Welfare to work : conditional rights in social policy /

Contents: Welfare-to-work programmes in modern welfare states -- Welfare-to-work programmes under the Poor Laws -- Contemporary welfare-to-work programmes -- From equality to the right to welfare -- Welfare, work, and social inclusion.

"Welfare-to-work programmes aim to assist the long-term unemployed in finding work, to increase labour market flexibility, to eliminate dependency, and to tackle social exclusion. They have been implemented in many Western countries. This book focuses on an important and novel feature of these programmes: replacing the rights-based entitlements that have characterized the welfare state for decades with conditional rights dependent on the fulfillment of obligations." "This new type of social contract between the claimant and the state carries with it a new construction of the relationship between rights and responsibilities, and a new interpretation of citizenship. Paz-Fuchs examines the theoretical underpinnings of welfare-to-work programmes, incorporating a comparative analysis of the UK and USA, where the ideal of social citizenship is being curtailed through welfare reforms. He argues that when the rhetoric of the social contract is used to imply a continuous contract between citizens and the state, a vast array of conditions on welfare can be legitimated. These conditions include workfare, the obligation to accept any job offer, and moral and social preconditions that are based on a vague notion of reciprocity. Paz-Fuchs argues, by contrast, that conditional welfare undermines civil rights such as the right to privacy and family life by requiring welfare claimants to change their behaviour. He contends that strengthening welfare rights and relaxing preconditions on entitlement would better serve the objectives that welfare-to-work programmes are supposed to advance."--BOOK JACKET.