The Benefit Sanction: A Correctional Device or a Weapon of Disgust?. (March 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Redman, Jamie
• Is Part Of: Sociological research online. Volume 25:Number 1(2020)
• Page Start: 84
• Page End: 100
• Publication Date: 2020-03
• Subjects: benefit sanctions -- economic citizenship -- punishment -- stigma -- welfare reform; Sociology -- Periodicals; Sociology -- Methodology -- Periodicals; Sociology -- Research -- Periodicals; 301
• DOI: 10.1177/1360780419851132
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1360-7804

Abstract

The benefit sanction is a dominant activation policy in Britain's 'welfare-to-work' regime. While policymakers believe in their necessity to correct behaviour, research shows benefit sanctions cause additional harm to Britain's marginalised groups. Drawing upon a small-scale qualitative study, this article first navigates new territory, mapping the ways stigma emerges from the state – channelled through the benefit sanction – and manifests in the lives of sanctioned claimants. Acknowledging wider evidence, the sanction is then argued to have failed as a correctional device. Rather, taking into account Britain's current politico-economic climate, the sanction appears as a weapon used to incite negative emotion in an attempt to police the boundaries of the labour market, while frequently abandoning some of the UK's most vulnerable citizens.