More Than Making Do: Towards a Generative Account of Getting by on Welfare Benefits

Abstract

The narrowing eligibility and increasing conditionality of social security payments in Anglophone liberal democracies like Australia has been accompanied by growing attention to the ways benefit recipients navigate the personal and practical challenges of life amid welfare reforms. This article reorients the study of getting by on welfare benefits to focus on the material and affective investment in making life liveable. I argue that the generative dimension of getting by is suggested but submerged within the reactive orientation of much welfare scholarship on coping and resilience. This article takes up the challenge of telling sociological stories of hope in hardship without romanticising everyday struggle. It does so by focusing on the pleasures, pursuits and projects – however modest and muted – that sustain a liveable life in hardship but do not necessarily conform to normative ideas of ‘good resilience’.

Shadow care infrastructures: Sustaining life in post-welfare cities

“…DeVerteuil et al (2009) instead conceptualise survival practices on a continuum ranging from exit and adaptation to persistence and voice, and occurring within prime, transitional and marginal spaces. Mitchell (2021: 2) cautions that valorising agency can inadvertently feed into expectations that people face hardship ‘with plucky resolve’, particularly in policy contexts when the everyday lives and agency of the poor are increasingly scrutinised and targeted as the object of policy intervention. Risk can be ambiguously positioned when inadequate options are available (Dawney et al, 2020; Tomas and Dittmar, 1995).…”

“…Loans from family and friends can also be associated with love and support (Dawney et al, 2020), embedding this transaction in relational practices of care rather than simply exploitation and risk. There is not always a clear distinction between sustaining and undermining practices of getting by (Mitchell, 2021).…”

Shame, Anger and Hope: The Messy Relations of Charitable Help within the Welfare State

“…First, Friedli and Stern (2015) illustrated how positive affect can be part of the welfare state’s arsenal to stigmatise the poor and diminish dissent. Second, focusing on positive emotions to counter destructive poverty concentrates on people’s coping behaviours, which may reinsert normative expectations that people should make do under challenging circumstances (Mitchell, 2022). Examining how poverty and charitable encounters feel involves remaining sensitive to the mundane practices of (trying to) help.…”

Book Review: Dramas of Dignity

“…Costas has also written a book that is accessible to different audiences, and in doing so, she reminds researchers of the importance of translating themselves for a wider readership. In addition, the book raises broader questions in relation to how to engage with marginalised groups, how to treat everyday practices of getting by in a research context and how to concurrently account for despair and hope, injustice and moments of repair (Mitchell, 2022).…”