Chunn/Gavigan 2004;Dubois 2014;Handler/Hasenfeld 1991;Hansen 2019;Kevins et al. 2020;König 2015;Mau 2003;van Oorschot 2010;Perriard 2017;Pioch 2012;Tabin/Perriard 2016). Handler and Hasenfeld (1991: 11) argue, for instance, that social policies and their designed strategies must be fundamentally understood as a "set of symbols that try to differentiate between the deserving and undeserving poor in order to uphold such dominant values as the work ethic and family, gender, race, and ethnic relations". ...
This article deals with the policies directed at young adults in social assistance without vocational training (YAS) and the way implementers themselves as well as the YAS perceive policy implementation. In Switzerland, a currently on-going strategic shift in the policy field of welfare and youth policies has renewed emphasis on vocational education and training (VET) as a first and primary integration step. Building on collected data within cantonal administrations (Basel-City and Geneva) and encounters with YAS, this article discusses the underlying narratives of these policies with a focus on their moral justifications patterns.
... Moreover, working-class women's dependence on welfare is demonised and criminalised, and we see a rise in popular discourse of the 'welfare queen' or 'welfare fraud' folk devil (Chunn and Gavigan 2004;McCorkel 2004;Gelsthorpe 2010). ...
This paper draws upon my doctoral research into the experiences of women who have been sentenced to death for drug trafficking in Malaysia. I utilise this case-study as a lens through which to examine the relationship between women, crime and economic factors. From my data derived from ‘elite’ interviews, as well as legal and media database searches (resulting in information on 147 cases), I argue that current feminist criminological theorising should be updated to incorporate the relationship between women’s crime and precarious work. As I show, precarity is gendered and disproportionately affects women from the global south. Overall, I find that many of the women who have been sentenced to death in Malaysia were engaged in precarious work and drug trafficking was a way to make ‘quick money’ to address economic insecurity. Clearly, capital punishment is incommensurate with the crime.
... Moreover, it can take the definition of the practice of an illegitimate action aiming to reduce the tax responsibilities. The fraudulent activity also includes welfare frauds, which are related to the illegal welfare recipients (Chunn and Gavigan 2004), as it refers to the illegitimate gaining of either money or benefits (McKinney and Johnston 1986). Such activity has a significant impact on society and government, thus it should be persecuted. ...
The major issues discussed in this thesis revolve mainly around the proposition of critical political, economic, and cultural reforms that might affect the tax compliance of the Lebanese taxpayers. After the shadow economy in Lebanon has been estimated and after the bribe's impact on tax evasion and economic growth has been analyzed, optimal institutions were suggested to confront tax evasion. This thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 estimates the shadow economy in Lebanon by applying the monetary approach. The shadow economy was estimated at 36.61% of the GDP in 2018. Also, it was revealed that the tax evasion's share of the shadow economy hit 30.04% in 2018. It must be noted that shadow economy forecasts were presented for the year 2020. This chapter also presents the multiples factors amplifying this phenomenon in Lebanon and proposes several elements that can limit its growth. For instance, it was shown that the control of the tax evasion might increase the GDP and reduce the shadow economy. Chapter 2 introduces the bribe paid by the tax evaders to corrupted tax auditors, in a capital accumulation model to study its impact on the tax evasion decision and the economic growth. It was shown that the fiscal policy adopted by the government is the key factor defining the taxpayer behavior not the bribe. Moreover, it was proven that the bribe reduces both the individuals' capital accumulation and the government's public resources. This fact will lead to smaller economic growth, depending on capital accumulation. Besides, it was demonstrated that a productive government's budget is a significant factor in the economic growth for a high tax rate. However, the individuals' capitals are the guiding factor of economic growth for a low tax rate. Chapter 3 suggests an optimal aspect of the institutional design that might reduce fiscal fraud in Lebanon. It was revealed that optimal institutional design results in a higher tax collection and an increase in the state's income. Due to this fact, the introduction of changes in the institutional design is needed to improve the financial condition of the state and to respond to the Lebanese taxpayers, who demand competent and transparent institutions that are able to be inclusive. Public provisions, political institutions, tax system, and laws are essential instruments for the regulation of taxpayer behavior. Within this context, this chapter gives concrete proposals to enhance Lebanese taxpayers' compliance. It shows that a well-developed legal framework that controls the general authorities creates an ideal environment for economic and social progress. A "one man, one vote" electoral law, coupled with structural reforms of independent judicial and supervisory bodies, will support the improvement of the general authorities' performance. Therefore, taxpayers will trust the government and establish new cultural fundamentals that induce them to fulfill their obligations toward tax authorities and raise their level of compliance.
