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Underpinned by the idea of the right to a ‘basic minimum’, welfare states are a major feature of many societies. However, the lived experiences of persons seeking and receiving welfare payments can often be overlooked.
This book seeks to remedy this omission by honouring lived experience as valuable, insightful and necessary. It draws on qualitative interviews with 19 people receiving various working age welfare payments in Ireland to explore stigma, social reciprocity and the notions of the deserving and undeserving poor, and to analyse welfare conditionality in the Irish context.
Breaking new ground, this book offers original research findings which contest and inform policy both within Ireland and beyond.
Foreword by Fred Powell
Introduction
1. Setting the Stage: The Development of the Irish Welfare State and its Place in the World of Welfare
2. Welfare, Marginality and Social Liminality: Life in the Welfare ‘Space’
3. The Effect of the Work Ethic
4. Welfare Conditionality
5. Maintaining Compliance and Engaging in Impression Management
6. Deservingness: Othering, Self-Justification and the Norm of Reciprocity
7. Welfare is 'Bad' Bringing It All Together
8. COVID-19: Policy Responses and Lived Experiences
Conclusion