One step forward, one step back, one to the side – The Taylor Review into employment practices

Pierre Bourdieu once warned that television encourages ‘fast-thinking’, a form of commentary that is antithetical to the slow rigorous analyses in which academics and intellectuals should engage. Social media create an even stronger incentive to join public debates as early as possible, to avoid the risk of only contributing when attention has already shifted to another topic.

The publication today of the much awaited Taylor Review into ‘Employment Practices in the Modern Economy’ strongly illustrates this point, with a flurry of commentary published shortly after (or even before) the report has become available. These comments (including obviously this one) inevitably have a preliminary character; they ought to be confirmed, adjusted or refuted once the dust has settled and a clearer picture of the review and especially its material impact on working conditions in Britain emerges. And yet a few points already are visible, like the contours of a skyline on the horizon. It seems the Taylor Review is marked by multiple ambivalences that speak against a simplistic response of either praising or dismissing it swiftly:

First, the review is, from a political perspective, both current and dated. It is current because it rightly acknowledges and puts at the centre of public debate (at least for a moment) the crucial question of employment conditions - even if the rhetoric of the report itself attempts to mitigate against the impression of a profound change, for example by arguing that levels of full-time standard employment remain on a high level of 60% (p.24), or by stressing that the apparent rise in ‘zero hours contracts’ may be primarily due to an “improved recognition” of this employment type (p.25).

Notwithstanding, the continuous degradation of employment conditions has been one of the key pillars of neoliberal global capitalism, with its intrinsic tendency to transfer risks and exposure to the volatility of markets to individual workers and employees, in order to boost the profitability of businesses and the competitiveness of corporations as well as national economies. And while this economic model staggers on despite its apparent instability, its legitimacy has arguably been eroded substantially at latest since the ‘crisis’ of 2007 – to the point that addressing the question of employment conditions no longer is ‘only’ a matter of social justice and economic sustainability, but also of maintaining a democratic political order.

At the same time, the report is already somehow dated, as it was commissioned with political conditions in mind that failed to materialise. When Theresa May launched the review in October 2016, the aim was to underpin the Prime Minister’s first speech in office, in which tackling social divisions and injustices to help those who “just about manage” were elevated to major policy priorities. This attempt to redefine the orientation of the Conservative Party was partly built on the assumption that, due to the weakness of the Labour Party (and social democracy in general), a realignment of British politics in favour of the political right was possible. With the outcome of the latest general election, May’s ensuing weakness as Tory leader and Prime Minister, and the increased strength of Labour, the political context of the Taylor Review is largely different. It hence remains to be seen to what extent its recommendations can be implemented against the more extreme ‘small government’ faction within the Conservative Party and an emboldened Labour Party that is likely to oppose the review’s findings as ‘too little, too late’.

Secondly, the recommendations are both substantial and inconsequential. They are substantial in light of the acknowledgement that the regulatory framework for the labour market requires adjustments to restrict the ability of employers who exploit non-standard forms of employment such as ‘zero hours contracts’, agency work or bogus self-employment to act as they please - by imposing, for example, a more stringent test to determine the employment status of a person (p.35), and by strengthening the enforcement of existing rules by facilitating access to employment tribunals to assess a person’s employment status (p.62). All which is going against the trend of ever increasing ‘flexibility’ of employment. The report furthermore endorses a comprehensive understanding of ‘quality work’ (p.12-15), and underlines that ‘flexibility’ can be imposed by employers without granting reciprocal benefits (p.43).

While it can indeed be argued, like trade unions have done, that the creation of the new status of ‘dependent contractors’ to replace the current category of ‘workers’ (p. 35) simply replaces one type of employment status with restricted employment rights by another, the rights that would come with this status would nevertheless represent a small, incremental improvement in social protection of people who are currently regarded incorrectly as self-employed, for example by providing holiday and sickness pay.

This is unsurprisingly far from enough from a progressive point of view, but it seems fair to say that anyone who hoped for more radical conclusions from this review must have misunderstood its political function and remit. The report clearly embraces the current doxa, according to which low levels of labour market regulation are intrinsically positive and are seen as a sign for a dynamic economy (p.17).

