Indentured: benefit deductions, debt recovery and welfare disciplining

Edmiston, Daniel ORCID: 0000-0001-8715-654X (2024) Indentured: benefit deductions, debt recovery and welfare disciplining. Social Policy and Administration. ISSN 0144-5596

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Abstract

The UK social security system performs an important role as a creditor and debt collector for many benefit claimants, with more affected by deductions than formal welfare conditionality or sanctions. Deductions, then, are central to understanding low-income life in the UK. With that in mind, this paper draws on a mixed-methods project to explore the policy rationale, administration and effects of benefit deductions at a particular moment of crisis. Through new analysis of statistical releases, I evidence increasing indebtedness and an Inverse Care Law, whereby UK social security performs worst for those who need it most. Drawing on qualitative longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the height of the cost-of-living crisis, I also evidence how deductions affect the lives and trajectories of low-income claimants over time. The analysis offered details how deductions weaponize debt, often in ways that financialise benefit claimants and their entitlements that prove counter-productive to the stated policy objectives of deductions: worsening the poverty-debt trap and pushing people (further) away from the labour market.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14679515
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Authors
Divisions:	Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HG Finance H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
JEL classification:	H - Public Economics > H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies > H53 - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare and Poverty > I38 - Government Policy; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
Date Deposited:	22 Apr 2024 12:48
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 04:09
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/122724

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