IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/122724.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Indentured: benefit deductions, debt recovery and welfare disciplining

Author

Listed:
  • 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
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/122724/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hiilamo, Aapo, 2020. "Debt matters? Mental wellbeing of older adults with household debt in England," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 106507, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Jan Libich & Liam Lenten, 2022. "Hero or villain? The financial system in the 21st century," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(1), pages 3-40, February.
    3. Hulya Dagdeviren & Jiayi Balasuriya & Christopher Nicholas, 2022. "Spatial dynamics of post-crisis deleveraging [Financial geography II: financial geographies of housing and real estate]," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(6), pages 1225-1246.
    4. Hulya Dagdeviren & Ewa Karwowski, 2022. "Impasse or mutation? Austerity and (de)financialisation of local governments in Britain [Regul(ariz)ation of fringe credit: Payday lending and the borders of global financial practice]," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(3), pages 685-707.

    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

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:122724. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.