‘Sorting out income’: transnational householding and austerity Britain

Abstract

The reliance of welfare recipients on the state is classically demonised as a relation of dependency: one that foments passivity on the part of claimants. Critical voices in austerity Britain have drawn attention to government efforts to reconfigure that relationship, by 'reforming' welfare, remaking the grantee as a repaying loan-taker and turning dependents into responsible, autonomous citizens. This paper, based on research in the debt advice sector in England, shows that dependency may involve unexpected directionalities of reliance. (Those who appear as state dependents in one register can be those depended upon in another.) It focuses in particular on encounters with migrants, describing what the process of 'transnational householding' tells us about dependency. It discusses the relations between advisers and clients, showing how advice charities create a parallel system of care and support. A punitive and debt-based welfare system means that many clients owe money to the state as well as to commercial creditors. Austerity and welfare reform are rendering individuals' obligations to family members and others fragile and insecure. But given advisers' intervention between a hostile bureaucracy and debtors, the experience of reckoning, owing money and settling accounts can end up as something more akin to householding than to controlling discipline.

Financialization and the Household

“…At the same time, the state itself, especially at the local level, struggled to balance its own budgets, often having difficulties in finding the money to fund such welfare claims. These combined deficits led to an imperative to "sort out income" for citizens of few and modest means ( James & Kirwan 2020).…”

Owing Everyone: Debt Advice in the UK’s Time of Austerity

“…By (part-) funding advisors who will phone the Department of Works and Pensions to chase up any outstanding benefits applications or payments or contact HMRC to correct official errors in giving out 'tax credits', the council tries to make sure the client has as much 'income' as she can legitimately claim. Against that income from the centralised benefits system, efforts can be made to repay whatever debts she has: both to the council and to private creditors, but with the 'priority debt' classification privileging the former (James & Kirwan 2019). This approach serves both to help and support the recipient of welfare benefits and to ensure that rent arrears do not accumulate and leave the council out of pocket.…”