Transcript Policing the poor: the surveillance state and inequality

Policing the poor: the
surveillance state and inequality
Kieron Hatton
ConCrit Conference
Berlin 24th May 2014
Structure
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Setting the context
Poverty today
Watching the poor
The power of language
Creating alternative discourses
Building for change
Setting the context
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Jones and Novak (2014) have suggested that 500 years of history of dealing with
poverty have meant that the UK state has become permeated with ‘a particularly
callous treatment which marks it off from many of its European neighbours’ (p.4).
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These problems have been in turn compounded by the development of capitalism
which enabled new levels of class exploitation and enshrined the principal that
profit would be the driving economic and social force and that ,at best ,if you were
not in work your role was residual and mainly confined to being a reserve army of
labour which holds down wages.
These processes have become further entrenched since neo-liberalism became the
primary economic and social ideology from the 1970’s onwards.
Poverty has become an enduring phenomena across the world and is a major
factor in developed economies. How then does this continue to occur without the
poor, marginalised and dispossessed challenging this process of domination?
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We can begin by looking at the extent of the problem of poverty.
Poverty today
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In UK:
2 million more people are multiply deprived today than in 1999
Households are more insecure. 5 million more people live in
inadequate housing than in the 1990’s
3.5 million more people miss out on social activities than in 1999.
(taken from Poverty and Social Exclusion, 1983 – 2012)
Food poverty has increased – around 4 million people are not
properly fed by today’s standards. 913,138 used Foodbanks in
2013/14 cp. with 346,992 in 2012/13 (Trussell Trust Press Release,
16/04/14 – downloaded from
www.truselltrust.org/resources/documents/Press/FOODBANKFIGURES-TOP-900,000 on 21/05/14)
Poverty in Europe
In Europe:
• In EU27 24% of population were at risk of
poverty in 2011 (approx. 120 million people)
• 17% at risk of material poverty (receiving 60%
national median disposable income
• 9% severely materially deprived
(Eurostat newsrelease
www.ec.europa.eu/eurostat 171/2012 3/12/12) downloaded 19/05/14)
OECD 2014
The financial upheaval of 2007 - 8 created not just an
economic and fiscal crisis but also a social crisis.. Countries
that experienced the deepest and longest downturns are
seeing profound knock-on effects on people’s job
prospects, incomes and living arrangements.
Some 48 million people in OECD countries are looking for a
job – 15 million more than in September 2007 – and
millions are in financial distress. The numbers living in
households without any income from work have doubled in
Greece, Ireland and Spain. Low income groups have been
hit hardest as have young people and families with
children.
(OECD,2104 Society at a Glance)
Britain and Germany
This not just problem for poorer countries.
UNICEF reported in 2010 that in terms of
inequality the UK was in the fourth tier regarding
childrens’ well-being and Germany in the third
tier.
A recent publication of the Sunday Times Rich List
showed that of the 25 richest people in Europe 7
were from Germany and 3 were from the UK
equating to 40% of the richest in just 2 countries.
Analysing date from prior to the financial crisis in
2008 UNICEF found that out of 23 countries:
Measurements of inequality
• Material well-being - Norway and DK came top,
Germany was 14th and the UK 16th
• Educational resources DK and Switzerland top,
Germany 18th and UK 22nd
• House living space – Iceland, Germany and Switzerland
top, UK 17th
• Health inequalities – Netherlands Norway top Germany
10th, UK 19th
• Overview Netherlands, Norway top, Germany 4th, UK
11th
(UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre (2010) report Card
9)
Costs and consequences
Among a range of factors impacting on child wellbeing were:
Low birthweight
Parental stress and lack of parental time
Chronic stress for the child
Poorer health outcomes
Lower skills and aspirations
Unemployment and welfare dependency
(UNICEF, 2010)
Adaptation and resilience
Pemberton and colleagues however point to how
people facing poverty and exclusion show:
• Agency – in their adaptive responses to the
challenges of managing on low incomes, and
• ‘resourcefulness and creativity’ in developing
strategies to make ends meet. This includes:
• Budgeting – travelling distances to secure the
cheapest products, going without demonstrating
considerable restraint and self-discipline
Response of state, public authorities
and media to these
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The social construction of negative discourses as ‘common sense’
through aiming:
To blame the poor
To portray people in poverty, facing exclusion as scroungers,
feckless, lacking capacity
To repress people in poverty with sanctions, withdrawal of benefits,
reductions in benefits e.g in UK forcing people out of
accommodation through the ‘bedroom tax’
To promote inequality – the combined wealth of Britains richest
1,000 people hits £519bn = 1/3rd of UK’s entire economic output.
Britains elites worth increased by 15.4% between 2013/14
(Guardian 19 May 2014
To diminish controls on the rich and increase surveillance of the
poor
Examples of UK Poverty discourses
• Around young people – the lower rate of income
support for young people under 25
• Around single mothers – the assumption that benefits
causes young single mothers to become dependent
• Around disability – the work capability test
• Around Food – food banks – surely the debate around
living standards should start with the immorality of
food banks in one of the richest countries in the world
(Suzanne Moore, Guardian: 17/10/13)
• Benefit Street – Channel 4 documentary?
