The Social Division of Welfare Surveillance

Henman, Paul; Marston, Greg

doi:10.1017/s0047279407001705

Cited by 50 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Her research found that income tax fraud and welfare fraud are similar in many ways (compliance and disclosure of personal information), yet are strikingly different in 'public attitudes, in the scope of surveillance in place to detect wrongdoing, in the processing of suspected cases, and in the sentencing of offenders' (101). Like Henman and Marston's (2008) work, this finding shows how the intersections of social divisions (class, gender, race) can profoundly impact one's chances of navigating government services. Under neoliberalism, white-collar crime and fraud is 'business as usual' (Snider 2003) and a by-product of individual and corporate freedom while those who have to resort to social assistance are potentially guilty until proven innocent.…”

Section: C) Costs Vs Savings? Surveillance and The Corporatization Omentioning

confidence: 68%

“…28 The auditor general report admits its lack of vigour in surveilling corporations to comply with tax regulations, 'We concluded that where corporations did not voluntarily comply with the provisions of the Ontario Corporations Tax Act, the Ministry did not have adequate policies and procedures in place to ensure that the appropriate amount of corporations tax was being declared and remitted by taxpayers in accordance with statutory requirements ' (2002, 6). 29 See Henman and Marston (2008). 30 For more information on white-collar crime, see Snider (2000;2003).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is evident in relation to workfare, anti-fraud measures and centralizing state power. Henman and Marston's (2008) work on welfare surveillance, articulates the 'contradictions embedded in liberal welfare states in relation to surveillance where the liberal principles of freedom of choice and individual liberties are suspended for populations receiving certain forms of welfare ' (194).…”

Section: A) Understanding Governance and State Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Neoliberal Deviants and Surveillance: Welfare Recipients under the watchful eye of Ontario Works

Maki

2011

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This article examines the current practices of welfare surveillance in Ontario Works (OW). Although neoliberal policy changes to social assistance have been well documented by a variety of scholars, the surveillance technologies behind them have received less scrutiny. The article questions how new surveillance technologies have transformed the administration and everyday practices of OW. Based on primary research of policy documents, legislation, regulations and directives, the paper explores the eight surveillance tools used to police OW recipients including the Consolidated Verification Procedure (CVP); Maintenance Enforcement with Computer Assistance (MECA); Service Delivery Model Technology (SDMT); Ontario Works Eligibility Criteria; Eligibility Review Officers (EROs); Audit of Recipients; Drug Testing and Welfare Fraud Hotlines. I argue the Ontario Works Act (OWA) 1997 justified increased surveillance, regulation and control of poor families creating new forms of surveillance. Additionally, the rationales behind the implementation of OW surveillance (anti-fraud and workfare) were unjustified and have made OW recipients, particularly racialized single mothers more vulnerable. Using a feminist political economy critique, the article endeavours to explore the gendered, classed and racialized implications of welfare surveillance and the expanding ways the state has created 'deviants' out of those who fail to be 'good market citizens'.

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Section: C) Costs Vs Savings? Surveillance and The Corporatization Omentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A) Understanding Governance and State Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Neoliberal Deviants and Surveillance: Welfare Recipients under the watchful eye of Ontario Works

Maki

2011

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“…Moffatt (1996) investigates how welfare agencies in the United States have historically operated as a technology of power to discipline low-income women in order to achieve increased social stability. Henman and Marston (2008) argue that surveillance unevenly impacts low income people and reinforces the social power of the privileged. Little (1994) In perhaps the most extensive work on the subject, Gilliom (2001) reports on how low-income women negotiate the surveillance in their lives as they receive welfare.…”

Section: Surveillance and Low-income Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leprosy and the Plague: State Surveillance of Low-Income Fathers

Myers

Wilson

2013

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Foucault’s theory of state social control contrasts societal responses to leprosy, where deviants are exiled from society but promised freedom from social demands, and the plague, where deviants are controlled and surveyed within society but receive some state assistance in exchange for their cooperation.In this paper, I analyze how low-income fathers in the United States simultaneously experience social control consistent with leprosy and social control consistent with the plague but do not receive the social benefits that Foucault associates with either status.Through interviews with 57 low-income fathers, I investigate the role of state surveillance in their family lives through child support enforcement, the criminal justice system, and child protective services.Because they did not receive any benefits from compliance with this surveillance, they resisted it, primarily by dropping “off the radar.”Men justified their resistance in four ways: they had their own material needs, they did not want the child, they did not want to separate from their child’s mother or compliance was unnecessary.This resistance is consistent with Foucault’s distinction between leprosy and the plague.They believed that they did not receive the social benefits accorded to plague victims, so they attempted to be treated like lepers, excluded from social benefits but with no social demands or surveillance.

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“…But it also makes visible the ways in which old and new meanings about gender, poverty and criminality fundamentally shape definitions of riskiness, and how welfare surveillance practices play out more generally. This is a point that is routinely overlooked in analyses of risk (HannahMoffat and O'Malley 2007;Henman and Marston 2008 In this paper, I first set out the governmentality approach that I employ in this article. I then turn to an examination of the emergence and consolidation of risk rationalities in the Australian social security system.…”

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confidence: 99%

Policing Welfare: Risk, Gender and Criminality

Wilcock

2016

Int J for Crime, Justice & Social Democracy

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Over the last three decades, welfare states across the West have embraced a host of new technologies and initiatives in the name of fighting welfare abuse and fraud (see Cook 1989Cook , 2006Wacquant 2001Wacquant , 2009). Increasingly, these practices of 'welfare policing' are graduated according to risk; particular welfare populations considered at greater risk of welfare fraud are subject to more intense scrutiny. Drawing on interview research with compliance staff from the Australian Department of Human Services, this paper critically explores how the rationality of risk figures in the process of welfare surveillance in Australia. It pays particular attention to the ways in which risk formulations are embedded in gender and class politics, and how this has led to the characterisation of single mothers and unemployed recipients as more 'risky' than the general welfare population, a point that is often overlooked in the literature. But, far from being immutable, this paper also considers how the politics of risk are open to reformulation with often unexpected results. Keywords

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The Social Division of Welfare Surveillance

Cited by 50 publications

References 28 publications

Neoliberal Deviants and Surveillance: Welfare Recipients under the watchful eye of Ontario Works

Neoliberal Deviants and Surveillance: Welfare Recipients under the watchful eye of Ontario Works

Leprosy and the Plague: State Surveillance of Low-Income Fathers

Policing Welfare: Risk, Gender and Criminality

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