Abstract
The idea of ‘intergenerational cultures of worklessness’ has become influential in UK politics and policy, and been used to explain contemporary worklessness and to justify welfare reforms. Workless parents are said to pass on to their children attitudes and behaviours which inculcate ‘welfare dependency’. In its strongest version, politicians and welfare practitioners talk confidently of ‘three generations of families where no-one has ever worked’; even though no study, bar this one, has investigated whether such families actually exist. Solid evidence for intergenerational cultures of worklessness is elusive so this study tested the idea via interviews with twenty families in Glasgow and Middlesbrough that had been long-term workless. Theories of intergenerational cultures of worklessness feel like ‘zombie arguments’ – resistant to evidence and social scientific efforts to kill them off. Regardless, the findings of this critical case study are offered as a fresh batch of ammunition with which to try to do so.
Introduction
Behind the statistics lie households where three generations have never had a job. (Tony Blair, 1997) We have got places where there are three generations of men who have never worked. If your grandfather never worked and your father never worked, why would you think work is the normal thing to do? (Dame Carol Black, 2008) … on some estates … often three generations of the same family have never worked … (Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, 2009) … living on welfare has become a way of life, inherited through the generations from parents to children. (Baron Norman Tebbit, 2010) … there are four generations of families where no-one has ever had a job. (Chris Grayling, Minister for Work and Pensions, 2011)
That ‘workless families’ are culpable for fostering and passing on to their working age children cultures of worklessness has become one of the dominant ideas of UK politics. Popular with the previous New Labour administration, it is even more so with the Coalition government from 2010, informing policies for welfare reform and beyond. This general theory of ‘intergenerational cultures of worklessness’ finds a particular, strong form in statements popular with tabloid newspaper editors, welfare practitioners and politicians about ‘three generations of families where no-one has ever had a job’ (Shildrick et al., 2012a).
We believe that ours is the first study to put the idea of ‘three generations of families of where no-one has ever worked’ to the empirical test. Arguably, it also provides one of the most concerted assessments of the more general claim that unemployment can be explained by the transmission of cultures of worklessness across generations.
First, we briefly differentiate between explanations of worklessness based on ‘the deprivation story’ and on ‘the welfare dependency story’, before sketching the significance of these latter ideas in UK politics and policy and the extent of their basis in research evidence. Second, we describe ‘hunting the Yeti’ – the search for those elusive families said to have been workless across three generations. Third, we describe some of the main research findings. Fourth, we explain how these families became workless in the long term. In conclusion, we suggest that, with the idea of intergenerational cultures of worklessness, we are dealing with a zombie argument; one that is weak on social scientific evidence, but one which should be contended with nonetheless given the power of these ideas over contemporary policy.
The inheritance of idleness?
Since the recession of 2008, unemployment in the UK has been running at historically high levels. A particular focus of government concern has been ‘workless households’ (i.e. households having one or more working age adults, none of whom is currently in paid employment). In 2011, around one in five (19 per cent) – or 3.8 million households in the UK – were ‘workless’ (and 53.5 per cent had all adults in work; ONS, 2011). Approximately 2 per cent of households (370,000) are classed as having ‘never worked’ (i.e. no working age adult has ever had paid employment) (McInnes, 2012).
Unemployment is not, however, solely a problem of the UK’s recent economic recession. The UK’s ‘Old Industrial Regions’ (Hudson, 1989) – in the North of England, central Scotland, Northern Ireland and South Wales – have since the 1980s suffered stubbornly high levels of unemployment, subsequent to the widespread deindustrialization and economic restructuring of the UK economy from the 1970s onwards. This restructuring is well described elsewhere (e.g. Brown, 1997) but has entailed, for instance, shifts in employment from primary industries to the service sector (associated with the relative increase in female employment), the deregulation of the labour market and declining influence of Trade Union power and the increasing destandardization of jobs (so that part-time, low-skilled and temporary jobs become more prominent) (Beynon, 1997). For example, Middlesbrough, in Teesside, North East England, witnessed massive job losses in the traditional industries of steel, heavy engineering and chemicals in the 1980s but, despite growth in service industry employment, it still has had roughly twice the UK average rate of unemployment over the subsequent period (Shildrick et al., 2012b). Other disadvantages, such as possessing low skills, poor health or a disability, or coming from particular ethnic groups, also increase the risk of unemployment and add to disadvantages of place.
