"People don't understand the pressure on me to look perfect"-Kim Kardashian, 2011.

A brand endorsed by almost every consumer outlet (from Lipsy to Quick Trim) is the bodacious Kim Kardashian. 

Since 2007, Kim Kardashian has been the self-styled queen of the social media revolution, utilising social media outlets to #breaktheinternet. Her publicity, personal contacts and brute power make her the ideal selling platform.

The Kim Kardashian image, is of particular interest to me as I am a young, female, image-conscious twenty something, Kim’s main target consumer. The Kim Kardashian is a relevant contemporary brand as it is a phenomena created and exemplified by the mass media and its consumers alike - E! give her untold amounts of publicity and her fans buy into her existence.

The cultural cues that Kim Kardashian taps into are that of 'nouveau femininity' as represented by a voluptuous female shape with an ambiguously tanned skin colour - exotic yet still American.
Glamorous enough to entice the opposite sex yet authoritative enough to assert her independence (e.g. I’m in control of my own sex tape!). There is also the cultural cue of backlash and rebellion associated with Kim Kardashian’s body, as the trend for large breasts and buttocks came shortly after the size zero phenomena. The Kim Kardashian body is rounder and less angular, paradoxically connoting that it doesn’t let the media tell it what to do.

I feel that it would be fair to say that Kim Kardashian brand is a super brand, it is a brand endorsed by other brands, a marketing tool in itself to say the least. Kim Kardashian has endorsed at least 23 image and lifestyle related brands, including (but not limited to) DASH, the Kardashian’s clothing store; Tria At Home Laser Hair removal kit; Skechers Shape-ups; an OPI nail polish range amongst others. 

I predict that her career as a freelance promoter is the start of a future evolution of the celebrity super brand, her consistent self-promotion and her ability to be a relatable caricature of the all-American woman (superficially spanning across all ethnicities given her half-Armenian heritage) means that she is the perfect super brand for all other brands to invest into.

Ultimately it seems that the more brands that utilise Kim Kardashian's power, the less importance is given to her celebrity non-status. She’s exceeded the expectations of the B-list, and has worked her way up the ranks (via marriage) into the A-list. This in itself suggests that celebdom is fluid and dependent on an intrinsic mix of the consumers that buy into you and the brands that you endorse.

Just remember this Kimmy K, you are what we make you...

Family Homelessness

The emergence of a homeless household underclass is no surprise given the current climate and restrictions to benefit entitlements for claimant families. The current number of households accepted by local authorities as owed a main homeless duty was 12,520 in the first quarter of 2014, a figure that was once 9,590 before the Local Housing Allowance rates were established. The Local Housing Allowance serves to reinforce inequalities and exacerbate poverty amongst families with children.
Currently, a workless couple with two children are entitled to less housing benefit than a workless couple without children, effectively ostracising families with children. This in addition to Local Housing Allowance rates serving to cut the disposable income of family households (when working over ten hours and less than 27 hours), serves to contribute to rising poverty rates amongst families in need. This is particularly concerning as an unemployed lone parent has a disposable income of £47 per week, compared to the predicted poverty line amount of £168, this is further complicated when location is taken into account, according to the London Living Wage individuals earning £168 still remain below the London poverty line. It was also noted in the most recent Panorama episode that Housing Benefit rates were not keeping up with rising rents in the PRS, thereby condemning individuals on the welfare state within the private renting sector to a life of absolute poverty.
The media has picked up on the link between the PRS, poverty and benefit claimants, particularly within Channel 4’s “How to Get a Council House”. One case depicts a single parent with an autistic son and two daughters, who falls into rent arrears on her privately rented accommodation as a result of the £500 a week benefit cap restriction she has been faced with. The episode ends with the family counting their blessings at being given temporary accommodation by the council, however we do not know for how long the family is to be kept in such an unstable situation (typically at least 28 days or until a council assistance decision has been made), and as to whether or not the council will decide to re-house them in the PRS again.

However, poverty is not restricted to workless families, poverty within working families is also increasing. The government live tables of homelessness dictates that the end of a tenancy has been the most common cause of homelessness every quarter for the past ten years, a case study mentioned online described a family of four with two working parents residing in temporary accommodation of 15ft square due to the end of their short hold tenancy. This trend has been further confirmed in the recent Poverty and Social Exclusion survey which stated that over 4 million working families are claiming state benefits and are thus living below the poverty line. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s latest statistics on poverty further states that there are more people in working families living below the poverty line (6.7 million) than in workless and retired families in poverty combined (6.3 million).

This evidence suggests that the PRS can serve as a saviour or foe of the vulnerable, either saving them from the cramped conditions of temporary accommodation whilst waiting for council assistance or condemning them to chronic uncertainties at six to twelve month (short hold tenancy) intervals.

Single parent support needs

Single parent families are a subset of individuals with specific and varying support needs. According to the Family (Outcomes) Star, single parents have the additional support need of caring for their offspring which in turn may make any existing support needs more complex. The following highlights the relevance of the suggested support needs documented in the family star:

The Physical health branch involves assessing how a parent looks after their children’s physical health-are they currently registered with a doctor and dentist? If they have a chronic illness, are they accessing treatment? Are they proactively encouraging good health habits amongst their children?
This in turn is supported by research conducted by UCL which states that 27% of lone parents have a chronic health problem or disability. Furthermore, it has been noted that lone parents have an excess risk of mortality compared to couples particularly due to correlations between single parenthood and excessive use of alcohol and drugs and inflicted violence.

Emotional well-being is particularly poignant in this case, the outcomes star describes this as the ability “to cope with life’s ups and downs…[as well as] any problems within the family connected to mental health, alcohol, drugs or domestic abuse”, focusing on both the parent and the child/ren.
Although family composition has no significant effect on a child’s emotional well-being, the quality of relationships at home do play a distinctive role, including but not limited to relationships with parents, siblings, extended family and experiences at school.  

Keeping your children safe refers to ensuring that appropriate supervision is given to children, in order to protect them from accidents, risks, bullying, racial harassment and domestic abuse.
This issue follows on from the impact of negative relationships within single parent families on children as contributing to higher risks of emotional and physical danger. It is also important to note the costs associated with safe proofing a property for children, where funding would be available to make appropriate adaptation s to an accommodation for disabled children, such funding would not be available for able bodied children.

Developing appropriate social networks allows a family in need to learn about and access services in their local area, as well as serving to tackle the isolation commonly associated with single parenting. As the coordinator from the Southwark based support group Mummies Republic explained to us, isolation is a large cause and affect factor within the lives of many single parents, isolation may lead to the development of unhealthy relationships, lack of contact with service providers and poor emotional and mental health.

Child focused education and learning is deemed an important support need in order to ensure children are progressing at the appropriate rate. However targets may vary in accordance to the child’s age. Babies and younger children need stimulating activities, co-ordination and messy play, whereas for older children, positive mentoring and ensuring that they are in engaged in either working or learning is essential. 

Familylives.org.uk suggest that the easiest way to encourage a child’s education and learning is to take an active interest in related activities and providing out of school support. This in itself is supported by evidence collated by the Education website, which suggests that consistency and developing healthy relationships is key to ensuring good performance within school.  

Setting appropriate boundaries is important for ensuring that children develop good relationships with others as they grow older. Single parenting is indirectly linked to an inconsistent parenting style which in turn may affect a child’s behaviour, however it has been noted that this could be changed if certain factors were tackled, e.g. poverty, flexible work etc.

Family routine remains essential to ensure that the members of the family attend school or work on time, having a good household routine in place ensures that the home is organised enough for the family to function appropriately.
Further research conducted by Reuters Health showed that consistent family routines were linked to the child having better social-emotional habits, thus allowing them to progress more positively in life.