However, even from a more benevolent perspective, the review’s findings are also quite inconsequential on the larger scale, as the review operates within an intellectual framework that is partially outdated and that therefore struggles to draw conclusions that can appropriately tackle the question of vulnerable employment. Its overall premise is a combination of light-touch regulation with an increased reliance on negotiations between employers and employees within companies, with a focus on giving employees a stronger ‘voice’ and improving workplace transparency (pp. 52-54). This is encapsulated neatly in Taylor’s fourth principle for fair and decent work, which stresses that “better work is not national regulation but responsible corporate governance, good management and strong employment relations within the organisation” (p.9).

This approach suffers from a fundamental flaw: Although the report recognises power imbalances as a root cause of insecure work (p.26), it ultimately assumes a generally benign balance of power between employers and employees; an equilibrium that simply does not exist for all employees, self-employed and workers, due to the structural constraints of the contemporary British labour market in which especially low-paid workers and employees of the service industry are intrinsically disadvantaged and are unable to exercise the kind of pressure on employers that would be needed to engage in meaningful and fair negotiations.

It is of course undeniable that a substantive share of the self-employed and of ‘gig economy’ workers are able to defend their interests effectively but the role of the law as expression of the general will is to establish shared standards and rules that cannot be undercut and that hence protect the weakest members of society from abuse and hardship, as expressed in the often cited saying by Lacordaire “Between the strong and the weak, between the rich and the poor, between the lord and the slave, it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free.” By stressing that the existing employment “works well and is flexible enough to deal with new ways of working”, and that it is merely its varied interpretation that causes problems (p.33), the review attempts to foreclose any more far-reaching and radical discussion of labour market flexibility and its social impact.

This problem is illustrated in almost farcical form by the following quote regarding agency workers, on p. 48 of the report (but other similar quotes can be found easily): “The Government should introduce a right to request a direct contract of employment for agency workers who have been placed with the same hirer for 12 months, and an obligation on the hirer to consider the request in a reasonable manner.” All employers using agency workers to cut their wage bill and transfer the volatility of demand onto workers will already shake in their boots.

Having said this, even in the current political context, the report has the potential to stimulate public debates and introduces a number of interesting proposals, notably regarding self-employment (including changes to taxation and national insurance contributions), which merit further more careful study. Despite its overall conservative and incremental orientation, it re-politicises the topic of employment conditions and thus ideally will open up a debate about wage-labour-related problems that for too long have been side-lined.

Enrico Reuter – follow me on Twitter

It’s UC and the MIF, not NICs, we should be focusing on!

Since the 2008 financial crisis, self-employment as a sector of the British labour market has increased sharply, and accounts for nearly one third of the growth in employment figures since 2010. The rate of self-employment now stands at approximately 15% of the labour force, in other words about 4.64 million individuals (BoE, 2015; ONS 2016). Self-employment has “outstripped growth in permanent employment by 3 to 1 in the last decade” (O’Leary, 2015: 9) and has “accounted for nearly half of the increase in total employment since the recession” (Deane, 2016: 7).

It is some of this group (those earning more than £16,250 pa) that were most concerned by the changes in National Insurance Contributions (NICs) for the self-employed announced by the Chancellor Phillip Hammond in the 2017 Budget in the House of Commons on 8^th March 2017.

As a relatively small change in the Budget, the Chancellor announced that Class 4 NICs for the self-employed would rise from 9% to 10% in April 2018 – and then to 11% in April 2019 – on income up to the higher rate threshold of £45,000 pa. The new rates are still lower than for employees who pay NICs at 12% on the same income levels, while both groups will continue to pay at 2% on income above the higher rate threshold.

This caused a great deal of furore in various circles, both in The Guardian and The Telegraph amongst others, and not a little traffic on my Twitter timeline with a range of people arguing for this change as well as against. What didn’t make it through the knee-jerk reactions was that only those of the self-employed earning in excess of £30,000pa would be worse off – so whilst no one likes paying more, it was in its own way progressive.

However, not only did this change to NICs fall foul of the 2015 Conservative Party election manifesto’s commitment to a 5 year lock against income tax and NI rises, but combined with the scrutiny that the Chancellor’s decision was put under, and coupled with the political capital that is being used by the Prime Minister to push through the unnecessary and damaging hard Brexit, saw the decision reversed in a matter of days.

