In this paper we attempt to provide a conceptual framework which can help inform our analysis and understanding of current transformations taking place within the welfare state. We argue that the French school of regulationist literature, though able to provide a broad frame of reference for analysing contemporary shifts in economy and society, needs to be supplemented by an analysis which focuses on the racialised and gendered character of the welfare state. In the paper the ways in which the ‘universal’ welfare state has operated to exclude minorities and marginalised groups are charted, and we argue that in practice the Fordist mode of social regulation (MSR) operating in Britain generated a hierarchy of oppression. This hierarchy was constituted through the relations of class, race, and gender, and we show how these are currently being redefined as the British state seeks to mediate the crisis tendencies inherent in the Fordist MSR.
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