Issues of home and money are important to assess in order to understand how secure the family is in their new accommodation. If there are significant issues, there may be an immediate or severe risk of homelessness. A lack of support regarding these issues could result in relative poverty for the family, this is particularly important as the Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey has recorded a trend of single parent families being twice as likely to live in poverty. Suggesting that a poverty trap exists, particularly amongst single parents with few qualifications and limited hours to work, as they can often find that the work that they are able to obtain is poorly paid, so they may be better off on benefits.

However, further support needs may arise.  For example, St Mungo’s recent research piece “Rebuilding Shattered Lives” showed a clear link between women’s homelessness and custody battles over their children. The lack of accommodation held by the mother often resulted in state intervention, however by having the child removed from their care, the mother thus became a non-priority case under the Homelessness Act 1996.

Ultimately the problems faced by single parents are societal rather than personal. As highlighted previously, increasingly complex benefit entitlements are a contributing factor to single parent poverty-research by The Fawcett Society predicted that single parents in particular will be hit hardest by the welfare reforms. Three years of frozen child benefits has resulted in parents with one child, £130 worse off a year. Deductions in working tax credits have also increased parent’s difficulties to work whilst raising children. 

Shelter have also stated that changes to the local housing allowance rate has meant that single parents (who incidentally make up 50% of claimants) will be priced out of their local area, breaking  up vital social networks. Furthermore, the bedroom tax has shifted the responsibility of caring for a child/children to one sole parent rather than between both. Leading to one parent (if they are in receipt of Housing Benefit) having to downsize and forfeit the time they spend with their children or risk hardship and homelessness.

As well as a trying benefits system, single parents also face the stigma of parenting alone. Single parent charity Gingerbread, stated that despite a quarter of UK families with dependent children being headed by single parents, single parents are still subjected to negative comments in the street, job rejections and tenancy refusals. Which in turn suggests that social support is needed in addition to practical help.

A key suggestion made by the single parents spoken to, prior to writing this blog, have included a signposting service where an information point (in this case 0a mentor or befriender) could direct the parent towards appropriate ports of call. It was therefore agreed that the most feasible and realistic solution to the issues faced by single parents is the establishment of a reliable support network by way of volunteers with previous experience of single parenthood and/or homelessness. 

My leaves aint [sic] got no sun

“There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun.”

~Pablo Picasso

Barking and Dagenham, Poverty, Welfare and Employment cont. My Qualitative conundrums

In order to effectively research the issues highlighted in the previous blog post, it is imperative to develop a series of sound research questions and a methodology befitting the unique landscape of Barking and Dagenham.


With this in mind, the set research objectives are:

• To investigate to what extent the Welfare Reform Act and the ensuing investments have affected the residents of Barking and Dagenham.
• To identify whether the welfare reforms are inextricably linked to the likelihood of informal economies to take place.
• To observe and track any changes in the subjective meanings of employment amongst the milieu of Barking and Dagenham.

With regards to the methodology two distinct sources of data have been chosen in order to conduct this research:

• Secondary sources (Government related online and paper publishing’s of information and advice regarding the Welfare Reform Act and the Growth Boroughs Initiative).
• Primary sources (biographical narrative interviews, observations and outcomes star charts) from individuals associated with a selection of social institutions.

An emergent mixed method design was developed due to inspiration gained from Neal et al’s research on Living Multiculture’s (2013 and ongoing), where group interviews, participant observations and ethnographies were used to measure the changing geographies and subjectivities of multiculture in three localities. In a recent seminar, Neal et al stated that mixed methods is particularly beneficial for gaining empirical data as it allows for different dimensions of personal experiences to be captured. This is particularly relevant as the need for obtaining experiential data that acknowledges the personal employment and welfare-claiming experiences of individuals as well as real-time interactions when observing employment taking place is imperative to the research. 
As interview methods often yield narrative accounts of an event/topic, so incorporating an observational method will account for the differences between what an individual says and does. In addition to this, as observational methods are rarely intentionally self-reflective on the individual’s part, an evaluative Outcomes Star method will also be adapted and used. All of the aforementioned methods combine to create a pro-active form of Participatory Action Research.