In sum, there is no doubt that concentrations of worklessness can be found in some neighbourhoods, particularly in ‘the Old Industrial Regions’. Some families, particularly those in the most deprived neighbourhoods and/or which carry other disadvantages, are more likely to experience unemployment than others. How we explain this is an important question not least because it shapes how social policy should respond to the problem. Some seek an answer in the long-term depression of ‘opportunity structures’ (Roberts, 2009). For instance, MacDonald and Marsh (2005) suggest that, in the case of Teesside, high rates and repeated spells of unemployment (sometimes occurring in the same families) are primarily the outcome of living in ‘one of the most de-industrialised locales in the UK’ (Byrne, 1999: 93). The argument is that social structural disadvantage becomes spatially concentrated, impacting over decades on the life opportunities of different generations of the same families. This is what Macmillan (2011) – in seeking to explain ‘intergenerational unemployment’ – calls the ‘deprivation story’. We return to it later in the article.
The other possibility Macmillan considers is the ‘welfare dependency story’. This is one, in essence, that posits the inheritance of idleness across generations, from parents to children. This idea, that worklessness is cultural in nature (present in values, outlooks and practices), and reproduced and transmitted in families across generations, has a long history. It is heavily implicated in shifting theories of poverty and descriptions of ‘the poor’; with poverty typically being an outcome of the moral failure of ‘the poor’ to work. It can be seen in early categorizations of ‘the undeserving poor’ in the 17th century Poor Law and in the ‘social residuum’ identified by political theorists and early surveys of the urban poor in the 19th century. In the early 20th century, the Eugenics movement searched for the biological bases of poverty and social degeneracy. When this was discredited, professionals in the emergent post-war welfare state talked instead of ‘problem families’. The disputed ‘culture of poverty’ thesis of the 1960s was overtaken by Sir Keith Joseph’s ‘cycle of deprivation’ in the 1970s, itself superseded in the 1980s and 1990s by ideas imported from the US about the rise of a new, welfare-dependent underclass. Preferring the language of ‘social exclusion’ but not jettisoning underclass thinking, New Labour in the 2000s came to target the most deprived and excluded ‘bottom 2.5%’. More recently the UK government has turned its attention to ‘120,000 troubled families’. Most of this history has been well reviewed elsewhere (see Morris, 1994; Welshman, 2007; PSE, 2011).
Despite their chequered pedigree, ideas about cultures of worklessness are now prominent in UK politics and policy. The Coalition government professes itself determined to challenge ‘cultures of worklessness’ (DWP, 2012) and the intergenerational transmission of ‘welfare dependency’ (HM Government, 2010). Central to its welfare reforms is tackling the problem of ‘children growing up in homes where no one works’, worklessness being repeated ‘through the generations’ (DWP, 2010: 3) and ‘welfare benefits as a “lifestyle choice”’ (Osborne, cited in Wintour, 2010). The government’s Social Justice Strategy ploughs the same furrow, with an over-riding emphasis on the ‘importance of work’ particularly for the most disadvantaged families (DWP, 2012: 36).
Reading these government pronouncements, one might take it to be axiomatic that worklessness is, in good part, the result of the faulty dispositions of the unemployed; that worklessness is passed culturally from parent to child so that what is required primarily is an attack on ‘cultures of welfare dependency’ (e.g. via increasing workfare policies, greater conditionality on and reduction in the value of benefits). The same ‘taken-for-grantedness’ infuses assertions about ‘three generations of families where no-one has ever worked’ (a short-hand statement of the more general theory about intergenerational cultures of worklessness). These are mantras that are often repeated but rarely questioned. It is as if their continual restatement guarantees their truth.
One of the motivations for our study was that research evidence in support of the idea of cultures of worklessness (intergenerational or otherwise) is surprisingly limited. Here, some pertinent studies are briefly mentioned. Page (2000) studied deprived council estates in England, describing ‘inward looking communities’ and an ‘estate effect’ characterized by ambivalent attitudes towards education and work. Unemployed young men from ‘work poor’ families were said to have low morale, aspirations and motivations. Department for Work and Pensions (2003) research in Salford concluded that the attractions of the informal economy, a fear of leaving the security of welfare benefits and a ‘poverty of aspiration’ were all ‘community factors’ that helped explain worklessness. This was echoed by a report from HM Treasury and DWP (2003: 46): ‘in some areas a culture of worklessness and poverty of aspirations have developed, locking people into cycles of worklessness’. Research by the Social Exclusion Task Force, DCSF and DCLG (2008: 22) suggests that for young people ‘the intergenerational experience of worklessness’ could be an influential social framework leading to low aspirations for legitimate employment.
