Disabled people, conditionality and a civic minimum in Britain
Disabled people, conditionality and a civic minimum in Britain
reflections from qualitative research
This chapter discusses findings from a small-scale study into attitudes towards work-related conditionality being applied to disabled people. Focus groups were convened with small groups of both disabled and non-disabled people to discuss attitudes to welfare conditionality. The disabled people in this study were unanimously opposed to welfare conditionality being applied to disabled people, while non-disabled people were much more likely to believe it had potential. Participants employed paternalist, mutualist and contractualist defences in their discussions of welfare conditionality. This chapter reports on these findings, outlines the relevant policy context, and explores the work of Stuart White (2003), and his description of a ‘civic minimum’ (the necessary preconditions before a society could justly impose welfare conditionality). This chapter concludes that a ‘civic minimum deficit’ – the gap between the status quo and what would be required before conditionality could even be considered as a ‘fair’ policy solution – currently exists in Britain.
Keywords: contractualist, civic minimum, disabled people, mutualist, paternalist, welfare conditionality
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