Support for conditional unemployment benefit in European countries: The role of income inequality

an article by Renzo Carriero and Marianna Filandri (University of Turin, Italy) published in Journal of European Social Policy Volume 29 Issue 4 (October 2019)

Abstract

This article investigates attitudes towards the conditionality of benefits targeted to a specific needy group, the unemployed, and analyses their relationship with the structure of income inequality. The focus is on the deservingness of welfare recipients.

The public seems to use five criteria to define deservingness and, consequently, the conditionality to which public support is subjected:

1. need,
2. attitude (i.e. gratefulness),
3. control (over neediness),
4. reciprocity (of giving and receiving) and
5. identity, that is the similarity or proximity between the providers of public support (the taxpayers) and the people who should receive it. People’s willingness to help depends on how close they consider benefit recipients to be to themselves (i.e. the extent to which they belong to the same in-group). 

The identity criterion is the main object of our investigation. We argue that the operation of this criterion at the micro-level can be affected by macro-level variables.

Specifically, we focus on different measures of the structure of income inequality which are indicators of the social distance between welfare recipients and taxpayers. Based on data from three waves of the European Values Study (1990–2008) collected in

30 countries, the study offers a comparative and longitudinal analysis. The picture emerging from the within-country analysis – which removed much of the between-country heterogeneity − shows that when the social distance grows, it is more difficult for the majority of citizens (upper and middle classes) to identify with the unemployed.

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Mind the gaps: Universal Credit and self-employment in the United Kingdom

an article by Kevin Caraher and Enrico Reuter (University of York, UK) published in Journal of Poverty and Social Justice Volume 27 Number 2 (June 2019)

Abstract

Self-employment in the United Kingdom rose steadily until 2017, as part of wider changes in labour markets towards more flexible and potentially more vulnerable forms of employment. At the same time, welfare reform has continued under the current and previous governments, with a further expansion of conditionality with respect to benefit recipients.

The incremental introduction of Universal Credit is likely to intensify the subjection of vulnerable categories of the self-employed to welfare conditionalities and to thus accentuate the ambivalent nature of self-employment.

This article analyses the impact of Universal Credit on the self-employed by first discussing elements of precarity faced by the self-employed, and, second, by exploring the consequences of the roll-out of Universal Credit for those self-employed people who are reliant on the social protection system.

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A hand up or a slap down? Criminalising benefit claimants in Britain via strategies of surveillance, sanctions and deterrence

an article by Del Roy Fletcher (Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield, England) and Sharon Wright (University of Glasgow, Scotland) published in Critical Social Policy Volume 38 Issue 2 (May 2018)

Abstract

British policy-makers have increasingly sought to intensify and extend welfare conditionality. A distinctly more punitive turn was taken in 2012 to re-orientate the whole social security and employment services system to combine harsh sanctions with minimal mandatory support in order to prioritise moving individuals ‘off benefit and into work’ with the primary aim of reducing costs.

This article questions the extent to which these changes can be explained by Wacquant’s (2009) theory of the ‘centaur state’ (a neoliberal head on an authoritarian body), which sees poverty criminalised via the advance of workfare.

We present evidence of an authoritarian approach to unemployment, involving dramatic use of strategies of surveillance (via new paternalist tools like the Claimant Commitment and the Universal Jobmatch panopticon), sanction and deterrence. This shift has replaced job match support with mandatory digital self-help, coercion and punishment.

In relation to Work Programme providers, there is a contrasting liberal approach permitting high discretion in service design.

This article makes a significant original contribution to the field by demonstrating that Wacquant’s analysis of ‘workfare’ is broadly applicable to the British case and its reliance on a centralised model of state action is truer in the British case than the US.

However, we establish that the character of British reform is somewhat different: less ‘new’ (challenging the time-tethered interpretation that welfare reform is a uniquely neoliberal product of late modernity) and more broadly applied to ‘core’ workers, including working-class white men with earned entitlement, rather than peripheral workers.

Full text (PDF 22pp)

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Benefits and Employment: How Problem Drug Users Experience Welfare and Routes into Work

an article by Linda Bauld and Jennifer McKell (University of Stirling, UK), Colin Carroll (University of Glasgow, UK) and Katherine Smith (University of Edinburgh, UK) published in Journal of Social Policy Volume 41 Issue 4 (October 2012)

Abstract

Increasing the conditionality of welfare benefits is a growing trend in many developed countries, particularly in relation to some groups who may be perceived as undeserving of state support.

Problem drug users (PDUs) are one such group, and in the UK most PDUs do not work and a high proportion claim benefits.

Facilitating the movement of these individuals into employment is a policy aim, because it is believed to improve the circumstances of drug users (and promote future abstinence) and because moving all groups off benefits and into work is a primary purpose of recent welfare reforms.

Yet little is known about the interactions of PDUs with the UK benefits system or how recent moves to increase the conditionality of benefits are likely to affect this vulnerable group.

This paper begins to address this gap by exploring the perceptions that PDUs and relevant frontline staff have of drug users’ interactions with the welfare system and the factors affecting their prospects for employment.

The findings suggest some aspects of recent welfare reforms, notably the simplification of benefits, may help PDUs interact with the system. However, the data also reinforce claims that the increased use of sanctions is unlikely to succeed in improving employment rates amongst this group without intensive support and demand-side interventions.

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Requiring the long-term unemployed to train: is benefit conditionality effective?

an article by Heather Rolfe (National Institute of Economic and Social Research) published in National Institute Economic Review Volume 219 Number 1 (January 2012)

Abstract

Conditionality has increasingly been part of benefit entitlement and its effects have been examined in a number of ways. While the focus of previous research has been on general conditions such as job search and acceptance of job offers, this paper examines conditionality specifically in relation to participation in training.

Using data from a qualitative evaluation of a government programme, the Skills Conditionality pilot, the paper uses two hypotheses to critically assess the effectiveness of conditionality as a benefits policy: that it is successful in increasing participation in training; and that it is harmful by reducing time for job search.

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