I’d suggest that the focus of the (social) media-led outrage was misplaced. The real culprit affecting self-employed persons on low incomes is Universal Credit (UC), and specifically the Minimum Income Floor (MIF):

The most pertinent element of UC and self-employment in relation to vulnerability is the MIF, which applies to those who make a claim for UC and who have been self-employed for a minimum of twelve months. As the DWP (2016) makes clear, the “MIF is an assumed level of earnings”, based on an expectation of what a similarly gainfully employed person might be expected to earn. An individual’s MIF is calculated on the basis of:

Age applicable national minimum wage rate per hour x expected hours per week x 52 weeks = annual gross income, divided by 12 = gross monthly income

For the self-employed to claim Universal Credit, earnings must be declared to the DWP on a month by month basis, and if an individual’s earnings exceed their set MIF, self-employed claimants will receive less UC. However, if they earn less than their MIF, they will receive no increase in their UC, and in addition the MIF is only reviewed on an annual basis. Those who are self-employed are liable to earn less than employees and their income is likely to fluctuate throughout the year. In evidence given to the Work and Pensions Committee on 22/01/17, both Victoria Todd from the Low Income Tax Group and Benedict Dellot from the RSA suggested that a relatively low paid self-employed individual claiming Universal Credit will be worse off than an employee earning the same amount.

Clearly Universal Credit and the MIF disadvantages those who are self-employed, and this further increases their economic vulnerability as a result of a potentially fluctuating income and a social protection system that clearly fails to take account of this.

So although it is a clear truism that no one likes the idea of increased NICs, the real problem for the self-employed is Universal Credit and the Minimum Income Floor. It is this which the public, press and politicians should be aiming their ire towards. It is this which increases the likelihood of in-work poverty for those who, we are told, are a clear sign of success for the UK economy and are in part a driver of recovery both from the 2008 crisis and the inevitable fallout from Theresa May’s decision to pursue an ultra-hard Brexit… but that is a topic for another blog on another day.

Kevin Caraher – follow me on Twitter

Sources:

Bank Of England (2015) Self-employment: what can we learn from recent developments?, Quarterly Bulletin 2015 Q1, http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2015/q105.pdf

Deane, J. (2015) Self Employment Review: An independent report, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/505561/ind-16-2-self-employment-review.pdf

Department for Work & Pensions (2016), ‘Universal Credit and self-employment’, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-and-self-employment-quick-guide/universal-credit-and-self-employment-quick-guide

O’Leary, D. (2014) ‘Going it alone’, http://www.demos.co.uk/files/DEMOS_GoingitAlone_web.pdf?1409503024

ONS (2016). UK Labour Market: April 2016: Estimates of employment, unemployment, economic inactivity and other employment related statistics for the UK, https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/april2016#employment

‘Go getters’ who go get lunch – Vulnerable self-employment and social policy

The ‘gig economy’, ‘uberisation’, ’portfolio careers’ – these are just three of the buzzwords or phrases that are used to capture a profound change in how people work, build a career (or: develop a profession, for those who baulk at the idea of having ‘a career’), develop a sense of self and personal identity, and gain the income to buy all the goods and services on which depends and appears to depend a good living standard.

Despite all differences between these and other labels, they share the assumption that the traditional form of employment, encapsulated in the idea of a long working life in the profession for which one was educated and trained, with a comfortable retirement as final phase, is bound to become a rarity, both longed for by some thanks to the stability it offers, and dreaded by others because of the ‘iron cage’ of a narrow, predetermined path through life it represents.

It matters little in this context that this ‘traditional form of employment’ (that has had its undeniable shortcomings and that should not be glorified too much as part of a general nostalgia for the so-called ‘golden age’ of the three post-war decades) is a very young invention, strongly tied to the model of industrial and post-industrial welfare capitalism that dominated the second half of the 20^th century; an invention that therefore not surprisingly runs out of steam at precisely the moment when, on the one hand, the post-war approach to social protection is more and more undermined and questioned, while on the other hand the sustainability of a globalised capitalist order appears as increasingly doubtful, not only because of the enormous social and environmental damages it causes but also because it fails to produce the gains for the many on which its legitimacy is built.