Participatory Action Research (PAR)-Collaboration over Positivism...?
Participatory action research aims to, often ideologically and emancipatory, critique and change social structures and processes in order to reconceptualise the social phenomena in question. The method stands in opposition to positivism in its emphasis on a collaborative individual-researcher inquiry grounded in experiential data. According to Reason and Bradbury (2008) “communities of inquiry and action evolve and address questions and issues that are significant for those who participate as co-researchers”. Lewin (1946) founder of participant action research as a form of social action, strategically describes PAR as “a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action, and fact-finding about the result of the action” (1946:206). This research aims to adopt participatory action research principles in order to make sense of a welfare benefit recipient’s world through an attempt to collectively transform it, rather than simply observing and studying it. This will be conducted by encouraging the individuals to actively participate in the research (in particular the biographical interviews and the Outcomes Star tool), this study hopes to provide a reflective space in which meaningful change will eventually occur for the individuals and perhaps the collaborators.

A theoretical war was waging in my mind as to whether to adopt a positivist standpoint or a participant action research approach to the research. Ultimately, the participatory action research philosophy was employed within the majority of this research as opposed to positivism11. This was a particularly difficult decision due to the advantages of both approaches. What swayed the vote was modern positivism viewing empirical data as the “subordination of the intellect to the heart” (Comte 1856). This thought process coupled with the difficulties scientifically verified data has in reflecting the subjective inward aspects of the phenomena (Vico, 172512) suggests that positivist approaches often result in quantifiably sound data of little humanistic value, difficult for the individuals from whom the data was generated from to relate to (Walker, 1999). Participatory action research on the other hand, states that research and action must be done with people, not on people, thus providing an alternative to positivism’s rejection of the human capacity to change dynamically (Brock and Pettit, 2007; Chevalier and Buckles, 2008, 2013; Heron, 1995; Kindon et al., 2007; Reason, 1995; Reason and Bradbury, 2008; Swantz, 2008; Whyte, 1991).
Despite identifying myself as a qualitative sociologist, I have decided that it is not appropriate to completely reject the positivist approach to the social sciences. Government statistics for example have been beneficial to this research, as it has served to create the blueprints of its initial proposal. Deciding on the locality of the research was a result of Local Authority statistics stating that Barking and Dagenham was one of the poorest London boroughs with the joint second highest unemployment rate. Statistics from the HMRC tax gap publication showed that the tax gap was rising, and Think Tank statistics pointed to the informal buying and selling of goods (the Delboy approach) as a possible cause of this. However this research does not aim to gather data through quantitative approaches, for fear of omitting any potential researcher-individual collaboration, an important aspect of participant action research. Rather it aims to include positivist approaches in an alternative way, particularly in an attempt to:

• Direct the research, so that topics of statistical importance are researched.
• View the data with an element of realism, whereby a focus will be made to analyse any empirical sense data with secondary qualities (particularly when analyzing interview data13) in relation to pre-sourced statistics.

Ultimately numerical data from secondary sources will be present in the introductory processes of the research, and also to support any empirical findings. It could be argued that the Outcomes Star method can quantify data through the use of pre-set subheadings and numerical stages. However the data gathered from the Star will be analysed in relation to the wider context of the qualitative data gathered, namely the biographical interviews, thereby creating a research method that appreciates both positivism and empiricism, and combines statistics with qualitative data.

Barking and Dagenham, Poverty and Welfare-Personal research and private insights.

My interests in questions of social inequality, and personal experience of the benefits system has led to me acquiring several jobs working for charities in some of the poorest areas of London providing support to those living on the breadline. As a result of my day to day activities, I have often pondered how those living off solely the welfare state make ends meet.
Over two years ago, the looming changes in the benefit system led to my colleagues and I attending extensive team meetings with directors and managers, asking where do we go from here? How do we effectively support our service users? Will the company/charity/organisation feel the repercussions of the benefit cuts and harsh sanctions? In those instances it appeared that the security of employment for vulnerable people was the only answer to the newly arisen problem of a changing welfare state.

