Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T03:47:03.621Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The ‘Deserving’ and the ‘Undeserving’: Practice in an Urban, Local Social Security Office*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

L.E.A. Howe
L.E.A. Howe
Affiliation:
Research Fellow, Department of Social Anthropology, Queen's University of Belfast.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article describes the processes of assessment and administration of certain aspects of the supplementary benefit scheme in a social security office in Northern Ireland. Based on evidence obtained observing staff-claimant interaction and interviews with over fifty unemployed claimants, the analysis attempts to demonstrate that a combination of resource constraints, staff attitudes and beliefs, and claimant tactics gives rise to practices which sustain and reproduce the categories ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ at the very same time that staff insist that such practices are actually intended to vitiate this distinction.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , January 1985 , pp. 49 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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

REFERENCES

Atkinson, A.B. (1969), Poverty in Britain and the Reform of Social Security. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Blau, P.M. (1963), The Dynamics of Bureaucracy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Bond, N. (1975). ‘Knowledge of rights’, in Holman, R. and Butterworth, E. (eds), Social Welfare in Modern Britain, Fontana, London.Google Scholar
Briggs, E. and Rees, A.M. (1980), Supplementary Benefits and the Consumer, Bedford Square Press, London.Google Scholar
Burghes, L. (1980), Living from Hand to Mouth, Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), London.Google Scholar
Clark, M. (1978), ‘The unemployed on supplementary benefit’, Journal of Social Policy, 7:4, 385–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, H. (1965), The Demonics of Bureaucracy, Iowa State University Press, Iowa.Google Scholar
Colin, J. (1974), Never Had It So Good, Victor Gollancz, London.Google Scholar
Deacon, A. (1976), In Search of the Scrounger, G. Bell and Sons, London.Google Scholar
Deacon, A. and Bradshaw, J. (1983), Reserved for the Poor, Martin Robertson, Oxford.Google Scholar
Douglas, J. (1980). ‘The view from the local office’, in Coussins, J. (ed.), Dear SSAC…, CPAG, London.Google Scholar
Evason, E. (1976), Poverty: The Facts in Northern Ireland, CPAG, London.Google Scholar
Evason, E. (1978), Family Poverty in Northern Ireland, CPAG, London.Google Scholar
Evason, E. (1980), Ends That Won't Meet, CPAG, London.Google Scholar
Field, F. (1977), The Conscript Army, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.Google Scholar
Field, F. (1979), ‘Scroungers: Crushing the invisible’, New Statesman, 16 November.Google Scholar
Field, F.. Meacher, M. and Pond, C. (1977). To Him Who Hath, Penguin. Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Fraser, D. (1973), The Evolution of the British Welfare State, Macmillan, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
George, V. (1973), Social Security and Society, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.Google Scholar
Golding, P. and Middleton, S. (1982), Images of Welfare, Martin Robertson, Oxford.Google Scholar
Gould, P. and Kenyon, J. (1972), Stories from the Dole Queue, Temple Smith, London.Google Scholar
Hill, M. (1969), ‘The exercise of discretion in the National Assistance Board’, Public Administration, 47, 75–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, M. (1976). The State. Administration and the Individual, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.Google Scholar
Hill, M. (1981), Understanding Social Policy. Martin Robertson, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hood, C.C. (1976), The Limits of Administration, John Wiley and Sons, London and New York.Google Scholar
L.E.A. Howe (1983). Unemployment in Belfast: Some Findings from a Pilot Project, Final report to the ESRC.Google Scholar
L.E.A. Howe (1984). ‘The unemployed on supplementary benefit’. Scope, 76, 12–14.Google Scholar
Lipsky, M. (1981), Street Level Bureaucracy, Russel Sage Foundation, New York.Google Scholar
Lister, R. (1974), Take-up of Means-tested Benefits. CPAG, London.Google Scholar
Lister, R. (1980), ‘Discretion: Getting the balance right’, in Coussins, J. (ed.), Dear SSAC … CPAG, London.Google Scholar
Lynes, T. (1981), The Penguin Guide to Supplementary Benefits, Penguin, Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Marsden, D. (1982), Workless, Croom Helm, London.Google Scholar
Moore, P. (1980), ‘Counter-culture in a social security office’, New Society, 10 July.Google Scholar
Moore, P. (1981), ‘ Scroungermania again at the DHSS’, New Society, 22 January.Google Scholar
Rein, M. (1983), From Policy to Practice, Macmillan, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, J. and Wilson, P. (1979). Social Security Claimants, OPCS. London.Google Scholar
Robinson, A. and Wainwright, S. (1981), ‘Specialist claims control: A local experience’, Poverty, CPAG, 49, 8–14.Google Scholar
Sinfield, A. (1970), ‘Poor and out of work in Shields’, in Townsend, P. (ed.), The Concept of Poverty, Heinemann, London.Google Scholar
Sinfield, A. (1978). ‘Analyses in the social division of welfare’. Journal of Social Policy, 7:2, 128–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, D.J. (1980), ‘How unemployment makes the poor poorer’, Policy Studies, 1, 20–6. Supplementary Benefits Commission (1978), Take-up of Supplementary Benefits, SBC Administrative Papers No. 7, HMSO, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Titmuss, R. (1958), ‘The social division of welfare’, in Titmuss, R., Essays on the Welfare State, Allen and Unwin, London.Google Scholar
Townsend, P. (1976), ‘The scope and limitations of means-tested social services in Britain’, in Townsend, P. (ed.). Sociology and Social Policy, Penguin, Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Townsend, P. (1979), Poverty in the United Kingdom, Penguin, Harmondsworth.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, C. (1983), Changing Social Policy, Bedford Square Press, London.Google Scholar
Weightman, G. (1981), ‘Under the grille’, New Society, 5 January.Google Scholar