Welfare Reform and the Logic of Financial Responsibility: Creating the ‘Value-able’ Subject

Abstract

Financialisation has driven many transformations across advanced capitalist economies and their welfare systems have not been immune from such change. Finance works both as structural force in society, and as a more contingent and contextual set of practices that place demands on the conduct of individuals and the welfare system lies at the intersection of these tendencies. Financial markets have long played a role in the provision of housing or pensions, but are also becoming increasingly visible in benefit systems targeting the poor and economically excluded. Given the exclusionary nature of finance and the marginal assistance it provides to those on low incomes, tensions and contradictions emerge that demand further investigation. This article takes as a case study the recent reform of UK welfare known as Universal Credit and the specific discourse of ‘financial responsibility’ that has emerged around it. This has brought the disciplinary toolkit of the welfare state to bear on ensuring the population meets the demands of financial valuation. Yet the difficulties these reforms have faced suggest that the logics of finance and welfare will always be pulling in different directions.