... Most of the rhetoric relied on the two moral foundations shared by liberals and conservatives: care/ harm and fairness/cheating. Supporters of expansion emphasized care for those in need while opponents focused on an unfair system, the latter of which echoes a history of conservatives differentiating between the deserving poor and undeserving poor when speaking of welfare programs (Chunn andGavigan 2004, Katz 2013). ...
Using moral foundations theory (MFT), this study analyzes how Republican governors employed moral concepts to either build support or opposition to Medicaid expansion. The study examined statements about Medicaid expansion made by all Republican governors as reported in two large newspapers in each governor’s state from 28 June 2012 to 31 December 2018. A slight majority of the statements (183 or 58.5%) used moral arguments in support of Medicaid expansion. Governors from both policy camps most frequently used the moral foundations shared by liberals and conservatives: care/harm and fairness/cheating. Those supporting expansion also used loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. Those opposing expansion used liberty/oppression. Policymakers recognize that activating the public’s moral intuitions can be an effective way to advance a policy of interest. Those interested in advancing health policies would do well to better understand the kind of moral arguments that are used with potential supporters and arguments that may be used by opponents.
... Among the multiple effects of post-1995 social assistance reform in Canada are changes to the structure of welfare benefits and how these are delivered, which is the focus of this paper. Other research has highlighted the drastic effects of the severe rate reductions, the rules regarding 'spouse in the house', the adoption of the zero-tolerance policy for 'welfare fraud', and the introduction of workfare, particularly on the lives of lone mothers (Breitkreuz, 2005;Christie, 2000;Chunn & Gavigan, 2004;Evans, 1996;Little, 1998Little, , 2001. A plethora of research in both Canada and the U.S. has focused on the "success" of welfare reform on the basis of the observed reduction of welfare rolls (Anderson, Halter, & Schuldt, 2001;Dunton, Mosley, & Butcher, 2001;Foster & Julnes, 2001;Frenette & Picot, 2003;Julnes, Fan, & Hayashi, 2001;Rickman, Bross, & Foster, 2001;Westra, 2001). ...
Previous research has illuminated the effects of the welfare reform in Canada post-1995. However, very little research has focused upon the ways welfare is delivered. Using four supplementary benefits available to social assistance recipients as the backdrop, this paper explores the discretionary practices employed in determining eligibility. Based on interviews with lone mothers and a focus group with social assistance case workers the data illuminates that a lone mother’s ability to access supplementary benefits is based upon rationing practices which may have little to do with her legitimate need and formal eligibility, such that practice, in the hands of caseworkers, contravenes the policy intention. KEYWORDS: lone mothers, social assistance, case workers, discretionary practices, rationing practices, supplementary benefits
... Trade liberalization over the past three decades has had a significant impact on Canada's manufacturing sector. Coupled with profound changes in policy and investment by all orders of governmentparticularly in the areas of social and housing policy-new trade rules resulted in the growth of poverty and the rise in housing precarity (Gaetz, Dej, Richter, and Redman 2016;Chunn and Gavigan 2004;Moscovitch 1997). The popular rise of neoconservative thinking led to policy and investment shifts that had a profound impact on lowincome Canadians. ...
Mass homelessness emerged in Canada in the wake of neoliberal policies that reduced government production of housing and other supportive measures. Efforts to reduce homelessness have occurred in three stages: 1) an emergency response in the 1990s that consisted mostly of investment in shelters, soup kitchens, and day programs, 2) the implementation of community plans to end homelessness, combined with the adoption of Housing First as a strategy that seeks to provide reliable shelter as a first step to anyone without it, followed by other remedial services, and 3) the recent development in Canada of early intervention strategies to prevent homelessness from its inception. The second stage was highly successful in dealing with the situation of chronically homeless adults, and many communities have begun to see reductions in homelessness. However effective, this approach does not break the cycle by intercepting potentially homeless individuals in their youth, which is when it begins for many people. Canada is at the beginning stages of the move towards a stronger focus on prevention, aided by a social innovation agenda to identify, design, test, and evaluate preventive interventions to determine which ones will be most strategically effective, setting the stage for implementation and going to scale.
... poor'(Kirwan et al 2016;Chunn and Gavigan 2004;Costelloe et al 2009;Kornhauser 2015;Hogan et al 2007). ...
... The main difference is the manner in which welfare or law and order agendas, through policy, legislation or policing, are being mobilised to mark out deviant versus commendable behaviour (Wacquant, 2009). The neoliberal ascendency entangles appropriate or commendable behaviour with market forces; the increased focus on welfare fraud as a category of deviant behaviour is a testament to this (Chunn and Gavigan, 2004). The 'capable neoliberal citizen' has the capability to manage their own risk, as it may relate to their employment status, health, disability and, as we are exploring in this article, their financial wellbeing (Lovell, 2014: 226). ...
