Welfare conditionality and social marginality: The folly of the tutelary state?

Abstract

In a contemporary evolution of the tutelary state, welfare reform in the United Kingdom has been characterised by moves towards greater conditionality and sanctioning. This is influenced by the attributing responsibility for poverty and unemployment to the behaviour of marginalised individuals. Mead (1992) has argued that the poor are dependants who ought to receive support on condition of certain restrictions imposed by a protective state that will incentivise engagement with support mechanisms. This article examines how the contemporary tutelary and therapeutic state has responded to new forms of social marginality. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews conducted with welfare claimants with an offending background in England and Scotland, the article examines their encounters with the welfare system and argues that alienation, rather than engagement with support, increasingly characterises their experiences.