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Indentured: benefit deductions, debt recovery and welfare disciplining

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  • Edmiston, Daniel

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Edmiston, Daniel, 2024. "Indentured: benefit deductions, debt recovery and welfare disciplining," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 122724, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:122724
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/122724/
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hulya Dagdeviren & Jiayi Balasuriya & Sheila Luz & Ali Malik & Haider Shah, 2020. "Financialisation, Welfare Retrenchment and Subsistence Debt in Britain," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(2), pages 159-173, February.
    2. Edmiston, Daniel & Robertshaw, David & Young, David & Ingold, Jo & Gibbons, Andrea & Summers, Kate & Scullion, Lisa & Geiger, Ben Baumberg & de Vries, Robert, 2022. "Mediating the claim? How ‘local ecosystems of support’ shape the operation and experience of UK social security," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 113829, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    qualitative longitudinal research; debt; financialisation; poverty; welfare; Universal Credit; British Academy and Wolfson Foundation. Grant Number: WF21210269; Grant Number: 101077363;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

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