In this particular setting, enter the idealised personality type of our current period: the ‘entrepreneurial self’ (Bröckling, 2016), the person who understands that to have a ‘good life’, it takes continued individual efforts, constant mobilisation, personal investment and high flexibility, in order to deal with all the challenges and to seek all the opportunities that life offers. In other words, a person who relies primarily on themselves to succeed, ignoring the core insight from any introductory sociology course that humans are intrinsically social beings that are defined by their surroundings, and thrive most within a collective.

While this ideal serves as beacon and goal for everyone, its demands are particularly challenging for an increasing share of the working population: To juggle different (more or less paid) jobs and projects and hence manage a ‘portfolio career’, to be presentable and attractive to new clients in the ‘gig economy’, and to secure a decent income from ‘uberised’ jobs, in other words jobs that have none of the protections that ‘traditional’ full-time employment offered and still offers, being highly active in such an individualised sense is a core requirement. It no longer suffices to sell one’s labour force and to be competent, it now is essential to sell one’s entire personality, to show prospective buyers not just professional skills but also the right attitude of a proper ‘go getter’ – even if one just goes to get someone their lunch by driving around on a bike through a polluted city.

Legally, many of these ‘new’ jobs (that could also be called ‘old’ jobs, harking back to the times of day labour) fall into the realm of self-employment, even though this categorisation can be and is contested, like in the case of Deliveroo, purveyor of a fashionable form of ‘meals on wheels’ for the busy urbanite. Being self-employed conveys a sense of autonomy, but also the risk of self-exploitation and weak or non-existent social protection or benefits, such as sick pay or paid leave. In the context of a steep rise in self-employment in the UK over the last years, we can observe an increased share of those who either just get by (as indicated by the median income having fallen much steeper for the self-employed than for employees) or are bogusly self-employed (because they have only one client, often their former employer who found a neat way of liberating themselves from any responsibility of the employee’s or worker’s well-being and the reproduction of their labour force). It is these self-employed, who are living under precarious material conditions while being asked to take full personal responsibility for their fate, that my colleague Kevin Caraher and I have defined as most vulnerable.

But beyond the personal circumstances of the vulnerable self-employed, one essential question emerges: Given that all markets are inevitably social constructs, developing out of legal, cultural and political arrangements, and considering that the labour market is one of the most complex and hence most heavily regulated markets, what is the role of social policy in determining the contours of the outlined employment context? What kind of support is provided to the vulnerable self-employed, and to what extent do welfare agencies encourage or even push unemployed persons into self-employment, either by providing incentives or by creating a punitive environment (as it is so powerfully depicted in the latest masterpiece by Ken Loach ‘I, Daniel Blake’) from which the status of self-employment is seen as a viable escape route. In short, how is self-employment structured by social policy interventions and how do these interact with economic changes?

A vast research agenda, but one worth pursuing, as it will help to shed light not only onto the ‘nature’ of work in the 21^st century, but also onto how state power is used to protect, support and emancipate as well as to discipline, guide and penalise individuals.


Enrico Reuter – follow me on Twitter @ReuterEnrico

Broeckling, U. (2016). The Entrepreneurial Self: Fabricating a New Type of Subject. London: Sage.

They come and go… and come back: Theoretical concepts in social policy research, and why they matter

Social policy research, much as the wider discipline of social sciences, is characterised by the ebb and flow of theoretical concepts, which fluctuate in popularity, can disappear and later reappear (perhaps in slightly different shape), or emerge as fresh new ways of reflecting upon and making sense of our complex social world.

Whether it is old classics such as ‘poverty’ and ‘inequality’, or more recent manifestations such as ‘social exclusion’ or ‘vulnerability’, two features appear to be universal: On the one hand, there is usually a tension, if not outright conflict, between academic conceptualisations and the way in which political activists or policy-makers use such terms. On the other, there can be lively debates within the research community itself as to which concepts (and which interpretation of any given concept) are the most appropriate and useful to analyse social phenomena.

When I was working on my PhD a few years ago, investigating social policies against exclusion, I was often struck by the extent to which theoretical work that I considered to be deeply insightful and intelligent was simplified, distorted and twisted by politicians, leaving behind little more than some empty shells of rhetoric. At the same time, it was fascinating to observe that controversies were running high within academic circles, to discuss the merits and demerits of ‘social exclusion’ as a theoretical concept. 