Neoliberalism as economic orthodoxy has facilitated the onset of social and public policy that is required to ‘fit’ with the common sense of our times. This article critiques the growth of government-supported financial capability programs in Australia. We explore the experiences of a sample of rural South Australians who have accessed microcredit. We found that microcredit provides an avenue for poverty survival by reducing the stresses associated with financial shocks through consumption smoothing, yet that the extent to which microcredit contributes to addressing poverty and inequality is questionable. We critique how the discourse of financial resilience aims to produce deserving neoliberal citizens who are moving toward self-reliance. We conclude that effort should be directed at developing a structural, proportionate universal approach that does not rely on financially vulnerable individuals navigating a regulatory environment that rewards and punishes in accordance to a market logic.
... The neoliberal ascendency has entwined appropriate or commendable behaviour to market forces. Indeed, the increased focus on welfare fraud as a category of deviant behaviour is a testament to this shift (see Chunn & Gavigan, 2004). Meanwhile, media reports about Australian big businesses such as Qantas avoiding tax are disregarded and several years of intense public pressure and strong evidence were required to finally force the current federal government to scrutinise the banking sector (Hutchens, 2018). ...
... These traditions of public economic law, as well as the prevalence of ordoliberalism in Germany and étatisme in France, perhaps explain why regulation did not emerge there as a distinct field in the same way as in the Anglosphere. 5. Work in this journal along these lines includes Gill (2002), Chunn and Gavigan (2004), Lippert (2009) and Bradley and Szablewska (2016). 6. ...
In the quarter-century that Social & Legal Studies has been published, regulation has emerged as a new, and for many exciting, interdisciplinary field. The concept itself requires a wider view of normativity than the narrow positivist one of law as command. It is certainly protean, ranging over many fundamental questions about the changing nature of the public sphere of politics and the state, and its interactions with the ‘private’ sphere of economic activity and social relations, as well as the mediation of these interactions, especially through law. This survey aims to outline and evaluate some of the main contours of the field as it has developed in this recent period, focusing on the regulation of economic activity. Regulation is seen as having emerged with the withdrawal by governments from direct provision of many economic and social services, to be replaced by corporatist bureaucracies and quasi-public agencies managing the complex public–private interactions of financialized capitalism. The arguments for ‘smart’ regulation have, in an era fixated on neo-liberalism, generally legitimized delegation of responsibility to big business. Its advocates, having been drawn into policy fields, have perhaps too often lost their critical edge, and allowed it to become instrumentalized, reflecting the technicist character of its practice.
... Much of this literature commends and/or critiques aspects of neoliberal welfare reform, and its impacts on 'welfare dependency' (see Smith-Carrier 2011). The inadequacy of the benefits (Lightman, Mitchell, and Herd 2003), perpetual surveillance, and punitive nature of the programme (Chunn and Gavigan 2004) is now well documented. In juxtaposition to the literature on OW, Ontario's workfare programme, the provincial programme to support disabled people, the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), has received relatively scant attention. ...
Although ample literature exists on workfare in Ontario, Canada, research on the social assistance programme for disabled people, the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), is relatively scant. What we do know points to similar shortcomings. We present a critical disability study considering four policy domains to explore how disabled people are identified and accommodated in Ontario. Discussing the principles of universal design, we argue for policy design that meets the needs of as many individuals as possible, while accounting for significant human variability. We conclude that the ODSP, in failing to adopt a rights-based framework, violates the dignity and rights of disabled people.
... While several recommendations were proposed to achieve this goal (i.e., a fundamental restructuring of benefits, including those outside of SA), few have been implemented to date (e.g., changes have been made to rules pertaining to asset holdings). There is a substantial literature base on Ontario's SA system, OW in particular, replete with accounts documenting the punitive nature of receipt, and the degradation , pervasive scrutiny (Maki 2011), moral regulation (Chunn and Gavigan 2004), burdensome demands (Herd and Mitchell 2003), and stigma experienced by its participants (Smith-Carrier 2010;. ...
This study uses repeated Cox Proportional Hazards models to explore the characteristics significant in predicting social assistance (SA) exit rates in Ontario, Canada. The results indicate that gender, age, immigration status, family structure, and presence of children significantly affect the likelihood of SA exit. Interpreting these findings through a critical feminist lens, I highlight the structural barriers that potentially influence people’s trajectories. Social policies that might better address the lives of women and other groups are explored, and a human rights framework is discussed as one avenue to advance poverty reduction efforts.