‘WELFARE REFORM ACT WILL IMPOVERISH HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS’

The ins and outs of welfare changes temporally as well as geographically, its evolution depends on choices made within their functioning regions. The current British welfare state is attributed to the development of a state insurance plan shortly after the Second World War, characterised by individual means tested social insurance, which included providing educational and healthcare assistance as well as welfare benefit payments.
Although the newly implemented Welfare Reform Act of 2012 has been branded negatively, DWP have stated that the changes to the current benefits system aims to make things “simpler and clearer”, by encouraging people to get back into work and ensuring that a fairer system exists for both the benefit claimant and the taxpayer. The changes include the introduction of Universal Credit, a single monthly payment aimed at creating a smooth transition from benefit payments into full-time employment (similar to a monthly wage). A stronger approach to reducing fraud and error, including harsher penalties and benefit sanctions for those caught. The introduction of the Bedroom Tax, in which a home owner’s housing benefit payment is deducted if they do not make sufficient use of all the rooms in their homes, 14% deduction for one spare bedroom and 25% deduction for two or more. The introduction of the Personal Independence Payment (PIP), replacing the Disability Living Allowance (DLA), where payment is based on a complex assessment of the individual’s disability, ultimately PIP will depend on how your condition affects you, not what your condition is. Greater power is also being given to local authorities (LA’s) in order to tackle any abuse of the Social Funds system (government based fund from which loans and grants are given). A reform of the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) benefit is currently taking place, where those deemed as not seriously disabled will have a time limit on their benefit claim. There will also be changes to the child support system, parents currently claiming Income Support will have their claim changed to Universal Credit or an equivalent means tested benefit once their youngest child is over the age of five.
These changes are more likely to be felt in areas with a high population of benefit claimants of job seeking age, such as the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. The area is home to a large youth population in comparison to
its surrounding boroughs, in November 2012 there were 5.6 million benefit claimants of working age, compared to 2.5 million claimants of the pension credit. According to government poverty markers, it was viewed as the fourth most deprived borough in London, with a high number of its residents either being in low paid employment or claiming benefits, this coupled with low educational attainment has affected the social climate of Barking and Dagenham (Bressy and Dwyer, 2012)9-in particular the number of homeless households has risen dramatically, placing the borough second place in the run for the most homeless households in London. The government is already acting in order to change these statistics by including the borough in a large-scale social, economic and housing investment initiative spanning the eastern quadrant of London. These developments were initially called the Growth Boroughs Scheme until December 2013 however it is now functioning under many different guises (Local Enterprise Growth Initiative, London Sustainable Industries Park, London’s Newest Opportunity). Benefit changes coupled with shifts in society and community settings in turn may provide the perfect setting for alternative forms of employment to flourish.

“INFORMAL ECONOMIES OFFER NEW INSIGHTS INTO PROSPERITY”

The alternative forms of employment, mentioned previously, refers to labour exchanges not acknowledged by any form of government. Job security and personal gain are used to measure this, focusing on those with and without job security who involve themselves in unreported employment, hidden from the state for tax purposes but legal in all other aspects. Whilst the informal economy is widely viewed as a social ill, Sassen (1997) describes it as a product and driving force of advanced capitalism and the site of entrepreneurial activities within urban economies, making it a pivotal phenomenon to observe whilst researching the general scope of unemployment in the borough.
Ultimately in subsequent blog posts, what I would like to do is identify how the changes to the welfare reforms, current and future economic investment in the Barking and Dagenham area, and the government’s emphasis on benefit claimants gaining work have changed the meaning of employment, in both the noun (as a label) and the verb (as an activity) sense of the word.

Can we unlearn culture?

