The Impacts of Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions Support and Behaviour Change

Should a citizen’s right to social welfare be contingent on their personal behaviour?

Welfare conditionality, linking citizens’ eligibility for social benefits and services to prescribed compulsory responsibilities or behaviours, has become a key component of welfare reform in many nations.

This book uses qualitative longitudinal data, from repeat interviews with people subject to compulsion and sanction in their everyday lives, to analyse the effectiveness and ethicality of welfare conditionality in promoting and sustaining behaviour change in the UK.

Given the negative outcomes that welfare conditionality routinely triggers, this book calls for the abandonment of these sanctions and reiterates the importance of genuinely supportive policies that promote social security and wider equality.

Peter Dwyer is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of York. His research and teaching focuses on social citizenship. He led the large ESRC funded Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions Support and Behaviour Change (2013-2019) project.

Lisa Scullion is Professor of Social Policy and Co-Director in the Sustainable Housing and Urban Studies Unit at the University of Salford.

Katy Jones is Research Fellow in the Centre for Decent Work and Productivity at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Jenny McNeill is Project Manager at Groundswell. She previously worked at the University of Sheffield and University of York on the Welfare Conditionality project.

Alasdair B. R. Stewart is Lecturer in Social and Public Policy in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow.