Young people, individualism, and welfare conditionality over time

Rochow, Thomas (2023) Young people, individualism, and welfare conditionality over time. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Edited abstract.

Labour activation backed up by behavioural regulation is now ubiquitous in policy approaches which seek to address worklessness and poverty in advanced capitalist societies. Conditionality is fundamental to the design of contemporary social security systems, which operate on the basis that behavioural changes on an individual level can overcome structural barriers.

This thesis explores young people’s experiences of conditional social security systems in the UK, and how they navigate and respond to behavioural regulation, insecure employment, conditional housing pathways, and worklessness over time. The thesis employs secondary analysis of qualitative longitudinal data, of a youth (16-25) sub-sample comprised of 56 young people and 114 total interviews, drawn from the Welfare Conditionality Project (2013-2019), to understand how young people who experience conditional social security systems make sense of the behavioural regulation and how they conceptualise pathways to their future aspirations.

Recent generations of young people in the UK have transitioned to adulthood during a period of insecure labour markets, unaffordable housing, welfare retrenchment, economic recessions, and the proliferation of self-help discourses. Young people who cannot rely on informal support are increasingly unlikely to realise the traditional cornerstones of adulthood: secure employment and owner-occupied housing. These markers of adulthood have been restructured and restricted for recent generations of young people. However, the market-orientated state enforces onus on the individual to realise a secure future.

Self-improvement discourses and individualised futures have been particularly significant for recent generations of young people. Their transitions to adulthood have coincided with the explosion in the self-help mindset: that challenges in life should be addressed, and aspirations realised, through adapting individual psyche. On the surface this appears empowering; those who are struggling in the contemporary labour market are provided with the tools to supposedly unlock their potential. In practice however, this behaviourist framing of labour market outcomes can undermine structural inequalities and covertly maintain the existing social order by upholding the concept of a meritocracy. The findings of this thesis suggest that young people who experience welfare conditionality are likely to buy into the ideology of behavioural policies but are unlikely to realise secure transitions to adulthood.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General); H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Urban Studies
• Funder's Name: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
• Supervisor's Name: Wright, Professor Sharon and Wong, Dr. Mark
• Date of Award: 2023
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2023-83969
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 01 Dec 2023 15:38
• Last Modified: 13 Mar 2024 09:30
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.83969
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/83969