Social Citizenship and Social Security Fraud in the UK and Australia

McKeever, Grainne

doi:10.1002/9781118509807.ch7

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Second, a relational dimension that stresses the importance of a social security system that treats its users with respect in everyday interactions. Benefit recipients' feelings about intrusive questioning about their medical history and personal lives, monitoring of job seeking and treatment with suspicion, and the physical environment of the Jobcentre, such as the presence of security guards, are highlighted above and reflected in other researchers' findings (Edmiston, ; Harris, ; McKeever, ; Wright & Stewart, ). Third, an intrinsic dimension (see Dore, ) that sees individuals' sense of self‐worth detrimentally affected by reliance on familial or charitable assistance (Dwyer, Jones, McNeill, Scullion, & Stewart, ; Simpson, Fitzpatrick, & McKeever, Accepted/In press; Garthwaite, ), media, political, or even relatives' and friends' portrayals of benefit receipt (Jensen & Tyler, ; Patrick, ; Wiggan, ) and being pushed into employment deemed unsuitable (Finn & Goodship, ).…”

Section: Discussion: Towards a New Understanding Of Dignity In Socialmentioning

confidence: 88%

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

Patrick

Simpson

2019

Soc Policy Adm

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Dignity and social security have been closely associated since at least the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, but there is a lack of clarity around what dignity means in this context. This article explores how two key stakeholders-out-of-work benefit recipients and policymakers-understand dignity in the context of social security, drawing on qualitative research with each group. The evidence presented notes a relative absence of direct references to dignity among policymakers, although related issues are nonetheless discussed, whereas benefit recipients commonly articulate experiences of undignified treatment and the negative impact this has on their lives. This article's exploration of dignity is of particular relevance to Scotland, where recent framework legislation includes the principle that their security system should be underpinned by "respect for the dignity of individuals." The authors propose that a social security system that protects dignity must take account of distributional, relational, and intrinsic aspects of dignity-providing sufficient income, treating users with respect, and avoiding interventions or discourses that are disrespectful and dehumanizing. Further, the authors question whether it is possible for dignity to enjoy meaningful protection within highly disciplinary conditional welfare regimes. K E Y W O R D S conditionality, dignity, Scotland, social security, welfare

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Section: Discussion: Towards a New Understanding Of Dignity In Socialmentioning

confidence: 88%

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

Patrick

Simpson

2019

Soc Policy Adm

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“…Neoliberalism privileges profit-making over the interests of society, riding upon the myth of trickle-down economics. It is the most “dominant form of obligations-based ideology,” an ideology that decimates social citizenship (McKeever, 2012, pp. 467–468).…”

Section: Neoliberalism and Laboring In The Picmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radically Rethinking Social Work in the Criminal (in)Justice System in Australia

Jarldorn

2019

Affilia

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Historically, research on prisons and prisoners privileges an individualizing framework, when in fact the prison experience is strongly tied to social stratification and collective identities. Informed by the data created for a Photovoice project with former prisoners in South Australia, I contend that contemporary “criminological” knowledge tends to individualize crime through its own privileged view of the world. This individualizing approach seeps into the ways in which criminalized women experience release into the community after a prison sentence, confirming that society does not believe that imprisonment furnishes any form of “rehabilitation.” There can be no separation between capitalism, the prison industrial complex (PIC), and the violence present in carceral settings. This violence, although to a lesser extent than prisoners, is experienced by social workers selling their labor power within the PIC who are co-opted into believing that they can “make a difference.” Yet, social workers, whose codes of ethics are grounded in a framework of human rights, are witness to abuses of human rights on a daily basis within the PIC. Instead of making a difference, they are coerced into silence and roles of social control. The argument proposed here suggests that social workers must radically rethink the place and purpose of prisons by considering them as a violent response by the state to structural social problems that are experienced as politically perpetrated misery and oppression.

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“…In most contexts empirical evidence on the occurrence of fraud is ambiguous – with the conflation of fraud and error within official indicators being a widespread phenomenon (Chunn and Gavigan, 2004; McKeever, 2012; Lundström, 2013). Welfare fraud is a form of crime typically understood to be ‘high volume, low cost’ (Doig, 2006; McKeever, 2012). It primarily consists of claimants intentionally withholding information about their means or living circumstances or working on the side.…”

Section: Welfare Fraud In the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Rational skivers or desperate strivers? The problematisation of fraud in the Irish social protection system

Gaffney

Millar

2019

Critical Social Policy

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The Irish social protection system has taken an increasingly workfarist turn in the post-crisis era. Concurrently, ‘welfare fraud’ emerged as a contentious political issue, leading some commentators to argue certain groups of welfare claimants have been cast as ‘scapegoats’ for widely experienced financial hardship. This article brings these two points of inquiry together for the first time by critically engaging with two anti-fraud strategy policy documents, from 2011 and 2014 respectively, using a Foucauldian inspired policy analysis methodology called ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ We find the practices outlined in these documents predominantly problematise fraud as an act carried out by entrepreneurial ‘rational actors’ – silencing alternative problematisations of abuse and error. Furthermore, welfare claimants are constituted as subjects under constant surveillance, reinforcing the workfarist turn, but also potentially serving to undermine the legitimacy of the welfare system in the eyes of both claimants and wider society.

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Social Citizenship and Social Security Fraud in the UK and Australia

Cited by 6 publications

References 16 publications

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

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

Radically Rethinking Social Work in the Criminal (in)Justice System in Australia

Rational skivers or desperate strivers? The problematisation of fraud in the Irish social protection system

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