In-depth interviews with people using public assistance in a rural place in the United States demonstrated barriers to accessing resources through formal work and self-provisioning and the ability to benefit from use of public assistance. The Theory of Access (TOA) was used as a framework to organize participant narratives and an intersectional perspective to a multidimensional theory of power was used to demonstrate how moral capital is levied and reproduced. Findings from the TOA revealed intersectionalities in barriers to accessing resources across structural, relational, physical, and psychosocial access mechanisms for women, particularly women of color with dependent children, pregnant women of color, and women with disabilities. While TOA demonstrated need for public assistance, the double power of moral capital demonstrated how the benefits of public assistance to human dignity and welfare were reduced by (1) disciplinary tactics to reject public assistance and (2) reproduction of broader moral imperatives. The connections between TOA and moral capital contribute an intersectionality approach for understanding the multiple disadvantages of people with the lowest incomes, which helps to explain low rates of self-provisioning and public assistance use despite high need across the rural Global North.
This chapter draws on four qualitative studies conducted in England from the mid-1990s to 2015, to trace the intertwined stories of the emergence, flourishing and decline of activist welfare professionals committed to democratising access to justice and the expansion of and subsequent restriction in legal subjectivity. It situates these professionals’ role conception and practices in post-war UK social citizenship and shows how the neo-liberal project to construct an exclusionary form of citizenship entailed restrictions in access to the law. The data is used to highlight the relationship between the resulting impoverishment and disenfranchisement of welfare clients and the de-professionalisation of their lawyers and legal advisers and explores the mechanisms by which these twin goals were achieved.
How do judges formulate their written decisions when rejecting plaintiffs’ requests in a welfare context? In this paper, based on our thematic analysis, we show how judges construct a nuanced concept of ‘welfare deservingness’ to narratively mitigate their own moral and emotional tensions when making decisions on remedies in public-housing cases. Deploying a notion borrowed from criminology—‘neutralisation techniques’—we discuss the material and symbolic implications of this concept, contributing to the theoretical discussion of both poverty law and legal professionalism. We claim that judges use ‘neutralisation techniques’ to negotiate, justify, and explain their decisions while attempting to avoid or lessen the dilemmas they typically face, given the scarcity of housing resources and their inability to grant material assistance. Employing these techniques, the judges create ‘deservingness spectrum’ that enables them to essentially subvert the binary division of accepted/denied cases. At one end of this spectrum, the denial of the plaintiff's ‘victim’ status is enacted through the negation of symbolic deservingness and, thus, the denial of housing is framed as a warranted sanction on the plaintiff's reproachable character. At the other end, the techniques allow the judges to recognise ‘symbolic deservingness’ while still not providing material aid. Judges are therefore able to preserve their professional status and sense of moral rectitude when making such unenviable housing decisions. More broadly, our analysis offers a novel lens through which to critically understand judicial decision-making in welfare jurisprudence.
People receiving working-age income support payments are often stigmatised as morally and/or behaviourally deficient. We consider the role of the media, as a potential source of structural stigma, in perpetuating negative characterisations of people in receipt of either the Disability Support Pension (DSP) or unemployment benefits (Newstart) during a major period of welfare reform in Australia. Newspaper articles (N = 8290) that appeared in Australia’s five largest newspapers between 2001 and 2016, and referenced either payment were analysed. We found an increased use of fraud language associated with the DSP, which coincides with increased political and policy focus on this payment. We conclude that in a period of increasing political concern with welfare reform, media coverage of welfare recipients is a form of stigma power, acting discursively as symbolic violence.
How does the state respond to members of the public seeking to mobilize its coercive power? Focusing on welfare fraud control units in the United States, we examine how race/ethnicity and written English proficiency affect access to systems for reporting welfare fraud suspicions. Using a correspondence audit, we assess fraud control authorities’ likelihood of taking up reports from Latinas and Whites with higher and lower English proficiency. We find that fraud units are less likely to take up lower-proficiency Whites’ reports, but that lower proficiency's uptake-dampening effect does not hold for Latinas. To explain the mechanisms underlying our experimental results, we draw on interviews with fraud investigators. The interview evidence reveals the determinations of investigative promise underlying these uptake disparities. For White reporters, English errors cue gatekeepers’ preexisting skepticism about public reporters’ reliability, decreasing enthusiasm for investing resources in these reports. Reports from lower-English proficiency Latinas offer special viability appeal, however, offsetting the negative influence on uptake probability that errors demonstrate for White reporters. Our results shed new light on contemporary racial/ethnic dynamics in the US welfare system, and advance social scientific understanding of how bureaucratic gatekeepers decide what to do—if anything—with volunteered reports of misconduct.
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Conditional welfare policies are frequently underpinned by pejorative representations of those they target. Vulnerable children, under physical or moral threat from their welfare-dependent parents, are a mainstay of these constructions, yet the nuances of this trope have received little focused attention. Through a discourse analysis of parliamentary debates at the introduction of compulsory income management (CIM) to Australia, this article explores the complexities of the vulnerable child trope. It shows how the figure of the child was leveraged to justify hard-line welfare reforms in Australia, and offers a deeper and more intersectional understanding of how social and economic marginalisation is reproduced through welfare discourse.