Having had the fortune of reading my fair share of Pierre Bourdieu during my own studies, this was of course not surprising, given that the academic world represents one of the ‘fields’ he had written about, with their struggles for symbolic capital and reputation as well as the need to be both on the inside, by playing according to the rules, and to find one’s own niche. In more recent times, ongoing research on vulnerability, together with my colleague Kevin Caraher, has led to similar observations…

These controversies, be it within academia or in the wider realm of politics are, however, not only inevitable in an open society, but also highly beneficial. At the risk of stating the obvious, it is these debates that help to push forward the boundaries of knowledge and that challenge us intellectually – and hence lead ideally to progress. 

And they also help to engage critically with policy-making by, for example, highlighting the shortcomings or biases of social policy programmes, and by being able to understand which approaches could work better. Moreover, such controversial discussions sharpen the tools for critical reflection – something essential in any democratic society to avoid the dullness and narrow-mindedness of a ‘there is no alternative consensus’ and to foster lively debates and peaceful ways of expressing conflicting views.

Finally, it is these ‘controversies’ as well as keeping an open mind, accepting and contrasting different views, and never stopping learning what makes academic work so enriching, for teachers and students alike.

This year, to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, we offer two bursaries for students on our new MA in Social and Public Policy.

Enrico Reuter – follow me on Twitter: @ReuterEnrico

Four frameworks to understand public service reform – a proposal

Public services tend to be seen as guarantors of well-being. Whether we think of education, healthcare or essential local services, it is generally agreed that public services, funded by taxation and available to people regardless of their ability to directly pay, play a role in protecting certain minimum standards. As soon as we move however beyond these basic assumptions, debates around public services become more antagonistic, with competing arguments regarding the most efficient use of public funds, the most effective modes of delivery and the main priorities of service provision. It is thus not surprising that reform plans for public services are subject to controversial and often contradictory claims as to what should be done, can be done and why.

It is one of the tasks of social scientists to reveal what lies behind such arguments and to hence analyse the material and ideological drivers behind social transformations or policy change. To do this well, it makes sense to rely on an effective combination of empirical research and theorising, with the latter being essential to reduce the complexity of social reality and to create frameworks, models and categories that help to foster a critical understanding of the social world surrounding us.

Based on empirical research of public service reforms and having taught this topic for several years, I would argue that we can identify four distinct ideational frameworks, which represent a coherent set of beliefs guiding public service reform. In this blog post, I would like to briefly introduce these four and invite any comments, either publicly or via email:

The social-holistic framework sees public services as deeply interwoven with the integrative fabric of a society, as institutions that tie social groups, individuals and communities together by establishing bonds of collectively organised mutual support and interdependence. The importance of public services goes beyond the practical, as they represent one major expression of how a society chooses to be organised along the lines of democratic inclusiveness as well as inter-generational and inter-personal solidarity. Public services are, from this perspective and in the words of Castel and Haroche (2001), a form of social property accessible to all citizens and residents.

The political-selective framework is equally embedded in material social relations, but it is less universal and comprehensive than the previous framework, as it focuses on the conflictual interplays between social groups. The shape and generosity of public services as well as the priorities of service delivery are determined by the ability of social groups and classes to influence the policy process and to make demands for service provision.

The economic-functionalist framework defines public services negatively, as a response to perceived gaps and distortions in the functioning of markets. Wherever market failures occur, a space for legitimate government intervention opens up to address said market failures, but the scope of public services remains generally restricted to those realms where market-based approaches, according to the theoretical premises of this perspective, appear as insufficient.

The moral-residual framework takes this thinking further, by stipulating that public services ought to provide nothing more than a minimum safety net for the poorest members of society, in other words for those who do not possess the economic or social capital to protect themselves, for example by purchasing private education or health insurance. It could be argued that this framework represents a sub-set of the economic-functionalist framework, if it weren’t for one substantial difference: Similar to means-tested benefits, users of these residual public services can potentially be subjected to a moralising discourse that defines any reliance on the minimum safety net as a sign of personal failure.

These four frameworks obviously need to be fine-tuned by further empirical research in order to create proper ideal-types, but I think they can serve well as a starting point for analyses that seek to identify how advocates of public service reform, be it political parties, think tanks or NGOs, conceptualise and act upon public services.

