Citizenship, as a concept, has been fundamental to social policy analysis since its inception. Often this has relied on the initial tripartite framework, which has been open to challenge through increasing awareness of diversity, not just within nations but also across them. Yet the importance of citizenship for understanding access to, and experience of, welfare support remains fundamental. As such, the contribution made by Edmiston in Welfare, inequality and social citizenship offers an important revisiting of the concept in the aftermath of the financial crisis and lingering austerity.
Framing welfare debates in relation to citizenship has been an important endeavour in the formation of welfare systems. It ensures that an element of solidarity and collectivism underpins the universal treatment of members of a nation and the protection of their collective and individual rights. Yet, through his analysis of research, participants lived experiences, Edmiston demonstrates how the concept of citizenship creates individualism and fracture the solidaristic bonds, which once underpinned support for welfare recipients.
Identifying two worrying trends, this analysis is fundamental to rethinking a defence of welfare provision in the coming years. First, Edmiston illustrates how narratives have shifted to individual accounts of social problems whilst structurally generated inequalities create unequal citizens, which underpins an increasingly commodified and individualistic series of welfare reforms. Second, because of the first development, this fragmentation erodes the equality of status that existed between citizens within the previous welfare settlement. Those who fail to engage as fully neo-liberal citizens, from Edmiston's evidence, lose their claims to universal/collective welfare support.
This worrying trend demonstrates the rise in “anti-social citizenship”. In this context, regressive fiscal and welfare reforms have not only fragmented the sense of citizenship but generated different experiences depending on one's level of affluence. Edmiston is clear in his review of both “deprived” and “affluent” citizens, to illustrate the difference generated by the current dominate welfare paradigm. Thus for the deprived their marginality removes their status as equal members of society whilst, for the affluent, a sense of having a stake in society is fostered. As Edmiston concludes this is fundamental to understanding the material interests, individual interests and policy preferences of citizens. Rather than rely on persistent, taken-for-granted assumptions about citizenship, which seek to balance individual and communal interests, the analysis disrupts such complacent assumptions to illustrate how material hardship creates an acute awareness of loss of agency whilst the affluent assume that agency can influence circumstances. Thus the structural causes of inequality, and their reflection through institutional arrangements and dominant welfare paradigms, shape lay understandings of citizen lives which reinforces, for the affluent, individualised, pathological explanations of social problems and a commitment to self-help solutions creating new challenges for efforts to generate a welfare paradigm built upon collectivism and solidarity – on the equality of social rights.
Whilst Edmiston makes several recommendations for future research into citizenship and inequality, he also promotes a call to arms for a more “vocal” reform of welfare. Rather than seek reforms through stealth redistribution, he suggests there is a need for a more overt, and honest, debate about the nature of inequality and the vital importance of retributive welfare in tackling the sources (and outcomes) of inequality. The passionate suggesting will resonate with many readers of the book exactly how this is framed within wider political and policy debate (inside and outside of academia and politics); and how this can in turn inform the lay accounts of citizenship, which Edmiston exposes, remains a central challenge for contemporary social reform. Without this language the key challenge which Edmiston draws out – the difficultly of (re)creating a narrative around social citizen based on equality –becomes difficult to establish. Part of this project requires an explicit recognition of the role of structural factors and the impact this has on the agency of those whose material circumstances would have traditionally entitled them to welfare support.
Overall, the book is engaging, thought-provoking and well written. It will be integral to future debates about citizenship and welfare provision. Part of its significance will rest in the worrying reality it has revealed. Some common assumptions within Social Policy will need rethinking if a successful argument is to be made in efforts to challenge austerity politics and reinvigorate the welfare state (for those who wish to make such arguments). Additionally it provides an important lens for the analysis of citizens’ lived-experience to be applied broadly across a range of social problems to offer a richer account of citizen access and experience of welfare support.