- transcript from a workshop delivered at  sorryyoufeeluncomfortable's first showcase at InIVA, entitled Baldwin's Nigger Reloaded

Hello everyone, thank you for having me today! For this workshop I have been asked to unpick and de-conventionalise the concept of learned culture. I am going to do this by providing an overview of relevant cultural theories, the pros and cons of each, supplemented by examples of popular culture, and then end with a series of questions which I hope will inspire some lively conversation.
So allow me to re-introduce myself by way of my cultural identity; my name is Arooj, I am a woman-I belong to a biological group known as females, I have no control over that aspect of my life; Neither do I have any control over the fact that I am Pakistani - my parents moved over to England before I was born; and in the same vein of thought, I am British - again something that I have little control over; my educational background, which I have chosen myself has turned me into a social researcher and a data modeller; and given my career choice I am a frontline homelessness practitioner. I could go on forever about my identity but for the sake of a linear notion of time, I’ll stop there.

In an attempt to unpick the title of the workshop, providing that we assume that culture is indeed a learnt trait rather than an innate one, the first thing we need to ask ourselves is; ‘what is culture?’ What is this word so freely brandished by the media and our peers alike?

Luckily enough for me, an abundance of research has already been undertaken on this topic, particularly from a sociological and anthropological perspective. 20^th Century and 21^st Century paradigms of thought has taken culture and cultural identities to be a distinctly symbolic process (the famous anthropologist Adamson Hoebel in his book‘Anthropology: Study of Man’ defines culture as “an integrated system of learned behaviour patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society and which are not a result of biological inheritance”). Thus stating that we are not born with a culture, we learn a culture.

It could be fair to say that culture is a realm of objective facts created and maintained by our subjective belief; the real world as we see it is dependent on our creative imagination, providing that it is regulated by our peers who also belong to the same social community. An example of which is a recent news article entitled female Muslim boxer bringing shame on to her Muslim community – it's a Daily Mail article, so please take with a handful of salt! At a glance it appears that the idea of femininity is more complex and varied in Muslim communities than it is in Britain (why can’t women box?! What is to become of her? Is she top be condemned to a life of household chores and baby-bearing?), it instantly throws up images of cultural conflicts between this particular individual's British identity and Muslim identity.  However, if we were to analyse what it means to be a woman from a British perspective, things do not become any simpler. How many English words can we think of to denote female and women? (ask audience).
I have found at least 100 different regional English variations of the word including colleen, lass, maiden, matron, each referring to female but connoting differing meanings. Matron referring to a motherly female, whilst maiden connotes a young virginal woman.

The idea of culture is made further complex by the fact that members of particular social groups, in most situations, have the opportunity to pick and choose what aspects of a culture they take and ignore. E.g. I am British when I pay my taxes and expect to have full use of public services, but I denounce my Britishness when topics of world politics or the arms trade are raised. In the same breath, I am Pakistani when speaking about cricket or the late great singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, but when the Taliban stronghold in the north is mentioned I become apologetic and reassure my companion that I, in fact was born in Britain and have a British Passport and thus share very little with that particular mentality… 

So now we understand how cultures are woven complexly into the everyday. How do we learn to unlearn them? 

The general consensus is that we learn from our observations and experiences, and to cement our learnings we then teach others about our newly acquired knowledge, suggesting that human involvement is pivotal to the sustainment of culture itself. So if humans are both the cause and effect of culture, to unlearn culture one would have to remove themselves from any sort of human interaction.
One way in which to do this would be to place a human into social isolation in order to effectively cancel out the impact of culture on them, however the noted consequences of human isolation suggests that the initial exposure to a culture still affects individuals after long periods in isolation e.g. sensory illusions - Tom Hanks in Castaway whilst stranded on the desert island, engages in dialogues with the personified volleyball Wilson, these very interactions with an inanimate object serve to reinforce a culture that would otherwise have been lost five years prior.
Another way in which to unlearn culture would be to not learn it at all. Providing that there were no such things as ethical constraints, a longitudinal study could be conducted by placing a newborn in the wilderness and seeing how they would cope. The child may become completely self-sufficient and reliant on itself, developing a one person culture, unregulated by a social group but rather self-regulated by themselves. Alternatively the child could become feral and develop an animal culture e.g. Tarzan and Mowgli.