‘Poverty porn’
People in poverty often referred to as ‘scroungers’, feckless,
‘spongers’, ‘idle’
Abigail Scott Paul from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
refers to much of the coverage as ‘poverty porn’. She says, ‘
we know that the media is partial, and that people in
poverty themselves feel victimised, stigmatised and
objectified’. Adding:
When public attitudes are hardening towards
people in poverty and when life is getting worse for
people at the lowest end of the income scale, is it right
that broadcasters commission shows that compound
stereotypes by pitting deserving against undeserving
poor? (JRF blog 23/08/13)
• The size of the gap between between popular
conceptions and the reality of life in poverty
is...profoundly depressing – and difficult
territory to start putting together a compelling
public case for tackling poverty
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Criticism from within the state - UK
• Interestingly even the more mature government agencies
point to the unfairness of these discourses. The House of
Commons Work and Pensions Committee (2014)
commented on the way the government releases
information to the press about people using welfare
services says:
• The government is...promoting a positive image of disabled
people...However this positive image is undermined if the
language used in Press Releases and ministerial media
comments...adopts a tone which feeds into negative
preconceptions and prejudices about people on benefits,
including disabled people
(para’s 141 – 143, pp 44 - 45)
Surveillance
• Surveillance can mean to look at, to watch, to
control.
• Recent discussions have focused on how the
state controls information, maps behaviours
and seeks to reduce dissent. Often seen as
function of information society. Focus on how
people who disagree with state behave.
• However there is a history of the state using
these powers to control and punish the poor
Surveillance and the poor
This can be seen in a number of ways:
• Through the ‘penalisation of poverty’ which Waquant
(2001) describes as the process, ‘designed to manage
the effects of neo-liberal policies at the lower end of
the social structure of advanced societies. The harsh
police practices and extended prison measures
adopted today...are indeed part and parcel of a wider
transformation of the state...precipitated by the
overturning of the inherent balance of power between
classes and groups fighting over control of employment
and the state’. (p. 401)
Cont.
Waquant , following Faugeron (1995) suggests that
imprisonment can perform three functions at the same
time:
• ‘imprisonment of safety’ – for dangerous offenders
• ‘imprisonment of differentiation’ – designed to exclude
so called undesirable categories’ increasingly used
against refugees and marginal groups such as
Roma/Travellers (see also Powell, 2012)
• ‘imprisonment of authority’ – used to reaffirm the
powers of the state and often used against black and
minority ethnic communities
Cont.
Waquant suggests that to oppose the
‘penalisation of precariousness’ a triple strategy
is needed:
• On the level of words and discourses
• On a judicial level we should stress that, ‘police
surveillance’ aggravate and amplify the problems
they are supposed to resolve’ (p.410)
• To link together activists and researchers at a
European level to optimise resources to oppose
these trends
Language and discourse
• Foucault has highlighted for us the way language is a source of
oppression but can also be liberating. He points out how
language/discourse needs to understood in the context of power
and the structures underpinning power relationships.
• Habermas warns how language gives us the power to think but also
it can be distorted by imbalances of power to the extent that:
the lack of suitable language may even inhibit the ability of
the oppressed to articulate their situation to themselves
(Edgar, 2006:78)
This is similar to the way writers such as Fanon and Memmi
describe the way people experiencing colonialism began to believe
in their own inferiority
Challenging these distortions of
language
• Foucault (and Chris Weedon) talk about how we need
to enter into a ‘reverse discourse’ – that is we need to
re-appropriate the language of the powerful, reclaim it
so that it represents the aspirations of those currently
without power and helps challenge dominant power
relationships. Examples include:
• People with disabilities reclaiming the word ‘crips’
• GLTB people reclaiming the word ‘queer’
• People in poverty demanding to be treated as citizens
with equal rights and a recognition of their ‘voice’ –
from Benefits Street to opposing fraud investigations
(the Rabbit Squads)
Orwell, 1984 and today
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At the beginning of 1984 Orwell outlines the three slogans of the
party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Under the banner headline that ‘Big Brother is Watching You’
Today these may read:
AUSTERITY IS GOOD
AVARICE IS ESSENTIAL
ANOMIE IS RIGHT with perhaps and addendum that
INDIVIDUALISM RULES
Under the headline banner
‘Neo Liberalism Rules the State’
What can we do to change this
situation?
• We have the choice to be passive, retreat into our
personal and professional bunkers and project
responsibility onto others or we can begin to
develop our own alternative discourses. But as
Stuart Hall wrote almost 25 years ago:
contestation is not enough there is a need
to generate positive alternatives
• Without such positives there is a danger that we
will, to quote Amin (1998), degenerate into a
‘self destructive nihilism’ (p.78)
Role of social professionals
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To return to Foucault, who says there is a need for ‘specific intellectuals:
Magistrates and psychiatrists, doctors and social workers, laboratory technicians and
sociologists have become able to participate, both within their own fields, and through
mutual exchange and support, in a global process of politicisation of intellectuals
(Foucault,1980:127–my emphasis).