In this way, we can gain a deeper understanding of the underpinning ideas and interests that drive policy change in this particular field. Moreover, it becomes easier to identify broader trends in public service reform and to situate specific case studies within these trends, going beyond categories such as ‘choice and competition’ that are frequently used by observers and policy-makers to describe reform processes. And finally, frameworks like these, or adjusted versions of them, should enable us to shine a brighter spotlight on the intellectual premises that underpin debates about public services. It seems to me this critical engagement is crucial in times when the neoliberal and managerial paradigms of the past, despite their obvious flaws and failures, continue to restrict policy debates.

Enrico Reuter - follow me on Twitter

Castel, R. and Haroche, C. (2001). Propriété privée, propriété sociale, propriété de soi. Paris: Librairie Artème Fayard.

So we’re all vulnerable now, or are some more vulnerable than others?

When at the 2015 UK Conservative party conference the Home Secretary

Theresa May invokes “the most vulnerable” as a selling point for harsh new proposals regarding the treatment of refugees (which the Refugee Council described as “thoroughly chilling”), it isn’t to highlight the human cost of the current wave of migration originating to a greater extent from Syria and other conflict zones, rather it is an attempt to employ a vulnerability narrative to soften the harsh and draconian new asylum proposals in what can clearly be seen as a self-serving speech in her presumed bid for the Tory leadership. When however the World Health Organisation tells us that although ‘the vulnerable’ pre-exist globalisation, groups such as “the elderly, the young, and the poor [who] are already so marginalized that they cannot benefit from globalization… are increasing in numbers as globalization increases the gap between rich and poor” it suggests that vulnerability represents a substantive and long-standing problem. And when Martha Fineman, a Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University and an internationally recognized law and society scholar, argues that vulnerability is a life-long universal human ‘condition’ which has both political and policy implications, then clearly there is more to the concept than simple semantics and something which is clearly worthy of further research and investigation. Indeed it is precisely the political and policy implications of vulnerability which is the driver for research that myself and my colleague Enrico Reuter are currently engaged in. Our research examines the relationship between a specific conceptualisation of vulnerability and labour market policies, and the impact policy has on those at the margins of the labour market.

Vulnerability as the WHO suggest is not a new phenomenon, nor is it new to the social sciences. For example, it has a history as a way of conceptualising risk (Beck 1992) in contemporary society, with Beck (2009: 178) noting that vulnerability and risk were “two sides of the same coin”. Perhaps what is ‘new’ is the plethora of uses this term is applied to, clearly not with the same intent or agenda, by a range of social actors, whether that be housing, education, disability or youth justice (Levy-Vroelant, 2010; Brown, 2012; Emmel and Hughes, 2014).

In thinking about vulnerability, I want to make a distinction between what can be thought of as the generalised conceptualisations of vulnerability in popular discourse on the one hand, and a perhaps broader conceptualisation of vulnerability which can be applied to labour market relations in general and to those on the margins of the labour market in particular on the other hand. The margins are those areas of the labour market that are less secure, more informal and so at greater risk of exposure to the vagaries and the ebb and flow of the broader global economy (Savage et al, 2013). The margins also contain those who are employed on short term or ‘zero hours contracts’, those who in plain terms are more vulnerable to unemployment and at greatest risk of poverty and/or increased inequality whether that be through unemployment or as members of the working poor. In September the UK’s Office for National Statistics released figures which showed that nearly three quarter of a million people are on zero hours contracts  It is this group whom Guy Standing (2011) has defined as the precariat, which he argues is a coming class defined by its members’ relationship to a range of securities allied to the labour market.

