| Unit name | Criminalising Welfare |
|---|---|
| Unit code | SPOL20043 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Kirwan |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | School for Policy Studies |
| Faculty | Faculty of Social Sciences and Law |
This unit provides you with an understanding of how, as part of the shift from ‘social security’ to ‘welfare benefits’ systems in the UK and elsewhere, state welfare is being absorbed into and increasingly resembles criminal justice systems.
The unit aims to enable you to:
Critically examine the ways that welfare systems have become more punitive (e.g. ‘sanctions’, enforced unpaid labour and direct deductions from income).
Understand how claiming state welfare is increasingly experienced in criminal and punitive terms.
Explore the discourse of scrounging and benefit fraud.
Evaluate the ways in which welfare is prone to be understood as an area to be approached through models of crime control.
1. Identify how welfare benefit policies in advanced liberal democracies have been increasingly shaped by knowledges, strategies and practices taken from criminal justice systems.
2. Engage with how claimant-subjects are regulated, controlled and directed, as well as being drawn into criminal justice systems.
3. Discuss how the criminalisation of welfare fits into broader discussions of the ‘criminalisation of social policy’.
4. Present differing explanations for why social security systems internationally have become more punitive.
5. Identify and critically examine potential sites of resistance to the criminalisation of state welfare-benefits.
10 x two-hour lecture
10 x one-hour seminar
Case Study (1000 words) 25%
Seen exam (2 hours) (75%)
Cooper, M. (2017) Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism. New York: Zone Books
Lazzarato, M. (2014) Governing by Debt. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotexte
Wacquant, L. (2009) Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
