Suchergebnisse

Over the last three decades, welfare states across the West have embraced a host of new technologies and initiatives in the name of fighting welfare abuse and fraud (see Cook 1989, 2006; Wacquant 2001, 2009). Increasingly, these practices of 'welfare policing' are graduated according to risk; particular welfare populations considered at greater risk of welfare fraud are subject to more intense scrutiny. Drawing on interview research with compliance staff from the Australian Department of Human Services, this paper critically explores how the rationality of risk figures in the process of welfare surveillance in Australia. It pays particular attention to the ways in which risk formulations are embedded in gender and class politics, and how this has led to the characterisation of single mothers and unemployed recipients as more 'risky' than the general welfare population, a point that is often overlooked in the literature. But, far from being immutable, this paper also considers how the politics of risk are open to reformulation with often unexpected results.

Over the last three decades, welfare states across the West have embraced a host of new technologies and initiatives in the name of fighting welfare abuse and fraud (see Cook 1989, 2006; Wacquant 2001, 2009). Increasingly, these practices of 'welfare policing' are graduated according to risk; particular welfare populations considered at greater risk of welfare fraud are subject to more intense scrutiny. Drawing on interview research with compliance staff from the Australian Department of Human Services, this paper critically explores how the rationality of risk figures in the process of welfare surveillance in Australia. It pays particular attention to the ways in which risk formulations are embedded in gender and class politics, and how this has led to the characterisation of single mothers and unemployed recipients as more 'risky' than the general welfare population, a point that is often overlooked in the literature. But, far from being immutable, this paper also considers how the politics of risk are open to reformulation with often unexpected results.

This thesis critically and systematically explores the set of strategies deployed by the Australian Department of Human Services (DHS) in the name of fighting social security fraud and other forms of unlawful welfare claiming, known as the welfare compliance program. These strategies include pre-emptive data surveillance, payment reviews, a dedicated fraud tip-off line and fraud investigation and prosecution strategies.To examine Australia's welfare compliance program, this thesis draws on a Foucauldian governmentality analytic and critical theories of crime, policing and the welfare state. These analytical and theoretical tools are supplemented with interview data derived from semi-structured participant interviews with DHS officials and social security lawyers as well as documentary data gathered for this thesis research. Using this interdisciplinary research framework, this thesis charts and analyses specific welfare compliance strategies and the logics and practices that underpin them. It considers how welfare non-compliance is policed and the ways in which these policing practices may shape the contours of welfare administration. The focus of analysis is on the extent to which welfare compliance mechanisms are informed and shaped by criminal justice logics and practices, and their effects on welfare delivery.This thesis argues that the emergence of Australia's contemporary welfare compliance regime has been deemed necessary and realisable because of the production of social security recipients as putative criminals, or at least prone to criminality. The growth of the welfare compliance regime has facilitated the spread of criminal justice logics and practices into the arena of welfare administration. The overall effect of this regime is to restrict access to social security, punish recipients and stigmatise welfare use. But, this thesis research also highlights the variability and multiplicity in the enactment of specific welfare compliance initiatives. This illustrates that the criminalisation of social security receipt is neither uniform nor inexorable.