From social security to state-sanctioned insecurity: how welfare reform mimics the commodification of labour through greater state intervention

Insa Koch and Aaron Reeves

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Policymakers seeking to reform social security systems have frequently confronted a central tension: how to reconcile welfare retrenchment with the political challenges of implementing unpopular reforms. One way in which policymakers have responded to this tension is by repurposing existing institutions to serve new ends. We investigate the system of Universal Credit (UC) in the United Kingdom as an example of conversion. UC expands the reach of ‘active citizenship’ policies to a much larger population than ever before. However, far from producing uniform outcomes, UC’s implementation has been marked by chaos and ultimately failure for individuals and communities. We argue that UC exemplifies a broader shift from social security to state-sanctioned social insecurity as policy reforms come to mimic the insecurities and risks commonly associated with the market.

Keywords: Universal credit; austerity; active citizenship; policy conversion; social security; welfare states; mixed methods; IGA (Institute for Global Affairs) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2021-07-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Economy and Society, 3, July, 2021, 50(3), pp. 448 - 470. ISSN: 1469-5766

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