On the other hand, a different study by the Social Exclusion Unit (2004: 6) found that concentrations of worklessness in the UK were largely ‘structural’, resulting from changes in the job market, ‘residential sorting’ and other area effects. It found ‘no consistent evidence of a culture of worklessness in these neighbourhoods, in the sense that people have completely different values and do not want to work at all’. Fletcher et al. (2008: 40) concluded exactly the same from their study of residents of social housing. Rather, a main problem for residents was not finding work but keeping it. They became caught up in a cycle of low-paid, insecure jobs and unemployment (see Shildrick et al., 2012b). MacDonald and Marsh (2005) rejected Murray’s (1990) thesis that a culture of welfare dependency defines a new underclass, finding overwhelming commitment to the ‘social and moral value of working for a living’ amongst young adults in deprived neighbourhoods (2005: 123).
It is difficult to explain these different findings about ‘cultures of worklessness’. It is possible that studies that pursue the question most directly, and which use intensive qualitative methods, tend to come out against the idea. Even supportive studies are often tentative in their findings, hedging them with ‘may’ and ‘possibly’ (e.g. Dewson et al., 2007: 37). In their extensive review of the literature on the causes of worklessness in the UK, Ritchie et al. also reach for cautious language (2005: 9, emphasis added): where cultures of worklessness are said to exist, they are characterised by: lowered incentives to work where peers are also unemployed and the informal economy has a strong pull factor, and a view of joblessness as unproblematic within a context of lowered aspirations, and short-term horizons … it can be said that cultures of worklessness may exist in some areas, within which worklessness, in some cases, is intergenerational.
Hunting the Yeti: Aims and methods
Given the power of these ideas, but their shaky basis in research evidence, our principal aim was to investigate whether ‘cultures of worklessness’ passed down the generations was a viable explanation for the concentrated worklessness that can be found in some neighbourhoods and families in the UK.
‘Three generations that have never worked’?
Our previous research in deprived neighbourhoods had not led us into contact with any families where three generations had never worked (although we had heard them talked about often by practitioners; MacDonald and Marsh, 2005; Shildrick et al., 2012b). The nature of most UK labour markets in the 1950s and 1960s when full employment was the norm, and the multiple ‘reforms’ that have brought greater stringency and conditionality to the receipt of welfare benefits since, make it doubtful that there would be families where worklessness had existed permanently across these decades. Nevertheless, as with the Yeti, just because incontrovertible evidence of their existence has yet to be found does not mean they do not exist. After all, Yeti hunters may have searched the wrong mountain ranges or simply not looked hard enough. The research was designed as a critical case study, involving substantial fieldwork effort, so that it gave as great a chance as possible to uncovering ‘families where three generations have never worked’.
Research sites
Glasgow and Middlesbrough were selected for the research (see Shildrick et al., 2012a for fuller descriptions). Middlesbrough is now one of the poorest towns in England and has had high rates of worklessness since the collapse of its industrial mainstays in the 1980s. The neighbourhoods focussed on (anonymized as ‘East Kelby’) have a relatively stable and predominantly white working-class population and feature in the top 3% most deprived wards in England. In Glasgow industrial decline and the shedding of manual employment began earlier than in Middlesbrough, since the mid-1960s, and in both places traditional skilled manual jobs have increasingly been replaced by less well-paid and less secure jobs in the service sector. ‘Parkhill’ in Glasgow is in the top 5% most deprived wards in Scotland. During the fieldwork period (in February 2010) the worklessness rate was 38.1% in Parkhill (compared with 21.8% in Glasgow and 14.6% in Scotland). In East Kelby it was 30.6% (compared with 20.9% in Middlesbrough and 12.4% in England).
Sample recruitment
The original aim was to recruit twenty families (ten in each locality) where, across three generations, there was at least one family member of working age and out of full-time education who had never had a job. We anticipated: an ‘older generation’ (i.e. the grandparents) aged 60 years plus; a ‘middle generation’ (the parents) aged approximately 40 years plus; and a ‘younger generation’ (the children) aged approximately 16 to 25 years (whom we did not require to be still living in the same household as their parents). The discourse about ‘three generations of workless families’ is often ‘masculinist’ (e.g. ‘if your grandfather never worked, and your father never worked …’ etc.). Nevertheless, we hoped to interview roughly equal numbers of women, one reason being that they too are implicated negatively in contemporary debates about welfare (Department for Work and Pensions, 2012) and, after all, the focus here is on workless families not just grandfathers, fathers and sons.
