Encounters with the centaur state: Advanced urban marginality and the practices and ethics of welfare sanctions regimes

Abstract

This article examines the relationships between advanced urban marginality and new forms of state craft to regulate marginalised populations, specifically Wacquant’s concept of the centaur state and the use of conditionality mechanisms in the British welfare state. The article empirically explores the experiences and perspectives of welfare practitioners and subjects. It finds some evidence of an inculcation of elite narratives and understandings of urban marginality and incidences of antagonism. However, the orientations and ethical frameworks of those deploying or subject to processes of sanctioning within reconfigured welfare regimes are more differentiated and ambiguous than both governmental discourse and critical urban studies often suggest.