Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-hbs24 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-12T06:21:22.010Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Activation Workers’ Perceptions of Their Long-term Unemployed Clients’ Attitudes towards Employment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2013

ANDREW DUNN
ANDREW DUNN*
Affiliation:
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lincoln, Brayford Pool, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, LN6 7TS email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Work Programme's use of severe social security benefit sanctions reflects British coalition ministers’ belief that many people on out-of-work benefits do not want a job. While a substantial empirical literature has repeatedly demonstrated that in fact unemployed benefit claimants possess the same work values as the employed and that the vast majority want paid work, it has ignored some conservative authors’ pleas to consider the views and experiences of people who work with the unemployed. Forty employees of agencies contracted to help unemployed people into employment were interviewed in summer 2011. Respondents had spent an estimated combined total of 147,000 hours in the presence of people who have claimed Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) for over six months. Most said that between a quarter and half of their present clients did not want employment. This finding does not contradict existing research, given that most JSA claimants re-enter employment within six months. However, all forty agreed that many others remained unemployed because they were choosy in the jobs they were willing to undertake, and, most strikingly, respondents overwhelmingly endorsed the view that a ‘dependency culture’ exists in households and neighbourhoods that have experienced joblessness for several generations.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 799 - 817
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bradshaw, J. and Holmes, H. (1989), Living on the Edge, London: CPAG.Google Scholar
Daguerre, A. (2007), Active Labour Market Policies and Welfare Reform, Basingstoke: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniel, W. (1990), The Unemployed Flow, London: Policy Studies Institute.Google Scholar
Deacon, A. (2002), Perspectives on Welfare, Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Deacon, A. and Mann, K. (1999), ‘Agency, modernity and social policy’, Journal of Social Policy, 28: 3, 413–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deacon, A. and Patrick, R. (2011), ‘A new welfare settlement? The coalition and welfare-to-work’, in Bochel, H. (ed.), The Conservative Party and Social Policy, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 161–80.Google Scholar
Dean, H. and Taylor-Gooby, P. (1992), Dependency Culture: The Explosion of a Myth, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) (2010a), The Work Programme Prospectus – November 2010, London: Department of Work and Pensions, www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/work-prog-prospectus-v2.pdf (accessed 20 July 2011).Google Scholar
Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) (2010b), Universal Credit: Welfare that Works, cm 7957, London: The Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Duncan Smith, I. (2010), ‘Foreword’, in Department of Work and Pensions, Universal Credit: Welfare that Works, cm 7957, London: The Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Dunn, A. (2010), ‘The “dole or drudgery” dilemma: education, the work ethic and unemployment’, Social Policy and Administration, 44: 1: 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dwyer, P. (2000), Welfare Rights and Responsibilities, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Gallie, D. (1994), ‘Are the unemployed an underclass? Some evidence from the social change and economic life initiative’, Sociology, 28: 3, 737–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallie, D. and Paugam, S. (eds.) (2000), Welfare Regimes and the Experience of Unemployment in Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallie, D. and Vogler, C. (1994), ‘Unemployment and attitudes to work’, in Gallie, D., Marsh, C. and Vogler, C. (eds.), Social Change and the Experience of Unemployment, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 115–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harkness, S., Gregg, P. and MacMillan, L. (2012), Poverty: The Role of Institutions, Behaviours and Cultures, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.Google Scholar
Hutton, J. (2006), ‘Welfare reform: 10 years on, 10 years ahead’, speech, 18 December www.dwp.gov.uk/aboutus/2006/18-12-06.asp (accessed 11 June 2008).Google Scholar
Lindsay, C. and McQuaid, R. (2004), ‘Avoiding the “McJobs”: unemployed job seekers and attitudes to service work’, Work, Employment and Society, 18: 2, 297–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDowell, L. (2003), Redundant Masculinities, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGlone, F. (1990), ‘Away from the dependency culture’, in Savage, S. and Robins, L. (eds.), Public Policy under Thatcher, London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
McKay, S., Walker, R. and Youngs, R. (1997), Unemployment and Jobseeking before Jobseeker's Allowance, DSS Research Report 73, London: HMSO.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, E., Millar, J. and Cooke, K. (1989), Work and Welfare Benefits, Aldershot: Ashbury.Google Scholar
Marsland, D. (1996), Welfare or Welfare State? London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mead, L. (1988), ‘The hidden jobs debate’, Public Interest, 91: 40–58.Google Scholar
Mead, L. (2004), Government Matters: Welfare Reform in Wisconsin, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, J. (2000), Keeping Track of Welfare Reform: The New Deal Programmes, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.Google Scholar
Moore, J. (1987), ‘Welfare and dependency’, speech to Conservative Constituency Parties Association, September.Google Scholar
Murray, C. (1994), ‘Introduction to the Tenth-Anniversary Edition’, in Losing Ground, New York: Basic Books, pp. xiii–xxi.Google Scholar
Murray, C. (1996a), ‘Rejoinder’, in Lister, R. (ed.), Charles Murray and the Underclass, London: IEA, pp. 81–94.Google Scholar
Murray, C. (1996b), ‘The emerging British Underclass’, in Lister, R. (ed.), Charles Murray and the Underclass, London: IEA, pp. 23–53.Google Scholar
Pahl, R. (1994), ‘Balancing all forms of work’, in Bryson, A. and McKay, S. (eds.), Is it Worth Working? London: Policy Studies Institute, pp. 60–76.Google Scholar
Reay, D., David, M. and Ball, S. (2005), Degrees of Choice, Stoke: Trentham Books.Google Scholar
Shaw, A., Walker, R., Ashworth, K., Jenkins, S., and Middleton, S. (1996), Moving off Income Support, DSS Research Report No.53, London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Shildrick, T., MacDonald, R., Webster, C. and Garthwaite, K. (2010), The Low Pay, No Pay Cycle, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.Google Scholar
Smith, D. (2005), On the Margins of Inclusion, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Spicker, P. (2011), How Social Security Works, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Surender, R., Noble, M., Wright, G. and Ntshongwana, P. (2010), ‘Social assistance and dependency in South Africa: an analysis of attitudes to paid work and social grants’, Journal of Social Policy, 39: 2, 203–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, R. with Howard, M. (2000), The Making of a Welfare Class? Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Westergaard, J., Noble, I. and Walker, A. (1989), After Redundancy, Oxford: Polity Press.Google Scholar
White, M. (1991), Against Unemployment, London: Policy Studies Institute.Google Scholar
Wright, S. (2012), ‘Welfare-to-work, agency and personal responsibility’, Journal of Social Policy 41: 2, 309–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar