Poverty in the United Kingdom

The concept of 'employability' plays a crucial role in informing labour market policy in the UK, the EU and beyond. This paper analyses current and previous applications of the term and discusses its value as an exploratory concept and a framework for policy analysis. It then traces the development of the concept, discusses its role in current labour market and training strategies (with particular reference to the UK) and seeks to identify an approach to defining employability that can better inform labour market policy, by transcending explanations of employment and unemployment that focus solely on either supply-side or demand-side factors. Although the literature offers a range of definitions of 'employability', many policy-makers have recently used the term as shorthand for 'the individual's employability skills and attributes'. It is argued that this 'narrow' usage can lead to a 'hollowing out' of the concept of employability. The paper concludes by presenting a broad framework for analysing employability built around individual factors, personal circumstances and external factors, which acknowledges the importance of both supply- and demand-side factors.

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The Concept of Employability

The purpose of this article is to question whether the concept of social capital has anything original to offer for understanding why some communities have weaker networks compared to others. Drawi...

Bonding and bridging social capital: reflections from belfast

Political attention to the plight of the ‘socially excluded’ in contemporary Britain suggests a renewed interest in issues of class and inequality at government level. This paper addresses the nature of that engagement by analysing the dominant discourse of welfare reform as a cultural reconstruction project which references goals of modernisation and multiculturalism. The centrality of the white working-class poor to the realisation of these goals is examined as a racialised positioning, a stage in the reconstruction of nation through the reconstruction of white working-class identities. The shift from naming the working-class poor as ‘underclass’, a racialised and irredeemable ‘other’, to naming them ‘the excluded’, a culturally determined but recuperable ‘other’, is pivotal to the recasting of Britain as a postimperial, modern nation. Analysis of the modes of modernisation and multiculturalism through which new definitions of nation are being established shows the constitutive role of neoliberal and cl...

Illegitimate Subjects?: Abject Whites, Neoliberal Modernisation, and Middle-Class Multiculturalism:

The citizenship literature includes remarkably few empirical studies. In this article we report on how young people in a British city perceive citizenship and their own transitions as citizens. Of five models which emerged, the most dominant was 'universal status', followed by 'respectable economic independence', 'constructive social participation' and, less frequently, 'social-contractual' and 'right to a voice'. The extent to which the young people identified themselves as citizens reflected these models and their own life experiences. They drew clear distinctions between what it means to be a 'good' and a 'first class' citizen and had greater difficulty articulating their rights than their responsibilities. Overall, their responses drew on fluid understandings of citizenship but pointed more towards communitarian than liberal or civic-republican citizenship paradigms. They also underlined how everyday understandings of citizenship can have both inclusionary and exclusionary implications.

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Young People Talk about Citizenship: Empirical Perspectives on Theoretical and Political Debates

List of Figures List of Tables Introduction Of Poverty and Riches The Spectre of Poverty The Spectacle of Riches Of Welfare and Citizenship Security Versus Freedom Citizenship and Social Difference Popular Paradigms and Welfare Values Appendix References Index

Poverty, Riches and Social Citizenship

The English Riots of 2011: A Summer of Discontent

This article reviews existing evidence and debates in relation to young people and sexual exploitation in the light of new empirical evidence generated through primary research. This research explored the types of sexual exploitation that practitioners had worked with in the preceding year and Local Safeguarding Children Boards' responses to young people's sexual exploitation. The findings indicate that there may be several models of sexual exploitation operating simultaneously in any particular area, and the article therefore suggests that the discourse on young people's sexual exploitation that has dominated policy and practice for more than a decade in the UK requires reconsideration to account for the complex forms of sexual exploitation young people experience in the 21st century. The paper suggests that, in order to provide young people with the most appropriate support, practice responses need to be developed from the concrete conditions in which young people are subject to sexual exploitation, rather than applying abstract 'models' that fail to capture the lived experience of the young people concerned. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 'There may be several modes of sexual exploitation operating simultaneously' Key Practitioner Messages * There is confusion in relation to identifying child sexual exploitation. * Several models of child sexual exploitation may be operating simultaneously in any one place and at any one time. * Practitioners need to account for the agency and decision-making process of young people when working with those who are sexually exploited. 'There is confusion in relation to identifying child sexual exploitation' Language: en

Twenty-First Century Party People: Young People and Sexual Exploitation in the New Millennium

This article discusses the possibility that social security benefit fraud is intelligible as an unravelling of the rights and responsibilities of welfare citizenship. It recounts the findings of a study of the attitudes and moti vations of people engaged in individual benefit fraud, including the dominant discourses engaged in by respondents, their approach to work and their conceptions of citizenship. These are analysed in relation to age, gender and ethnicity and, in so doing, the authors call upon secondary analysis of data from the British Social Attitudes survey. It is concluded that benefit fraud does not signify any erosion of the work ethic or people's desire to participate in conventional life-styles, but that it is consistent with—if it is not nourished by—an impoverished conception of citizenship.

Unravelling citizenship The significance of social security benefit fraud

This article presents findings from a study of the attitudes and beliefs of social security claimants engaged in benefit fraud. The basis for a taxonomy of such claimants is outlined, drawing upon concepts of reflexivity and anxiety. This is compared and contrasted with other theoretically-drawn taxonomies, one relating to workplace crime, the other to the consumption of social care services. Finally, the article considers whether benefit fraud is intelligible as resistance to social control. It is argued that benefit fraud represents a conservative form of resistance. Benefit fraud does not signify a “culture” of resistance, so much as a “manageable” form of rule-breaking.

Margaret Melrose

Papers

Poverty, Riches and Social Citizenship

The English Riots of 2011: A Summer of Discontent

Twenty-First Century Party People: Young People and Sexual Exploitation in the New Millennium

Unravelling citizenship The significance of social security benefit fraud

Manageable discord: fraud and resistance in the social security system