ABSTRACT

This chapter considers how ordinary social practices, in this case claiming state welfare benefits because of worklessness and financial necessity, have come to be seen as a form of deviance, particularly within the popular media and by some politicians. As a consequence large swaths of the working class have become demonised. Some might look to welfare claimants for signs of resistance to contemporary capitalism’s degrading forms of work, or might think to find examples of canny ‘ducking and diving’ that outwits the state benefits bureaucracy. Yet what many sociologists, social policy researchers and psychologists will tell them is that, in fact, unemployed people tend to have deeply conventional views about the moral, social and financial value of working.