The Politics of “Doing Exactly Nothing”: Feminist Legal Change and Bureaucratic Administration of Refugee Protection

State tactics of welfare benefit minimisation: The power of governing documents

“…While Meers (2020) and Masoumi (2019) offer detailed descriptions of how applicants were filtered out of particular application processes, this study extends their context-specific accounts to provide a conceptual model of how states work to curtail entitlements by foregrounding applicants’ responsibility in the context of a lack of agency. While choices were advertised as being available, this did not mean that low-income separated mothers were able to make choices.…”

“…For the women in this study, these tactics manifest as: women with histories of domestic violence not seeking exemptions in the first instance, or at all; spending years collecting payments privately before moving to Agency Collect, despite significant underpayments; and using the default MEM for calculating FTBA, resulting in additional financial penalties for women when fathers did not make payments. These tactics of administrative curtailment went beyond what Meers (2020) described as the discretionary exercise of ‘fettering’, and what Masoumi (2019) described as bureaucratic strategies of exclusion, to actively orchestrate advantages to the state at the expense of – and purportedly at the request of – some of Australia’s most vulnerable families.…”

“…Government forms and documents may instead present an illusion of choice, while in effect limiting applicants’ options. According to Ahmed (2004; 2006), and recently echoed in Masoumi’s (2019) analysis of refugee application administration, documents can achieve socially reinforcing outcomes through the illusion of doing something while, in effect, achieving very little. As such, documents can have performative as well as nonperformative effects.…”

“…Next, how researchers have examined the state’s pursuance of its interests through governing documents is explored. This research has either examined how governing documents are used to enact particular outcomes (Meers, 2018; 2020) or achieve no outcome (Ahmed, 2004; Masoumi, 2019). Following an overview of the study methods, women’s choices are presented across three child support decision-making contexts, namely (1) whether to seek child support, (2) how to collect payments, and (3) how child support would interact with the calculation of their welfare benefits.…”