But even when likely terrain has been identified how does one find families like these? The fieldwork involved various steps and refinements. Given the popularity of this idea with practitioners in earlier studies (e.g. Shildrick et al., 2012b), the first step was to meet with over thirty representatives of organizations working locally (e.g. community workers, drugs workers, GPs, priests, ‘welfare to work’ advisors).
These practitioners often drew on the idea of ‘three generations of families where no-one has ever worked’ in trying to understand the situations of those they aimed to help. For instance, one housing officer said ‘with some [young people] it’s the case that when grandfathers haven’t worked and fathers haven’t worked, well why should I bother?’ It became apparent, however, that most of these practitioners operated with a loose definition of ‘never worked’. When pushed they would clarify that they had heard of the idea but they personally had never dealt with such families. Alternatively, they meant individuals from the same family who had experienced long-term or recurrent unemployment, perhaps coupled with other social or health problems. None of these contacts were able to direct us to potential recruits for the study (and confidentiality of client records was only a small part of the explanation). This is an important finding in itself. Despite their close engagement with local communities and their support for the idea, these interviewees were unable to point us towards any families in which ‘three generations had never worked’.
A range of techniques were then used to recruit a sample (e.g. posters in public places and short stories about the project in newspapers and schools’ newsletters; leafleting particularly deprived streets; approaching clients of Job Centres and ‘welfare to work agencies’; talking to people in shops and cafes; attending the social events of community groups; ‘snowballing’ from early interviewees).
Using these different techniques to ‘hunt the Yeti’, in intensive fieldwork over eight months, we were still unable to find any families where ‘three generations had never worked’. Coincidentally, during the course of the fieldwork, social statistical analysis of the UK Labour Force Survey was published that confirmed the problem we faced. Gaffney (2010) and Macmillan (2011) both separately concluded that households that contain two generations where no-one has ever worked account for less than half of one per cent of workless households. Even this figure used only ‘necessary’ not ‘sufficient’ criteria, to arrive at a possible upper limit. Gaffney estimates this to be around twenty thousand households in the UK, most of which comprise a lone parent and a young adult who is relatively new to the labour market. Logically, families with ‘three generations who have never worked’ will be even fewer than this.
Because we were also interested in the more general idea of intergenerational cultures of worklessness we progressively loosened our sample selection criteria: from three to two generations of ‘families where no-one had ever worked’; then to families where in the middle generation there was ‘very long-term worklessness’ (of at least five years); and finally we ended up including some younger generation interviewees who were currently unemployed but had had a job previously. Throughout we kept searching for families where ‘three generations had never worked’. Although experienced in researching ‘hard to reach’ groups, we would stress the difficulty in even finding a sample of families that had known very long-term worklessness over two generations in these locales of very high unemployment.
The sample
Forty-seven people across twenty families were interviewed in Glasgow and Middlesbrough. It was only possible to interview one family across three generations because in the other cases these older family members were deceased or too ill to take part. All middle-generation members of these households were out of work. We had sought to recruit interviewees who were claiming a range of welfare benefits, not just ‘Job Seeker’s Allowance’, because of the way that people on sickness and disability benefits have increasingly been drawn into political and media discourses that paint them as part of a culture of ‘welfare dependency’ (Garthwaite, 2011). Participants reported claiming a range of benefits: 11 said they were in receipt of Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA) as their ‘main benefit’; eight, Disability Living Allowance (DLA); five, Income Support (IS); five, Employment Support Allowance (ESA); two, Carer’s Allowance (CA); and two, Incapacity Benefit (IB). Nine interviewees, all but one in the younger generation, reported receiving no benefits or other income. Later we describe why it was that these families had such long-term worklessness in the middle generation but the preponderance of ill-health related benefits gives some indication of what we found.
