Vulnerability and child sexual exploitation: Towards an approach grounded in life experiences

an article by Kate Brown (University of York, England) published in Critical Social Policy Volume 39 Issue 4 (November 2019)

Abstract

As child sexual exploitation (CSE) has risen towards the top of the UK’s political agenda, the concept of vulnerability has become a central frame through which to understand and address the issue.

This article analyses problems with the concept of vulnerability as it is commonly understood in relation to CSE, taking first steps towards developing an empirically-grounded account of the notion which is more sensitive to the lived realities of victimhood for sexually exploited young people.

Drawing on data from participatory qualitative research into life stories of ‘moving on’ from CSE in a large Northern city in England, the article illustrates how vulnerability is shaped through individual factors, situational dynamics and structural forces, connected by human agency through time. It argues that to respond effectively to vulnerability within the field of CSE, we need to move beyond discussion of ‘risk factors’ and denial of agency, towards an understanding of intersectional social divisions, social marginality, ‘critical moments’ and how these shape the investments and actions of vulnerable young people.

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Construction and deconstruction of ‘family’ by the ‘bedroom tax’

an article by Anat Greenstein (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK) and Erica Burman, Afroditi Kalambouka and Kate Sapin (University of Manchester, UK) published in British Politics Volume 11 Issue 4 (December 2016)

Abstract

This article explores how the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy policy, commonly known as the Bedroom Tax, works materially and discursively to create certain types of individuals and families as valued and deserving, while portraying others as excessive, wasteful or discretionary.

The paper draws on a qualitative study project (Bragg et al., 2015) which generated accounts from 14 families impacted by the policy, as well as 39 interviews with key workers in local schools, charities and community organisations.

Through analysis of official texts (such as the policy text and related debates in Parliament) and interview data, the paper explores how particular gendered understandings of care and kinship are constructed, regulated, penalised, and performed via the Bedroom Tax, and how these impact on the everyday lives of families subject to the subsidy removal, and beyond this also to their neighbours and neighbourhoods.

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Responsibilising recovery: Lone and low-paid parents, Universal Credit and the gendered contradictions of UK welfare reform

an article by Ruth Cain (University of Kent, Canterbury, UK) published in British Politics Volume 11 Issue 4 (December 2016)

Abstract

Universal Credit is a new benefits delivery system designed to streamline UK benefits and tax credits and encourage work.

This paper examines Universal Credit’s effect on lone parent and low-paid households. Lone mothers, identified as a moral and financial risk, face conditionality which ignores barriers to employment. Universal Credit also extends conditionality to lower-paid workers and their families. It encodes contradictory gendered messages.

While individual parental responsibility is increasingly socially and legally emphasised, unemployed or low-paid parents may be forced to spend minimal time with children under threat of sanctions or workfare.

Universal Credit demonstrates a clash between market-liberal economic ideals of labour flexibility, and conservative valorisations of the good mother and (married/heteronormative) family, enhanced by ‘recovery’ discourses of thrift and responsibilisation.

This paper argues that such moral/economic incoherence will penalise ‘workless’ and ‘part-workless’ citizens who cannot fulfil neoliberal ideals of the private, self-sufficient family unit in hostile economic conditions.

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