So back to the original question, if we take the view that culture is a symbolic process attained and maintained by humans themselves, a long-term, scientifically consistent social research experiment of  degree of social isolation, be it from birth or mid-life, may be the only way in which we can determine whether or not culture can be unlearned. In short, given the fact that culture is easily attained and rarely [fully] lost, I do not know yet whether or not culture can be unlearned…Which is where you come in.

I would like to take the original question posed to me by Eva and present it back to the group, being individuals with your own cultural identities, is there any way in which one can unlearn culture?

The perfect benefit claimant

Loosely defined, welfare refers to the statutory procedure or social effort to promote the basic physical or material well-being of people in need. Although the welfare reforms fall under the discipline of social policy, it draws on elements of sociology to explain the social milieu of welfare provisions. 

Mooney et al (2006) argue that social exclusion is prominent in the world of social welfare, this exists within the themes of family, work and national identity. I support this wholeheartedly...

A range of welfare policies are developed around the idea that families exist as a man, a woman and child/ren. At the turn of the twentieth century, during the first and formal implementation of welfare support, women were exempt from receiving benefits as the man was viewed as the breadwinner-however nowadays typical deviances to the normal framework of a family exist and are catered for to an extent. It still appears that social policies seek to reinforce the normal structure of families by rewarding normal conducts and deterring abnormal ones e.g. two separated parents claiming housing benefit, one would have to forfeit their spare bedrooms (which they use to accommodate their children on the weekend) so as not to rack up rent arrears. 

The concept of work is framed within the welfare world through benefits such as job seekers allowance, income support, budgeting loans and pension credits. National Insurance is deducted from a worker’s wages in order to contribute towards certain benefit entitlements-including a hard earned state pension, eligible only if you have contributed to the state for over thirty years.
However it appears that the concept of work is in the midst of a definition shift, the economic marginality (being economically insignificant, working hard but still not making a dent in the system) we are currently experiencing has led to social instability which in turn has resulted in a working culture of a precarious nature including shifting between casual and part time work and joblessness aka post-fordism. Economically marginalised individuals often do not have a formal employment history and may fall into the informal economy; this in turn may affect their ability to claim job seekers allowance (willingly leaving your job means that you have to wait six weeks before you can start a claim). The current instability also adversely impacts individuals claiming housing benefit, housing benefit rates are not adjusted in real time, making the transition from worklessness to work increasingly complex.
Ideally a claimant should not attempt to find work unless they are being threatened to do so, attempts to rock the (figurative) welfare boat may have adverse consequences e.g. benefit sanctions, trips to food banks, homelessness...

A claimants national identity is particularly important when attempting to make a claim. The mere phrase ‘welfare state’ suggests that welfare is constrained to one locality, more specifically the indigenous population of the said state. For example, European migrants have been subjected to stricter rules and regulations regarding claiming benefits, as of April 2014 those from A2 and A8 countries are not entitled to housing assistance if they become homeless. Similar to this, was the development of the Aliens Act 1905, although not directly linked to welfare, served to restrict foreign paupers from entering the country, thus denying them any welfare support. Despite the animosity, immigrants tend to be younger and more mobile than the majority of their host population, their overall contribution to the economy relies on their relative status and the resources available to them. However at this precise moment in time, available resources are scarce, so being a non-Brit is a distinct disadvantage to claiming welfare. 

Ultimately the key themes of family, work and national identity highlighted above serves as a reminder that a particular ideal of a benefit claimant exists. One that is part of a cohabiting family, is not economically marginalised and who is a British national. Difficult considering that 98% of under 25 benefit claimants are single parents with children.