This article examines whether the social policies manifest in different statutory definitions of ‘income’ in New Zealand discriminate against the poor. We adopt a benchmark of fundamental human rights to assess discrimination. Specifically, we examine definitions of income under income tax, welfare, accident compensation, legal aid, and student allowance legislation. We categorise income tax, accident compensation and student allowance as ‘deserving income’ and welfare and legal aid as ‘undeserving income’. We consider three types of receipt—cash gifts, gifts in kind, and compensation—to assess the effects of using different definitions and interpretations of income. We conclude that, although overt policy discrimination may not be manifest in definitions of income, it is present and insidious, and incompatible with the state’s duty to protect human rights.
The Irish social protection system has taken an increasingly workfarist turn in the post-crisis era. Concurrently, ‘welfare fraud’ emerged as a contentious political issue, leading some commentators to argue certain groups of welfare claimants have been cast as ‘scapegoats’ for widely experienced financial hardship. This paper brings these two points of inquiry together for the first time by critically engaging with two antifraud strategy policy documents, from 2011 and 2014 respectively, using a Foucauldian inspired policy analysis methodology called ‘What’s the Problem represented to be?’. We find the practices outlined in these documents predominantly problematize fraud as an act carried out by entrepreneurial ‘rational actors’ – silencing alternative problematizations of abuse and error. Furthermore, welfare claimants are constituted as subjects under constant surveillance, reinforcing the workfarist turn, but also potentially serving to undermine the legitimacy of the welfare system in the eyes of both claimants and wider society.
This article offers a review of shifts in feminist legal theory since the early 1990s. We first use our respective histories and fields of expertise to provide a brief overview and highlight some key themes within feminist legal theory. We then examine Social & Legal Studies (SLS), asking whether it has met its key goal of integrating feminist analyses at every level. Our review suggests that SLS has offered many important contributions to feminist legal scholarship but has not fulfilled its lofty goal of integrating feminist analyses at every level of scholarship. It features feminist work quite consistently and some degree of mainstreaming is evident, as is the international reach of SLS. Too many articles fail, however, to incorporate or even mention feminist approaches. We end with thoughts about, and hopes for, the future of legal feminism, examining efforts to revitalize the field and suggesting possible directions for the future.
This paper theorizes contemporary institutionalized forms of denunciation, or what I call ‘denunciatory technologies’. Denunciatory technologies are mechanisms that allow citizens to report one another to the state for a wide range of wrongdoing, such as welfare fraud. The scarce literature on such initiatives relies heavily on concepts of neoliberalism to explain their emergence and operation. I first argue that a focus on neoliberalism fails to recognize these technologies as a sophisticated type of statecraft that promotes public sensibilities. I then offer a more robust account of denunciatory technologies. Rather than relying on an analysis of neoliberalism, I argue that these technologies fuse the policing of political criminals like the ‘welfare cheat’ to the very notion of ‘public good’, and refract vertical populist energies back onto the population. I conclude that, through such technologies, publics become an integral tool in their own governance.
This is an ethnography of the everyday lives of street-involved youth in London, Ontario, Canada. Fieldwork was conducted throughout downtown London over the course of one year. I argue that the subjective experience of my informants, all of whom are ―participants‖ in Ontario‘s workfare programme, Ontario Works (OW), has been riven by some form of existential trauma (i.e., problems with anxiety and depression due to difficult personal histories of abandonment, substance abuse, etc.), which has led to an alternative process of becoming at odds with the hegemonic moral economy of the province of Ontario—specifically its rules and regulations regarding the provision of OW. This hegemonic moral economy is based on neoliberal regulatory logics of self-development, self-sufficiency and self-entrepreneurialism, which seeks to domesticate the ―economic potentialities‖ of the self. In reaction, the alternative process of being and becoming of my informants can be characterised by: 1) a tactical posture of débrouillardise (―social manipulation‖ with partial accommodation) regarding everyday life; and, 2) an approach to healing as a broadly conceived and processual existential project; a precarious project wherein the focus is on the reconciliation of one‘s past with one‘s present through a creative enterprise of becoming (existential transformation through poetry, drawing and performing as raconteurs), and not on simply "overcoming obstacles" (lack of skills, motivation), or overcoming impediments of the self (addiction, psychiatric disorders, etc.) that may block one from reaching OW‘s rehabilitative goal of acquiring a base-level of cultural capital (skills, training, education). As such, my informants get by day to day as wounded bricoleurs. Left little room to maneuver the ―disconnect of becomings‖ between state and self, they are forced to creatively re-invent their lives in the face of haunting and destructive personal histories. The dissertation closes with a re-conceived understanding of agency regarding the possibility ―to act rationally‖ according to one‘s own ―self-interest‖. I argue that my informants‘ agentive capacity is marked by the contradictory striations of ―zones of awkward engagement‖: the refractory lines of disconnection between the moral imperatives of the state and the existential imperatives to heal and ―make do‖.
