Introduction

It is regularly suggested by those on the right of the political spectrum that low-income benefit recipients exhibit problematic attitudes and behaviours that are, in various ways, distinct from the rest of society (for example, Murray, 1994; Dunn, 2010). Those advancing such an argument tend to suggest that the permissive proclivities of welfare provision corrupt common mores and ideals surrounding work and responsibility in ways that threaten the regulatory and integrative function of social citizenship (for example, Mead, 1986; Mead and Beem, 2005; Dunn et al, 2014). This chapter critically engages with such a claim by exploring the extent to which rich and poor citizens deviate from or conform to the dominant ideals and praxis of social citizenship in austerity Britain. The evidence presented here gives some credence to the notion that those reliant on low-income social security exhibit counter-hegemonic conceptions of social citizenship, but challenges the manifestation and nature of this difference by situating it within a broader schema of inclusion and exclusion, validation and contingency.

Numerous studies have presented empirical evidence on the ways in which British people (re-) produce and respond to popular discourses of social citizenship (for example, Conover et al, 1991; Dean and Melrose, 1999; Dwyer, 2000; Lister et al, 2003; Dean, 2004). Despite seismic political and administrative shifts in the welfare settlement since the 1980s, these studies illustrate enduring complexity and contradiction within popular conceptions of welfare, rights and responsibilities. Dean (2004: 68) suggests that the multiple, fluid and ambiguous repertoires of citizenship advanced by the general public can best be understood as ‘a dialectical process by which individual identities are established in relation to others in society – by human bargaining on the one hand and by human attachments on the other’.