School should be a 'culturally safe' place, particularly for those students in Christchurch who challenge the city's reputation as a culturally homogeneous space and are thus frequently open to discrimination. A case study focusing on Somali refugee adolescents highlights that Christchurch's secondary schools -like those elsewhere in New Zealandare not a culturally safe, certain space for all students but rather spatially reconstruct inequalities of gender, class and ethnicity. Yet, Somali students are not passive victims, for they have actively renegotiated these spaces within their schools with varying degrees of success.
Existing literature, which has emerged largely from Europe and Britain, suggests that the concepts of social exclusion and inclusion are fundamentally limited when accounting for ‘difference’. This paper extends this literature by considering the way in which a social exclusion/inclusion discourse has played out in a ‘white settler’ society where the ‘difference’ embodied by the highly ‘excluded’ indigenous population is a central concern for social policy. The paper argues that the goal of an ‘inclusive society’, which has framed New Zealand social policy since 1999, promotes an equal opportunity approach that sits in tension with the specific needs and rights of MØaori as indigenous peoples and partners in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. The ambiguous consequences of this goal highlight the need for settler societies to develop policy that reflects their own socio-political circumstances, rather than simply adopt policy discourses that are popular internationally.
Since 2008, mature welfare states have, to varying degrees, pursued a strategy of welfare reform that has reconfigured the dominant praxis of social citizenship. Drawing on qualitative data from two studies, this article explores what bearing this has had on the political subjectivity of welfare claimants in the New Zealand context. The findings suggest welfare claimants engage in diverse political struggles for and against social citizenship to resist, reconfigure and resign themselves to the prevailing socio-political settlement. In light of this, conclusions are drawn about the insurgent politics of low-income social security claimants as political agents in the citizenshipmaking process.
Income management, which reduces the control that benefit recipients have over social security income by quarantining a percentage for approved expenses, was introduced in both Australia and New Zealand in the late 2000s. In Australia, income management explicitly targeted Indigenous communities, being initiated as part of the Northern Territory Emergency Response in 2007, then later extended to other benefit recipients. In New Zealand, all 16-and 17-year-old benefit recipients and 18-year-old parents on a benefit became subject to income management in 2012 as a means to inhibit future 'welfare dependency' amongst young people. Despite the absence of an explicitly racialised framing in New Zealand, this article contends that both income management programmes represent a form of institutional racism, disproportionately affecting Indigenous peoples and significantly limiting Indigenous opportunities for self-determination.
Neo-liberalism represents a significant and enduring shift in the politics shaping social policy. Although frequently ascribed a hegemonic, all-powerful status that focuses our attention on the coherence found in neo-liberal policies, this article builds on scholarly work highlighting variegation in the neo-liberal project across different policy areas, national settings and time periods. Specifically, it employs Peck's and Tickell's (2002) view that neo-liberalism has gone through multiple phases in response to both external and internal crises as an entry point for studying neo-liberalism's impact on public support for the welfare state. Drawing upon New Zealand and British attitudinal data, the article argues that public reactions to an early period of retrenchment ('roll-back' neo-liberalism) differ from those reported in the 'roll-out' or embedding phase of neo-liberalism implemented by Third Way Labour Governments in both countries. Indeed, continuing public support in many policy areas arguably contributed to the internal crisis that provoked an adaptation to the neo-liberal project. The article further explores public support for the welfare state following the external crisis provoked by the financial meltdown of 2008-09 asking whether New Zealand and British attitudes showed signs of resisting austerity measures or whether they, instead, indicated a third, 'roll-over' period of neo-liberalism where the public accepted not only a neo-liberal economic agenda but also the need for further retrenchment of the welfare state. Conclusions about the politics of social policy at the level of public opinion offer both good and bad news for welfare state advocates.
Compulsory Income Management (CIM) is a form of conditional welfare that involves the mandatory quarantining of a portion of welfare recipients’ social security payments. Quarantined funds are accessible via a government‐issued debit card, with restrictions surrounding where and on what funds can be spent. Official justifications of CIM have framed these policies as attempts to combat substance abuse and gambling problems, and to thus secure better outcomes for welfare recipients and their families. Central to this narrative has been the argument that welfare quarantining will ensure more money is spent on ‘essentials’, including accommodation. No existing studies, however, have specifically interrogated the impacts of CIM on housing security. This article responds to this gap in the literature by reviewing existing research concerning CIM's impacts and locating this research within broader debates regarding the causes of homelessness and the efficacy of individualised policy interventions. In doing so, it highlights CIM's potential to exacerbate housing insecurity not only through technical issues such as rental transfer failures, but also by contributing to underlying stressors such as economic disadvantage; relationship difficulties, poor health and addiction; and social stigma. The article concludes that – far from addressing the structural causes of homelessness – CIM has enflamed them.
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