Keywords:
Urban Anthropology; Existential Anthropology; Anthropology of Illness and Health; Ethnographic Approaches to Subjectivity; Critical Theory; Neoliberalism
This thesis deals with New Labour’s development of Community Cohesion and welfare reform policy between 2001 and 2010. It argues that there was a disjuncture between the linguistic presentation and the actual aims of cohesion and welfare policy. This was symptomatic of deeper processes of coercion and consent, designed to create citizens amenable to socioeconomic adjustment and increasing responsibility onto the citizen. Discourses in policy are contrasted with everyday narratives of people living in Bradford and Birmingham to draw out this disjuncture, but also to show elements of dissent from dominant discourses, as well as the multiple ways in which the everyday narratives conform to a series of discursive logics, potentially lessening the impact of this disjuncture. The thesis uses a critical analytical framework, adopting Gramscian concepts of ‘common sense’ and hegemony, within which the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis and focus groups are used. Critical Discourse Analysis is used to analyse cohesion and welfare documents from between 2001 and 2010, whilst focus group research investigates the plausibility of the disjuncture between language and aims, as well as the underlying construction of a common sense understanding of ‘cohesion’ based on hegemonic discourses. However, these hegemonic discourses can still be challenged through what Laclau calls ‘contamination’, providing the everyday narratives with the capacity to question discursive logics and subtly alter the discourses themselves. The thesis’ contribution to knowledge comes from the combined use of critical discourse analysis and focus groups within the Gramscian analytical frame, as well as its findings that a disjuncture between the language and aims of policy, and how citizens in selected areas have reacted to this, points to wider questions about community, empowerment and responsibility in the New Labour years. This is placed in the context of New Labour’s approach to, and ambitions of, creating British citizens that followed an appropriate ideology (Bieling, 2003: 66) based on community as a new plane from which to administer micro-moral relations (Rose, 1996: 331).
The purpose of this study is to examine the church-state relations in the
United States from the perspective of the social welfare system. More
precisely, we are questioning the way the conceptual foundations and
practical activities of religious organizations influence the directions of
social policy and shape the way of dealing with the poor. The first part of
the text outlines the main features of religious life and social welfare
system in America, while the second contains an analysis of the impact of
basic moral and religious principles of the Reformed Protestantism and Roman
Catholicism (the two most widespread religious traditions) and the ways in
which religious organizations are taking part in the modern social welfare
system in America.
Throughout the 1980s, the breakdown of communist systems in Eastern Europe and the emergence of "new" social movements in both East and West led to a renewed interest among political theorists in the 19thcentury concept of "civil society."
This article explores different ways of thinking about the general problem of the interconnection between self-formation and political and governmental practices and processes. It first explicates the thesis of the relation of moral regulation and state formation advanced in the writings of Philip Corrigan. It argues that, despite its strengths, this formulation has several difficulties: its reliance on a culturalist account of the work of moral regulation; its undue focus on the state; and its inability to approach domains of self-formation at a distance from the state. It further argues that many of the problems raised within this framework can be formulated more effectively by developing the analytic of governmentality provided by Michel Foucault. Such a framework allows us to understand how processes of political subjectification are dependent upon, if irreducible to, both governmental and ethical practices of self-formation. /// Cet article explore des manières variées de penser au problème général de la relation entre la formation du rapport à soi d'une part et les pratiques et processus politiques et gouvernementaux d'autre part. Il explique tout d'abord la thèse de la relation entre régulation morale et formation étatique présentée dans les travaux de Philip Corrigan. L'article prétend que, malgré ses qualités, l'approche de Corrigan est marquée par plusiers difficultés: elle s'appuie sur une version culturaliste du travail de régulation morale; elle est trop centrée sur l'État; elle est incapable d'approcher des domaines de formation du rapport à soi, à distance de l'État. L'article prétend aussi que plusieurs des problèmes soulevés par ce cadre analytique peuvent plus efficacement être formulés en développant la problématique de la gouvernementalité offerte par Michel Foucault. Une telle approche permet de comprendre comment des processus d'assujetissement politique dépendent, sans leur être réductibles, de pratiques gouvernementales et éthiques de formation de soi.
Rapid growth of the US penal population over the last two decades has coincided with a decline in the number of welfare recipients. While shifts in crime rates, economic and political considerations most commonly account for variations in incarceration, we place the rise in incarceration levels in the institutional context of welfare state retrenchment. An analysis of state-level incarceration rates between 1975 and 1995 indicates that large penal systems are found in states with weak welfare systems. The negative relationship between welfare and incarceration grows over time, suggesting the emergence of a novel kind of penal-welfare regime in the late 1980s and 1990s. Although welfare state retrenchment is often interpreted as a kind of market deregulation, our analysis suggests that declining support for social welfare is part of a punitive policy development in which the state has a substantial and active role.
