Risk and Citizenship: Disabled
People and the UK Labour and
Coalition Governments
Anne Chappell
Department of Criminal Justice and Social Studies
Buckinghamshire New University
Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane
Conference
26th-27th June 2012
Introduction and Background
• Policy review which attempts to tie together
number of strands in UK social policy and explore
their impact on disabled people
• Chappell and Gifford 2011, Promoting social
justice, perpetuating social injustice? New
Labour and disabled people
• Highlighted apparent contradictions within New
Labour’s social policy – empowerment and
autonomy, alongside disciplinary and punitive
policy approaches (which appeared to reflect the
tensions at the heart of New Labour project)
Trying to join the
dots
Are these policy
themes
contradictory?
Can they be
understood using
concepts of
citizenship,
consumerism and
risk in late
modernity?
Citizenship and Welfare
• Comprehensive Welfare State after 1945 redistributed social risks (e.g. unemployment)
• These risks underwritten by the State
• Marshall’s model of citizenship (1963) argued
that the Welfare State demonstrated a system
of rights and obligations which would ensure
social cohesion and wealth creation
• Disabled people largely excluded from this
model of citizenship
Citizenship in Late Modernity
• Decline of industrial economy and rise of service-sector
economy
• Shifting relationship between citizen and state
• “New risks” and limitations of power of state to
manage these (Beck 1992)
• Thus if Beveridgian model of welfare was based on
shared risk, welfare in late modernity is based on
individualised risk
• We all have a duty to anticipate risk, be reflexive
consumers and be active citizens in our community
• Re-commodification of labour
Citizenship and disabled people
• Disability movement long struggle for
solidaristic citizenship with its emphasis on
collective struggle and social rights
• New Labour administrations 1997-2010
significant policy focus on disabled people
• Fragmentation and proliferation of models of
citizenship under New Labour (Clarke et al,
2007, p20)
• Contradictory or coherent?
Disabled people in late modernity
• In late modernity, citizens are “authors of their
own biography” (Taylor-Gooby, 2010, p148)
• How does this impact on disabled people in
following spheres??
Paid work
Consumerism
Compromised citizenship
Worker-Citizens
• Paid work central to being a “full” citizen
• Fordist economy, disabled people peripheral to the labour
market
• The “deserving poor”
• Fragmentation of work in the post-Fordist economy
alongside increasing policy demands that disabled people
are active in the labour market
• Work viewed as ‘intrinsically good’ for disabled people
(Roulstone, 2002, p 628)
• Re-commodification of labour
• Disabled people exposed to welfare activation policies
(though work does not lift people out of poverty in
straightforward path to citizenship, Ray et al 2010)
Consumer-Citizens
• Growing significance of consumption in late
modern societies
• Evolving from ‘a society of producers to a
society of consumers’ (Bauman, 2007, p8)
• Disabled people are ‘failed consumers’ (cf
Bauman, 2007, p124)
• However, can the consumerisation of welfare
open up a space for disabled people to
operationalise their citizenship?
• Disability movement argued that empowerment
and autonomy could be achieved with Direct
Payments
• Demand has met with policy success through
growth of self-directed support
• Here, disabled people can be reflexive
consumers, managing and anticipating risk
• Welfare entrepreneurs (see Scourfield 2007)
• Emergence of (some) disabled people as
“employer-citizens”?
• Some disabled people will have the resources and
support to make self-directed support work,
develop the necessary skills, learn from their
mistakes (see Arksey and Baxter 2012)
• Others may find it difficult to make self-directed
support work for them
• Employ personal assistants in low pay social care
market
• Does this represent re-commodification of
disabled people as employers?
Personal Budgets and Education
• Government plans to extend system of
personal budgets for families of disabled
children (Department for Education 2012)
• One objective is to prevent the:
‘unnecessary closure of special schools by giving
parents and community groups the power to take
them over’ (Department for Education 2011)
• “Big Society” in education?
Compromised Citizenship?
• Is there increasing intolerance of disabled people?
• Evidence of harassment and abuse of disabled people both
in health and welfare settings and in wider community
(Mencap 2007, BBC 2011)
• Disabled people caught up in the micro-management of the
poor via the anti-social behaviour agenda (Crawford 2009,
Hunter et al 2007)
• Young people with learning difficulties more likely to end
up in prison than other young people (Prison Reform Trust
2010)
• Disability Benefits Consortium (2011) concerned at tone of
media coverage of government overhaul of benefits
• In the risk society, there is an erosion of social
solidarity with vulnerable groups (Taylor-Gooby 2010)
• British Social Attitudes survey (2012) reports erosion of
trust and greater use of individualist explanations of
social problems
• If disabled people are viewed as getting “too much”
(welfare benefits, access to social housing etc), this
makes them vulnerable to harassment
• Easy targets in the ‘scapegoat society’ (Beck, 1992,
p75)
• Collateral damage in a age of growing global inequality
(Bauman 2011)
Conclusion
• Citizenship in late modernity creates some
opportunities for disabled people for social
inclusion e.g. as reflexive consumer citizens
accessing self-directed support, flexible
employer citizens of personal care providers
• At the same time, however, the recommodification of labour evident through
work activation policies exposes them to
harassment and abuse
References
Arksey H. And Baxter K. 2012, Exploring the Temporal Aspects of Direct Payments, BJSW, 42, pp147-164
BBC 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011pwt6
Bauman Z. 2011, Collateral Damage: Social inequalities in a global age, Cambridge: Polity Press
Bauman Z. 2007, Consuming Life, Cambridge: Polity
Beatty C. and Fothergill S. 2011, Tackling Worklessness in Wales, Sheffield: Centre for Regional
Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University
Beck U. 1992, Risk Society, London: Sage
Beresford P. et al 2011, Supporting People: Towards a person-centred approach, Bristol: Policy Press
British Social Attitudes, 2012, http://ir2.flife.de/data/natcen-social-research/igb_html/pdf/1000001_e.pdf
Chappell A. and Gifford C. 2011, Promoting social justice, perpetuating social injustice? New Labour
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reality, Manchester: Manchester University Press
Clarke J. et al 2007, Creating Citizen Consumers, London: Sage
References
Crawford A. 2009, Governing through Anti-Social Behaviour: Regulatory challenges to criminal justice,
British Journal of Criminology, 49, pp 810-831
Department for Education, 2012, Support and Aspiration: A new approach to special educational needs
and disability, London: Department for Education
Department of Education, 2011,
http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/toolsandinitiatives/emailstoschools/a00205220/teather-letter-09-03-11
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Journal of Social Work, 37, pp 387-403
Hunter C. et al (2007) Disabled People's Experience of Harassment and Anti-social Behaviour in Social
Housing: A Critical Review, Sheffield: Disability Rights Commission/Sheffield Hallam University
References
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C., Kelly M. and Ramia G. (eds.) Social Policy review 23, Bristol: SPA/Policy Press
Marshall T.H. 1963, Citizenship and Social Class, in his Sociology at the Crossroads, London: Heinemann
Mencap 2007, http://www.mencap.org.uk/campaigns/take-action/death-indifference
Prison Reform Trust 2011,
http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/ProjectsResearch/Learningdisabilitiesanddifficulties
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