Fink, J. and Lomax, H. (2014) Challenging images? Dominant, residual and emergent meanings in on-line media representations of child poverty (original) (raw)
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Benefits and Welfare: Chapter from 2015 British Social Attitudes Survey report
Bad News for the Poor Summary of the main points in the 2015 BSA chapter on Welfare and the Benefits Peter Taylor-Gooby, University of Kent p.f.taylor-gooby@kent.ac.uk The good news (for those who like the welfare state) is that almost nobody wants more cuts. Ninety per cent of those interviewed in the most recent survey in the authoritative British Social Attitudes series [http://www.natcen.ac.uk/our-research/research/british-social-attitudes/ ] want spending on health, education and welfare maintained or increased. The highest spending services, pensions and the NHS followed by education, are the top priorities. In addition, 85 per cent think child poverty matters and should be cut back. Party differences between Labour and Conservative supporters on these issues are relatively minor. The bad news is that most people view the welfare state for those of working age with suspicion. It’s in this area that the biggest party differences lie. The proportion thinking government should spend more on ‘welfare benefits’ has fallen from 60 per cent in the late 1980s to 30 per cent now. In 1989 two-thirds of those expressing a view thought unemployment benefits were too low and a third that they were too high. Now these proportions are almost exactly reversed. In 2014 over five times as many Conservative voters thought unemployment benefits too high compared with the number who though them too low. Among Liberal Democrats just over one and half times as many think it’s too high as think it’s too low. Labour voters are no more than evenly split. Unemployed people have few friends. The same pattern of grudging support even among Labour voters applies to other aspects of welfare for those of working age. Perhaps unsurprisingly, only eight percent of Conservative voters put benefits for unemployed people as their top priority. Labour voters do give higher support, but that’s only 16 per cent, with Liberal Democrats at 13 per cent. The even worse news (for the poor) is that big majorities among all main parties support the benefits cap: 85 per cent of Conservative and UKIP supporters, 75 per cent of Liberal democrats, 70 per cent of Labour voters and just over half of Greens. People are also unwilling to extend welfare state support to immigrants. Less than one in ten of all those interviewed think immigrants should have an automatic right to claim benefits. More than 50 per cent of voters for any party, except the Greens (and the Liberal Democrats for EU migrants), think migrants’ benefit rights should be restricted to a maximum of six months or less, whether the migrants come from EU countries or elsewhere. The overall pattern of attitudes is, from an academic perspective, surprising. As Ruth Lupton, John Hills and others show [ http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/spcc/RR04.pdf ], spending on the NHS and schools has been (at least in the relative sense used by the Treasury), ring-fenced, so that cuts here have been less severe than in other areas. Working age welfare has been hit hardest, from the harsh treatment of Sure Start through to the below inflation uprating of all benefits for this group, the cuts in child benefit, tax credits and housing benefit and the benefits cap. The big success stories of recent welfare have been the decline in pensioner poverty (down from 2.1 million in 1991 to less than half that now) and in child poverty (down from 4 million in 1992 to a third of that by 2004 but now creeping upwards). By comparison, poverty among those of working age is a much larger issue, up from under 4 million in 1990 to just under 6 million now, and still rising. Even more striking workless households are the group most harshly affected by poverty. Over 70 per cent of them fall below the poverty line according to official DWP figures [ https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment\_data/file/325416/households-below-average-income-1994-1995-2012-2013.pdf ]. The public express a high level of concern about poverty but seem happy to cut benefits for the group in the severest need. Even Labour voters are in two minds about whether the benefits unemployed people get should be cut further. Where does this take us? 1. From a welfare state perspective, Ed is right to focus on the NHS. NHS spending is a top priority for most people, and there is no mileage in help for the poor of working age, despite their deteriorating position. 2. Most people are profoundly ignorant of basic facts about the level of need among different groups in their own society - but maybe we knew that anyway. 3. Any programme to tackle poverty and advance social equality must be based on universal benefits and programmes: child benefits, school meals for all, Sure Start, rent control, decent wages and stronger employment rights. Means-tested benefits directed specifically at the poor stand little chance of gaining high public support.
Public attitudes to poverty and welfare, 1983-2011. Analysis using British Social Attitudes data.
NatCen Social Research, 2013
The aim of this analysis was to explore how far patterns of change in public attitudes to poverty and welfare relate to (and may be explained by) political and economic developments and experiences, both at the individual and societal level. Attitudes to and expectations for poverty levels are closely linked to economic circumstances and bear little relation to the targets and policies of political parties in power. However, changes in perceptions of causality reflect shifts over time in governmental approaches in this area. Current attitudes and expectations for child poverty sit at odds with the targets of successive governments, yet public perceptions of its causes favour individualistic over societal explanations, reflecting the current direction of Coalition policy.
MPs' Attitudes to Welfare: A New Consensus?
Journal of Social Policy, 2007
The post-war ‘consensus’ on welfare was based largely in the perceived agreement of leading politicians of Conservative and Labour parties on the role of the mixed economy and the welfare state. However, from the late 1970s economic and demographic pressures and ideological challenges, particularly from the New Right, led to cuts in spending on welfare, increased private involvement and an emphasis on more individualistic and selectivist approaches to provision. Recently some scholars have begun to discuss the emergence of a ‘new liberal consensus’ around welfare provision. Drawing upon interviews with 10 per cent of the House of Commons, this article examines the extent to which a new political consensus upon welfare can be identified. In addition to analysing responses to questions on welfare issues, it considers the extent to which MPs themselves believe there to be some degree of consensus in approaches to welfare. It also considers whether any consensus exists merely in the pol...