In addressing vulnerability, the policy results of institutions, of governments and their departments can either exacerbate or ameliorate individual/shared vulnerability, and too often in the current neo-liberal political environment it is the former rather than the latter that results from social policy reforms. Too often vulnerability is linked to a spurious notion of ‘choice’, and the predominant discourse is behaviourist and seeks to impose restrictions upon, or hurdles in the way of, those deemed vulnerable as a direct result of their own action or inaction as perceived by the state. This is particularly the case when the current (and previous) UK government talk about and legislate for employment and access to the labour market, as illustrated by the work capability assessment of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Whilst not wishing to push the exact relationship between the precariat and vulnerability too far, it is those who lack some or all of the ‘seven forms of security’ (labour market, employment, job, work, skill reproduction, income, representation) identified by Standing (2011) who become the target of social policies that highlight and target the individual. This can be both a positive as well as a negative element in policy making; in the former bolstering individual resources and resilience – being identified or labelled as vulnerable can result in individuals and groups being the recipients of direct or tailored support to combat such vulnerability – and in the latter adopting a behaviourist approach through restricted and conditional access to welfare state support. The common ground for both however is that social policies which simply co-opt the vocabulary of vulnerability pursue a clear focus centred on individual accountability rather than a social and collective rights-based response (Levy-Vroelant, 2010). It is the change in the relationship between employment and citizenship which, as the determining factor in the access to social rights, has undergone significant structural change as a result of the impact of a liberal globalised economy. In the words of my colleague Kate Brown, in her excellent book ‘Vulnerability and Young People’, we need a structural approach to vulnerability, one which takes account of “institutions and their role in the provision of ‘supportive’ services… institutional factors and forces that shape the choices, views and lives of individuals which persist over time, but which can be modified by human action” (Brown, 2015: 16).

On balance, the shift from de-commodification to re-commodification of labour (Greer, 2015) can result in greater individual insecurity and vulnerability to external shocks. Allied to the hegemonic neo-liberal discourse of the 1980s and 1990s, employment and participation in the labour market became and remains more precarious for a greater number of people in a variety of economic settings – particularly the young and least skilled – which places them at greater risk of (long-term) unemployment and confines them to the margins of the labour market.

Recently Professor Peter Fleming wrote a piece for The Guardian called ‘There is nothing good about the rise of zero hour contracts – ban them now’. In the context of vulnerability, citizenship and social rights, it is difficult to find anything to disagree with in what he says.

Kevin Caraher

Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London, Sage.

Beck, U. (2009). World at Risk, Cambridge, Polity Press.

Brown, K. (2012). Remoralising ‘vulnerability’, People, Place and Policy Online, 6 (1), 41-53.

Brown, K. (2015). Vulnerability and Young People: Care and Social Control in Policy and Practice. Bristol: The Policy Press

Emmel, N. and Hughes, K. (2014). ‘Vulnerability, Inter-Generational Exchange, and the Conscience of Generations’ in J. Holland and R. Edwards (eds) Understanding Families Over Time: Research and Policy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Greer, I. (2015). Welfare reform, precarity and the re-commodification of labour, Work, Employment and Society, (available online May 13 2015).

Levy-Vroelent, C. (2010). Housing Vulnerable Groups: The Development of a New Public Action Sector, International Journal of Housing Policy, 10 (4), 443-456.

Savage, M.,Devine, F., Cunningham, N., Taylor, M., Yaojin, L., Hjellbrekke, J., Le Roux, B., Friedman, S. and Miles, A. (2013). A new model of social class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment, Sociology, 47 (2), 219-250.

Standing, G. (2011). The Precariat: The Dangerous New Class, London Bloomsbury.

Our new Masters in Social and Public Policy: Expanding excellent distance learning at the University of York

For more than 10 years, the York Online Team has delivered excellent distance

learning programmes in the field of public policy, administration and management as well as international development. Based on these experiences and driven by our ambition to continuously improve the way we teach and support our students, we are today very proud and happy to officially launch our new MA in Social and Public Policy, which will be open to students from September 2016.

There have been two main reasons for this expansion of our programme catalogue:

1. Since we are part of the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, it seemed right to offer a programme with a strong, direct focus on social policy, to not only draw on the expertise of our own staff in this field but to also benefit from as well as contribute further to the outstanding reputation of the Department, which achieved the third place in last year’s Research Excellence Framework on research quality and is overall one of top ten social policy departments in the UK, according to the ‘Times and Sunday Times University Guide 2016’ and the Guardian University guide 2016.
2. Establishing this new programme enables us to reach new groups of students who wish to specialise in studying the interplay between public and social policy, and who wish to dedicate a substantive part of their studies to their Masters dissertation. 

To accommodate the latter, the new MA will differ from our other online programmes by being two years long (instead of three years for our other programmes; even though there exists the option on these three-year programmes to speed up the study process) and by focusing the second year on the preparation of an 18,000 words dissertation.  

If you are interested in this programme or know of people who may be, we would invite you to have a look at the new programme website that contains all relevant information on entry requirements, taught modules and the structured support available to you.

And please do not hesitate to get in touch, via spsw-online@york.ac.uk for any queries you may have.