I will be presenting next month at the Welfare Conditionality: Principles, Practices and Perspectives conference, 26-28 June 2018, University of York.
Abstract:
Critics and campaigners against conditionality for welfare benefits have highlighted the severe harms resulting from sanctions and the stigmatisation of benefit claimants. In response, proponents of conditionality have oft replied with the refrain that “there has always been conditionality in the system” and point to high levels of support for conditionality from the public, including amongst benefit claimants. Yet, missing from these debates has been a detailed account of how claimants draw upon and construct justifications and critiques of welfare policy and practice. To fill this gap, this presentation explores the ethical arguments made by welfare service users who participated in the Welfare Conditionality project. Drawing on Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) theory of justification to outline the diversity of ethical orders participants called upon to construct their arguments, including the ways compromises and contradictions are defended or denounced. Even amongst the majority of participants who agreed with the general principle that abled bodied claimants should actively be looking for work, they rarely made reference to only one ethical order. Frequently it was argued that the sanctions regime is disproportionate and actively undermining the reciprocal duty to provide claimants with support. Furthermore, participants expressed concern that within the current welfare system there is a lack of a civic ethos amongst DWP and private contractor staff, a predominance of an industrial target driven service model, and a violation of human dignity and universal rights.