Renegotiating Social Citizenship in the Age of Devolution

Abstract

The period 2012 to 2016 saw important developments in the role of the United Kingdom's devolved legislatures in shaping the social rights of citizenship. Near‐uniformity in social security is being eroded, with competences devolved to Scotland and Northern Ireland proceeding with limited divergence from Great Britain. This turn to regionalism is linked with dissatisfaction with British government approaches. This article examines developments from a social citizenship perspective. Welfare state regionalism is a challenge to Marshall's perceived unitary view of citizenship. Yet, it is argued, moves towards divergence are driven by regional differences of perspective on citizens' social rights and reciprocal obligations in a way that emphasizes the continued relevance of Marshallian theory. The democratization of political rights gave birth to social rights in the early twentieth century; today, the regionalization of democratic citizenship enables alternative visions for social citizenship to be articulated and begin to shape welfare services at devolved level.

Challenging scalar fallacy in state‐wide welfare studies: AUKsub‐state comparison of civil society approaches to addressing youth unemployment

“…The UK has a work first policy orientation (Peck & Theodore, 2000) evidenced more recently through continuous emphasis on employability in key policy documents and the UK's 2010/12 welfare reforms (Simpson, 2017; UK Government, 2021a, 2021b). The overarching aim is getting people into employment, one which arguably prevails over fair work, equal pay, quality of working conditions or in‐work poverty; opponents of this policy regime argue that this has resulted in the UK's lowest unemployment figures (ONS, 2021) coinciding with historically high levels of in‐work poverty (Hick & Lanau, 2018) shortly before the Covid‐19 pandemic and the current cost of living crisis.…”

“…This aspect overlaps with increasing use of activation policies by governments across Europe in the past decade, the German Hartz Reforms promoting part time work and self‐employment being one example (Giugni et al, 2021). However, work first in the UK is coupled with minimal (and contracting) welfare systems, stemming from the 2010/12 reforms, aimed at incentivising claimants to take employment with high levels of conditionality and exempting fewer groups from job seeking as a condition of welfare receipt (Simpson, 2017).…”

“…Other authors have examined the impact of devolution in the context of localism in England leading to variation in welfare provision by elected councils and as a means of implementing austerity (Hick, 2021). Relating more specifically to the field of employment and citizenship, Simpson's (2017) research shows a will to diverge from UK central government's focus on employability among senior Scottish and Northern Irish civil servants and politicians. Similar, sub‐state socio‐political context at key junctures is also highlighted in a number of key, international welfare analyses (Giugni et al, 2021; Vampa, 2014; Zamorano, 2017).…”

Conceptualising dignity in the context of social security: Bottom‐up and top‐down perspectives

“…The data are drawn from wider studies of experiences of welfare reform and of policymaker perspectives on social security devolution in the United Kingdom—see Patrick, , Simpson, , ).…”