Brno Studies in English
The article deals with British press coverage of a social group traditionally referred to in conservative discourse as the undeserving poor. The perception of the poor as either deserving or not deserving of state assistance on a moral basis is put into the context of the present public financial crisis, in which a justification for welfare cuts is being sought. It is shown that conservative-minded British papers (The Times, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail) uphold the Coalition government's hardened attitude towards benefits claimants, while progressiveminded papers (The Guardian, The Independent) refute the existence of the undeserving poor, looking instead for structural explanations of poverty-related phenomena. The main frames used to depict the undeserving poor are identified as fecklessness, antisocial behaviour and a something-for-nothing culture. The article draws on the work of frame theorist Shanto Iyengar and linguist George Lakoff, as well as on various social research reports on poverty in Britain.
Struggling With The System: The case for UK welfare reform
2010
The benefits system is an essential part of the social protection Britain has built to protect its citizens and to end poverty in the UK. At the moment, the system simply isn’t achieving this aim. Oxfam is calling for reform of out-of-work benefits to ensure they provide adequate protection for those people who need them, and to help people take up paid work if they are able to. To do this, the system needs to be more flexible, allowing people to take on some paid or voluntary work without losing benefits; it must also respond to the particular circumstances of individuals, taking into account, for instance, their caring responsibilities or the social support they rely on in their everyday lives. The government plans to reform the welfare system in the UK. Oxfam is calling for reform based on the principles and recommendations set out in this paper, to ensure that the benefits system becomes a truly effective tool for tackling poverty in the UK.
2019 Working for benefits: Deservingness and discrimination in the British social security system
2019
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the British welfare state came under systematic attack within a broader agenda of deregulation and austerity. As part of ETHOS Work Package 5 on justice as lived experience, this report explores what people understand to be the relation between means-tested working-age benefits and social justice. Its focus is on the impact of welfare retrenchment on three subordinated social categories: disabled persons, foreign nationals and young mothers. The research is based on documentary legal and policy analysis, secondary quantitative data, a literature review on political and media discourses of deservingness, as well as one interview and three focus groups with benefit claimants, activists and caseworkers. Each encounter lasted between 30 minutes and two hours. Most interviewees were recontacted after participating in previous ETHOS studies. All interviews were recorded, transcribed and, where necessary, translated into English. Findings reveal an influential media and political discourse holding that insufficient motivation to work and other individual factors are to blame for poverty. Under the rule of Conservative-led Governments, this rhetoric provided a cover of legitimacy to coercive measures purporting to make employment more attractive than claiming benefits and instill work-related behaviour. While the principle of ‘less eligibility’ continues to enjoy broad support, upholding it in a context of increasing in-work poverty has meant plunging families into destitution, riddling them with debt, subjecting their daily lives to close scrutiny and making the conditions and process for claiming benefits increasingly onerous. By effect or by design, these impacts have exacerbated the subordination of disabled persons, foreign nationals and young mothers. Most disabled claimants have faced reduced allowances on the highly contested assumption that they would be able to participate in paid employment. Non-UK jobseekers have been imposed stringent conditions for retaining ‘worker’ and ‘resident’ status, including minimum earnings thresholds, compelling evidence of job prospects, language skills and social connections. Due to the scarcity of affordable childcare, single parents of young children, the vast majority of whom are women, have born the brunt of work-related conditionality. Interviews suggest that some of these impacts are more likely than others to be perceived as flagrant injustices. While migrants have proven willing to accept a degree of less favourable treatment, sometimes by comparing the inadequate support received in their countries of origin, gendered ideals of work and childcare have contributed to stronger opposition toward austerity measures targeting young mothers. Perhaps the most uniformly negative reactions were aroused by the procedural failures of an increasingly complex and automatised system modelled after a vanishing ‘standard’ employment relationship, whose foremost intention is to ensure that claimants do not receive any more than the amount to which they are entitled. While sowing division and arousing interpersonal frustrations, benefit cutbacks have also sparked transformative forms of mobilisation. Non-discrimination provisions have provided a legal basis on which to challenge austerity, and specialist charities have been joined by statutory bodies in their support for claimants. International human rights bodies have played an active role in legitimating these cases by condemning in unusually strong terms the negative effects of benefit restrictions. Unions and job centre staff have allied with claimants to contest the Government’s insistence on making greater use of sanctions. Driven by an ideal of needs-based social assistance that furthers the interests of precariously employed workers, these alliances may become fertile ground for a renewed politics of social security.
10 We Need Child Poverty! Making Sense of Public Attitudes to Poverty in the Age of Austerity
2017
Child poverty is about children not having enough. This is not contentious and seems not to be complicated. In advanced economies, we often first learn that ours is a world with child poverty in schools. Children are familiarised with the realities of life for those presented as less fortunate in other places (contemporary global geographies of poverty) and at other times (local histories of poverty). As adults, we are presented with imagery of children in poverty to induce charitable donations as part of international responses to natural or political disasters. Creating a sense of a comfortable ‘us’, with responsibilities to a needy ‘them’ generate resources that can be used to ameliorate problems and lay the foundations for solutions to poverty. Paradoxically, the terra firma of global poverty may inadvertently complicate the reaching of a shared understanding of poverty within advanced economies, particularly when layered with neo-Liberal thinking in times of austerity.