This study examines the impact on women of funding social programs through the tax system. It does so using the framework of tax expenditure analysis, which allows one to view any departure from the normative tax system (i.e., those basic rules, such as the tax rate and the tax unit, that comprise the revenue-raising part of the system) as a spending measure. The analysis also takes into account the socio-economic realities of women’s lives and concludes that many tax measures that are subsidies in respect of social programs do not benefit women to the same extent that they benefit men. Tax measures explored include the child care expense deduction, the Canada Child Tax Benefit, tax subsidies for retirement saving, the disability tax credit and tax relief for caregivers. The conclusion is that in many instances women have less access to these tax subsidies and, often, the amount they receive is less than the amount that men receive. The study concludes with a list of issues that should be considered by those involved in the tax policy process in order to ensure that women are not disadvantaged in comparison to men when tax subsidies are used to fund social programs.
Widely praised as an outstanding contribution to social welfare and feminist scholarship, Regulating the Lives of Women (1988, 1996) was one of the first books to apply a race and gender lens to the U.S. welfare state. The first two editions successfully exposed how myths and stereotypes built into welfare state rules and regulations define women as "deserving" or "undeserving" of aid depending on their race, class, gender, and marital status. Based on considerable new research, the preface to this third edition explains the rise of Neoliberal policies in the mid-1970s, the strategies deployed since then to dismantle the welfare state, and the impact of this sea change on women and the welfare state after 1996. Published upon the twentieth anniversary of "welfare reform," Regulating the Lives of Women offers a timely reminder that public policy continues to punish poor women, especially single mothers-of-color for departing from prescribed wife and mother roles. The book will appeal to undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students of social work, sociology, history, public policy, political science, and women, gender, and black studies - as well as today's researchers and activists.
1. The theory and politics of moral regulation 2. Compulsion to virtue: societies for the reformation of manners and the prosecution of vice 3. Moral regulation from above: the vice society 4. From sexual purity to social hygiene, 1870-1918 5. Moral regulation in America 6. Sexual purity, maternal feminism and class in late-Victorian Britain 7. Traditionalizing moral regulation: making sense of contemporary moral politics.
Today we are witnessing a significant moralization of social conflicts; projects of moral regulation abound over pornography, drugs, child abuse and many other issues. It is therefore pertinent to examine the nature and mechanisms of moral regulation. It is important to take account of the fact that moral regulation does not only involve a specific moral arena, but rather is a component of all fields of social relations. For this reason Antonio Gramscis account of Fordism is significant because he focuses attention on the part played by moral and sexual regulation in the social construction of the new worker. This paper explores the originality of Gramscis discussion of Fordism as moral regulation. It draws lessons from both the strengths and weaknesses of Gramscis treatment for our understanding of the part played by projects of moral regulation in contemporary social issues.
Refuting the argument to choose between "the politics of recognition" and the "politics of redistribution," Justice Interruptus integrates the best aspects of both. ********************************************************* ** What does it mean to think critically about politics at a time when inequality is increasing worldwide, when struggles for the recognition of difference are eclipsing struggles for social equality, and when we lack any credible vision of an alternative to the present order? Philosopher Nancy Fraser claims that the key is to overcome the false oppositions of "postsocialist" commonsense. Refuting the view that we must choose between "the politics of recognition" and the "politics of redistribution," Fraser argues for an integrative approach that encompasses the best aspects of both.
FOR THE FEW CANADIAN HISTORIANS involved in alcohol history, temperance and related issues remain alluring themes. Little historical work has been done in Canada on public drinking in general and public drinking after prohibition in particular. This neglect is a real oversight in British Columbia because hotel saloons were transformed into hotel beer parlours after die province's brief experience with prohibition between 1917 and 1921. The first parlours opened in Vancouver in 1925, and, like saloons, they catered to a working-class clientele. Parlours held sway until 1954 when a new Government Liquor Act provided for additional venues of public drinking. One did not have to sit long in a Vancouver parlour to realize that more than alcohol consumption was being regulated. Parlours also regulated class, gender and sexuality, and race. 1 1 Despite the title of Cheryl Krasnick Warsh's collection, Drink in Canada: Historical Essays (Montreal and Kingston 1993), the majority of the essays are oriented, to temperance subjects. The same is true, of course, of Jan Noel's award-winning Canada Dry: Temperance Crusades Before Confederation (Toronto 1995). As for Sharon Cook's study of the Ontario WCTU, it is as much a work on evangelicalism as temperance.