But he warns such specific intellectuals:
encounter obstacles and faces real dangers – the danger of remaining at the level of the
conjunctural struggles, pressing demands restricted to particular sectors….above all the risk
of being unable to develop these struggles for lack of a global strategy or outside support
(p.130).
Vygotsky and Creativity
Vygotsky focuses on link between creativity and
imagination. Our creative actions are in turn, he
argues, based on our use of imagination which he
suggests is:
The basis of all creative activity, ...an important
component of all aspects of cultural life,
enabling artistic, scientific, and technical
creation alike...whenever a person imagines,
combines, alters and creates something new,
(p.11)
Relevant intellectual traditions
• Gramsci – challenges way ideas refracted
through the lens of the powerful,
development of counter hegemony, organic
intellectuals
• Friere - concientisation, dialogue and social
action
• Foucault – dispersed nature of power, social
workers/ social pedagogues as specific
intellectuals, need to use political imagination
• Overall commitment to equality and diversity
The Social Work Action Network
The current degraded status of social work as a profession
is inextricably related to the status and standing of those
we work with. Social work clients are amongst some of the
most vulnerable and impoverished in our society, and have
benefited least from New Labour’s social welfare reforms.
In fact, under New Labour we have witnessed not only
greater levels of material inequality, but also an intensified
demonisation of asylum seekers, young people and poor
families, the very groups that social workers engage with.
Too often today social workers are often doing little more
than supervising the deterioration of people’s lives.
(www.socialworkfuture.org/about-swan/nationalorganisation/manifesto )
Resources of Hope (Raymond
Williams)
• If we are going to change things we need to draw
on our ‘resources of hope’. This involves us not
only understanding the processes which combine
to marginalise the poor and reinforce oppression
but also taking action to change things in a
positive way.
• As critical social professionals (social pedagogues,
social workers youth workers, community
workers) we therefore need to develop a:
New pedagogy
A critical, creative and conscious:
• Pedagogy of Hope
• Pedagogy of Resistance
• Pedagogy of Social Change
Final remarks
Many of us have learned, over the years, to
live with the tension, and the contradiction,
between what we find and what we would like
to happen. I consider social action and
political projects to be essential in the
betterment of a society that clearly needs
change and hope (my italics).
(Manuel Castells, 2000:389)
It is necessary to direct one’s attention
violently towards the present as it is, if one
wishes to transform it.
Pessimism of the intelligence, optimism of the
will (my italics).
(Gramsci, 1971: 175)
Selected References
• Amin, A (1998) Spectres of Capitalism: A Critique of current
Intellectual Fashions, New York, Monthly Review Press
• Edgar, A (2006) Habermas: The key concepts, London, Routledge
• Eurostat newsrelease www.ec.europa.eu/eurostat 171/2012 3/12/12) downloaded 19/05/14
• Faugeron, C (1995) La derive penale, Espirit, 215, pp 132 – 144
• Gordon, C (1980) Michael Foucault: Power/Knowledge – selected
interviews and other writings 1972 -1977 by Michael Foucault,
London, Harvester Wheatsheaf
• House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee (2014)3rd report
of Session 2013 – 14 Monitoring the performance of the
Department for Work and Pensions in 212 -13 (downloaded
18/03/14)
References cont.
• Jones, C and Novak, T (2014) Poverty and Inequality, Critical and radical
debates in social work, Bristol, Policy Press
• Moore, S (2013) Surely the debate around living standards must start with
the immorality of food banks in one of the richest countries in the world,
Guardian 17/10/13
• Pemberton, S Sutton, E Fahmy, E (2013) A review of the qualitative
evidence relating to the experience of poverty and exclusion, Working
paper – Methods Series No. 22, Birmingham, PSEUK/ESRC
• Poverty UK ((2012) Going Backwards: 1983 – 2012 downloaded from
www.poverty.ac.uk/pse-research/going-backwards-1983-2012 on
01/05/14
• Powell, R (2013) Loic Waquant’s ‘Ghetto’ and Ethnic minority Segregation
in the UK: The Neglected Case of Gypsy-Travellers, International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research, 37.1 pp 115 - 34
• OECD (2104) Society at a Glance, OECD Social Indicators, OECD Publishing,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/soc_glance-2014-en
• Trussell Trust (2014) Press Release, 16/04/14 – downloaded from
www.truselltrust.org/resources/documents/Press/FOODBANKFIGURES-TOP-900,000 on 21/05/14
• UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre (2010) report Card 9 – The
Children Left Behind: A league table of inequality in child well-being
in the world’s richest countries, Florence, Italy
• Waquant, L (2001) The penalisation of poverty and the rise of neoliberalism, European Journal of Criminal Policy and Research, 9, 401
-412
• Wilkinson RG and Pickett KE (2006) Income inequality and
population health: A review of the evidence, Social Science and
Medicine pp 1768 – 1784
• Wilkinson RG and Pickett KE (2007) The problems of relative
deprivation: Why some societies do better than others, Social
Science and Medicine 1965 - 1978