Author: Andreas Cebulla
Cebulla, Andreas, 2016 Welfare to work, welfare dynamics and uncertainty, Flinders University, School of Social and Policy Studies
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The publications in this thesis combine economic and social research in three principal areas:
(a) the evaluation of welfare activation programs; (b) the study of welfare dynamics and (c) the
study of intergenerational changes in labour market transitions.
Activation programs, such as job search initiatives, have come to define public policy in the last
three decades. The aim of bringing together the three research areas is to reflect on activation
in light of empirical evidence of increasingly fragmented personal biographies. This
fragmentation, itself associated with more diverse labour market opportunities, choices and
experiences, challenges notions of universal programmatic solutions to unemployment and
social need.
Welfare activation signalled not only the emergence of a new social and economic policy
paradigm, but also a resurgence of an understanding of human behaviour as innately deviant,
yet also deeply rational. This understanding assumed that providing welfare had unintended
behavioural consequences, as individuals, in a rather calculated manner, chose to become
‘welfare dependent’. Such behaviour threatened to undermine or negate public policy. In the
view of public authorities and the academic community, this called for new behaviourist
interventions, which, in welfare policy, resulted in the increased conditionality of welfare
payments.
In sociology, the debate about the rationality of human behaviour ensued in the shadow of an
emerging sociology of risk (Beck 1992, Giddens 1998). Intellectual debate about the
relationship between societal structure and individual agency (Archer 2003) questioned the
extent to which an individual can have agency (is ‘free’) to negotiate structural obstacles. The
answer to this empirical question affects our comprehension of the scope for welfare
activation, as the latter builds on personal capabilities that can only be assumed to the extent
that agency is empirically validated and practically facilitated (Sen 1985).
With respect to activation policy, the publications in this thesis review the impact of activation
policies in the United Kingdom and the USA. The objective of that research is to determine the
effectiveness of the new, activating social policy in increasing employment and reducing
welfare receipts. The studies find often small, but typically statistically significant impacts of
welfare activation programs in the US and the UK. They also highlight variations in impacts
between populations and effects of local environmental factors, such as unemployment rates.
With respect to the study of social dynamics, the publications’ objective is to ascertain the
extent to which welfare dependency is a fixed state rather than in flux, and to understand the
iv
perceptions and welfare experiences of a particularly marginalised group of people who (need
to) rely on welfare: substance users. The studies find that people churn between welfare
statuses; substance users display an optimistic determination to return to work.
On intergenerational change in labour market transitions, the studies’ objective is to examine
how transitions from education in work have changed in the last half century. They also seek
empirically to assess the validity of the thesis of risk society theory of escalating uncertainty.
The emerging evidence supports the uncertainty thesis; the evidence shows that achieving job
aspirations has become more difficult.
The findings’ relevance to constructing an ‘enabling’ welfare system, which incorporates
labour market activation as a positive, rights-based facilitator, is discussed in a concluding
section on future research directions.
Keywords: welfare to work, youth, labour markets, risk, uncertainty, social exclusion
Subject: Social Work thesis, Policy and Administration thesis, Social Administration thesis
Thesis type: Doctor of Philosophy
Completed: 2016
School: School of Social and Policy Studies
Supervisor: Gerry Redmond