Writers from within the Foucauldian govern mentality school have characterised recent governmental trends, associated with neo-liberal political rationalities, as manifestations of the death of the collectivist and universalist character of the 'social'. However, the unfolding of these developments varies both between and within nation-states. Drawing upon a discourse analysis of two local government texts from a local authority district in south-east England, the paper emphasises that at this local level the 'social' is reformulated rather than displaced in the way that the grand narrative of the 'decline of the social' implies. In both documents, albeit in different ways, neo-liberal discourse operates in tension with a continuing emphasis upon appearing to maintain equitable and universally legitimate service provision. This amounts not to the death, but rather to a reformulation, of the social.
The article traces the main themes of the 'governmentality' literature, as developed by Michel Foucault and subsequent writers, and outlines a series of related ideas about 'the social' as a realm of government; statistics and bio-power; actuarial forms of reasoning; and government-at-a-distance. It goes on to illustrate the criminological value of these ideas by means of an analysis of some of the governmental rationalities and technologies that are currently emerging in the field of crime control. These include 'economic' forms of reasoning about crime and its control, the emergence of 'the criminogenic situation' as a practicable object of government and the use of 'technologies of the self' in penal settings. The final part of the article identifies some of the limitations and problems of the 'governmentality' literature. It argues that studies of governmentality beg certain sociological questions; that the governmentality analytic is quite compatible with certain forms of sociological analysis; and that the project of writing a history of the present is best pursued - in the field of crime control at least -by combining these forms of enquiry.
Today we are witnessing a significant moralization of social conflicts; projects of moral regulation abound over pornography, drugs, child abuse and many other issues. It is therefore pertinent to examine the nature and mechanisms of moral regulation. It is important to take account of the fact that moral regulation does not only involve a specific moral arena, but rather is a component of all fields of social relations. For this reason Antonio Gramsci's account of `Fordism' is significant because he focuses attention on the part played by moral and sexual regulation in the social construction of the new worker. This paper explores the originality of Gramsci's discussion of Fordism as moral regulation. It draws lessons from both the strengths and weaknesses of Gramsci's treatment for our understanding of the part played by projects of moral regulation in contemporary social issues.
Social security fraud is currently estimated at £7 billion per year out of an annual socialsecurity budget of £90 billion. The social security system is hugely bureaucratic andadministrative, leaving it wide open to abuse. Obviously there are individuals keen toexploit such vulnerability, but many innocent claimants also fall foul of its rules, quiteinadvertently. In 1997, the Conservative government declared that its anti-fraudinitiatives would save taxpayers £7 billion over the next three years.2 The main plankin the Conservatives’ anti-fraud strategy, which has now been implemented by theLabour Government, was the Social Security Administration (Fraud) Act 1997,designed to make the detection, prosecution and punishment of benefit fraud moreeffective.3 The aim of this note is to examine the legislation previously used in thebattle against benefit fraud, to identify the rationale for legislative change, and toanalyse the problems which arise from this new legislative position.
This paper is summary in several senses. First, in the course of the argument it summarizes a number of positions in the recent debate on ideology, without attempting to elaborate arguments or detail objections. Second, it represents a summary of my own, current provisional take, or position, on a number of those debates. Its structure is simple. We have been passing through a veritable deluge, in recent years, with respect to theorizing the domain of ideology. Much of this has taken the form of elaborate deconstructions of the classical marxist theory of ideology. The paper takes off from and reflects on this heightened period of theoretical contestation. However, this period of intense theorization has also engendered its opposite—a rigorous critique of the hyperabstraction and over-theoreticism that has characterized theoretical speculation since, roughly, the impact of structuralism in the early 1970s; and the charge that, in the pursuit of theory for its own sake, we have abandoned the problems of concrete historical analysis.
Cet article offre une analyse des pratiques étatiques du gouvernement Klein en Alberta en vue de contribuer à la compréhension de la place de l'État dans le contexte actuel de mondialisation de l'économie. Le gouvernement Klein est d'abord situé au sein du projet politico-culturel de la nouvelle droite, puis le concept de «régulation morale» est introduit comme principe d'interprétation de la pratique gouverne-mentale. La restructuration des secteurs de la santé, de l'éducation et des services sociaux est ensuite analysée, de même que l'intérêt que porte le gouvernement Klein aux enjeux de «la loi et l'ordre» ainsi que ceux des droits de la personne. L'article prétend que, en Alberta comme ailleurs> alors même que sa pratique est profondément restructurée, l'État demeure le partenaire irremplaçable du capital.
The state practices of Alberta's Klein government are analysed with respect to the issue of whether the state becomes powerless in the current wave of capitalist globalization. The Klein government is first situated within the political/cultural project of the new right, and the concept of “moral regulation” is introduced to make sense of the government's overall practice. The restructuration of education, health care and social services in the province is then analysed, along with the government's interest in law and order, and human rights issues. It is claimed that, in Alberta as elsewhere, while the state is undergoing a deep restructuring, it retains its importance as capital's irreplaceable partner.