Unravelling citizenship

Abstract

This article discusses the possibility that social security benefit fraud is intelligible as an unravelling of the rights and responsibilities of welfare citizenship. It recounts the findings of a study of the attitudes and moti vations of people engaged in individual benefit fraud, including the dominant discourses engaged in by respondents, their approach to work and their conceptions of citizenship. These are analysed in relation to age, gender and ethnicity and, in so doing, the authors call upon secondary analysis of data from the British Social Attitudes survey. It is concluded that benefit fraud does not signify any erosion of the work ethic or people's desire to participate in conventional life-styles, but that it is consistent with—if it is not nourished by—an impoverished conception of citizenship.