From social security to individual responsibility (Part Two): Writing off poor women's work in the Welfare Reform Act 2009

Grabham, Emily; Smith, Jenny

doi:10.1080/09649069.2010.484226

Cited by 17 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…In other words, a caseworker’s attitudes and actions do not necessarily occur as single stand-alone occurrences and instead, are organized by the mandates, policies, procedures, and practices of the social welfare system. The surveillance described in these narratives has been widely reported as a feature of class and gender-based prejudice and discrimination (Worth, 2003), especially perpetuated by neoliberal ideologies and discourses that reinforce notions that persons—women/lone mothers—living in poverty or relying of government aid are lazy, fraudulent, and a burden to society (Caragata, 2009a; Grabham & Smith, 2010; Power, 2005; Wacquant, 2001).…”

Section: Dehumanized By Being Treated Like a “Case”mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Why Are You Talking to Me Like I’m Stupid?”

Liegghio

Caragata

2015

Affilia

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Based on the analysis of qualitative, semi-structured interviews conducted with 92 welfare-reliant lone mothers living across Canada, this article explores the ''micro-aggressions'' experienced by these women in their interactions with the social welfare system. Micro-aggressions refer to the verbal and nonverbal, relational exchanges that send denigrating messages to persons of marginalized and discriminated against social groups. From the analysis, we conclude that class and gender become sites, intersecting and interlocking, where micro-aggressions as a form of interpersonal violence and discrimination occur against women/lone mothers living in poverty that act to diminish the agency and sense of public worthiness of these women, in turn limiting their access to contesting these constructions.Keywords gender-based violence, intersectionality, mothering, sexism, women in poverty Introducing the IssueThis article emerges from work conducted as part of Lone Mothers: Building Social Inclusion, a large community-university, research alliance involving five universities and various community organizations across three cities in Canada, namely, Vancouver, Toronto, and St. John's. The aim of the Lone Mothers project was to examine the impact welfare reforms had on lone motherheaded households that were receiving social assistance. Emerging from the analysis of a series of qualitative interviews conducted over a 4-year period with 92 (n ¼ 92) lone mothers was a long list of unsettling ways the women/mothers were degraded or dismissed in their interactions with

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Section: Dehumanized By Being Treated Like a “Case”mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Why Are You Talking to Me Like I’m Stupid?”

Liegghio

Caragata

2015

Affilia

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“…It is not the purpose of this article to align with a traditionally 'left' or 'right' political perspective. However, this quote is useful in tracking how social justice policies have been gradually constructed in economic terms, under both New Labour and Conservative governments (Barker andLamble 2009, Grabham andSmith 2010).…”

Section: Neoliberalism and 'Economisation'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Neoliberalism, family law and the cost of access to justice

Mant

2017

Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law

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This paper uses ideas drawn from Wendy Brown's critique of neo-liberal approaches to governance, to argue that the 'economisation' of social policy such as welfare and legal aid and the family justice system, has resulted in an economic re-making of the ideas of justice, fairness and equality, which have traditionally underpinned these policies and the context of the family court. The paper will map the political context to the implementation of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO hereafter), in order to understand how it has been possible to justify the cuts to family law that were made under the statute. This will involve considering how attitudes towards social security and welfare have changed, and how a waning commitment to the original aims of the legal aid scheme has manifested in the specific context of family law. The paper will then explore the effects of this approach for the family justice system, specifically the post-LASPO family courtroom. Using recent case reports, the paper will argue that the family court is now 'dilemmatic', in that it is now caught between its traditional obligations of safeguarding fairness and equality, and the economic demands which constrain the ability of judges and court staff to ensure those obligations. Having considered the way in which legal aid policy and the family justice system have been approached through a solely economic lens, the paper will finally turn to examine how LASPO itself was justified in this neo-liberal context. It will be argued here that the re-made notions of justice, fairness and equality have been repurposed for economic aims, and that this is a symptom of a wider loss of commitment to the original substance of these principles. In understanding how traditional notions of justice have been redrawn in economic terms, this paper concludes by arguing that family lawyers, practitioners and academics operating in a post-LASPO context must explicitly reject the economic terms of value against which these notions are measured, if their arguments against the effects of these cuts are to be in any way effective.

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“…Together these two themes create the discursive space for the third theme to be advanced, essentially that the Coalition’s welfare reforms are a necessary replacement for the outdated statist command and control of New Labour, which will address social problems and align social security with the needs of a modern economy (Norman, 2007: 9; Duncan Smith, 2010a, 2010b). Yet, whilst there is a greater determination to reduce the value and scope of benefits paid to those in and out of work (Wiggan, 2011: 34) Coalition policy, like New Labour’s, emphasizes economic rationality and builds on New Labour’s development of a more punitive welfare system (Barker and Lamble, 2009: 330; Grabham and Smith, 2010: 85).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Telling stories of 21st century welfare: The UK Coalition government and the neo-liberal discourse of worklessness and dependency

Wiggan

2012

Critical Social Policy

180

193

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Policy documents are a useful source for understanding the privileging of particular ideological and policy preferences (Scrase and Ockwell, 2010) and how the language and imagery may help to construct society's assumptions, values and beliefs. This article examines how the UK Coalition government's 2010 Green Paper, 21 st Century Welfare, and the White Paper, Universal Credit: Welfare that Works, assist in constructing a discourse about social security that favours a renewal and deepening of neo-liberalization in the context of threats to its hegemony. The documents marginalize the structural aspects of persistent unemployment and poverty by transforming these into individual pathologies of benefit dependency and worklessness. The consequence is that familiar neo-liberal policy measures favouring the intensification of punitive conditionality and economic rationality can be portrayed as new and innovative solutions to address Britain's supposedly broken society and restore economic competitiveness.

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From social security to individual responsibility (Part Two): Writing off poor women's work in the Welfare Reform Act 2009

Cited by 17 publications

References 11 publications

“Why Are You Talking to Me Like I’m Stupid?”

“Why Are You Talking to Me Like I’m Stupid?”

Neoliberalism, family law and the cost of access to justice

Telling stories of 21st century welfare: The UK Coalition government and the neo-liberal discourse of worklessness and dependency

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