Interviewing and analysis
Research ethics were approved by Teesside University and followed British Sociological Association guidelines (a key imperative was to preserve participants’ anonymity by using pseudonyms or changing minor biographical details). Interviews were normally conducted one-to-one, semi-structured, audio-recorded, lengthy (up to four hours in some instances) and usually undertaken in people’s homes. Complicated family trees and relationships made it difficult to identify potential interviewees and some refused to participate. What some might call the ‘chaotic lives’ of some participants also meant that fieldwork was time-consuming and difficult. To cover their expenses and encourage participation interviewees received £20. This proved to be one motivation for participation, but most said that they simply wanted to help us with the study.
Analysis proceeded from the verbatim transcription of interviews and construction of ‘life history grids’ for each participant. Case studies of each family were produced, presenting the relevant interview material under thematic codes for each family member meaning that we could see the extent to which experiences were shared across different generations of the same family. Case studies were read and debated by all the research team and used to generate the research findings that we present.
Intergenerational cultures of worklessness?
To test whether intergenerational cultures of worklessness were present amongst these families we drew on Ritchie et al.’s summary statement (2005: 9; see earlier), itemizing its alleged dimensions but extending it further to provide a fuller, harder test (e.g. we were interested not only in whether ‘peers were unemployed’ but in unemployment in the full social and family networks of interviewees). For reasons of space, we concentrate here on interviewees’ attitudes, values, experiences and aspirations in respect of work, welfare and worklessness. It should be stressed, however, that on all counts the study was unable to locate evidence that would support the idea of a culture of worklessness, intergenerational or otherwise.
‘I would rather work …’
Core to the idea of cultures of worklessness is the proposition that worklessness is in large part an outcome of values, outlooks and behaviour. Counter to this, however, across all interviews the social, psychological, financial and moral value of working for a living was very strongly emphasized (in comparison with ‘the miserable existence’ of being long-term reliant on benefits, as Ryan Blenkinsopp, 54, Middlesbrough put it). This finding was true regardless of age and gender. Some research (e.g. see Jahoda, 1982) suggests that women may have a less psychologically damaging experience of unemployment than men because of the greater availability to them of alternative, socially valued roles (such as motherhood). This was not borne out in our study; women were as likely as men to describe the negative experience of unemployment and the positive value of employment. A commitment to employment as a form of ‘working for a living’ appeared to be present across generations of working-class women in these families.
Janet Nash (40, Middlesbrough) was currently receiving Carer’s Allowance (she looked after her disabled husband): ‘I would rather work than be on benefits, because … it’s as if you’re sponging off the state and I don’t like it’. Her son, Connor Nash (16, Middlesbrough) stressed the same. In just the few months since leaving school, he had ‘applied for 120 jobs’ (and was keen to show us his application letters). Even though they were now long-term workless, middle-generation participants still described the commonly reported social and psychological benefits of working (e.g. Jahoda, 1982); remembering what it had been like to have had jobs years previously and voicing what worklessness denied them. Employment could give order to otherwise unstructured days and weeks and widen social horizons and networks. It could give a purpose in life and a better sense of personal identity and social status. Carrie Smith (52, Middlesbrough, currently receiving JSA) was typical: You need that interest, don’t you? Doing something rather than sitting around doing nothing all your life. Sounds so boring, doesn’t it! It gives you an interest, broadens your mind and gives you a feeling of self-satisfaction … it is just a way of life. [Speaking of her children’s attitude] … they all like to work. They really want to get on with something ….
Of course, it might be expected that interviewees would give responses that painted them in a positive light, given the stigma that is associated with worklessness (Shildrick and MacDonald, 2013); tabloid campaigns against ‘scroungers’ were rife at the time of the fieldwork in 2010–11. Nevertheless, the unanimity of participants’ viewpoints here, the emotional force and detail of answers to questions, and the fact that interviewees answered other ‘sensitive questions’ (e.g. about their family histories) in ways that might portray them negatively, led us to take their statements about the value of work as real and meant. This was also confirmed by people’s practices (e.g. job search activity or efforts to improve ‘employability’), not just what people said. One example here was the substantial engagement by many participants in voluntary and caring work (e.g. for children and for family members who were ill or had disabilities); a finding that points to the irony of labelling families like these as ‘workless households’. Theses about cultures of worklessness usually ignore work done by people outside of employment, beyond alleging engagement in the illicit, informal economy (Ritchie et al., 2005). Earlier we noted the similarity between men’s and women’s employment commitment. Caring work and voluntary work were examples, however, where gender did shape participants’ experiences. The majority of this work was carried out by women (see Shildrick et al., 2012a), confirming other research on the role of women in these spheres in deprived neighbourhoods (e.g. MacDonald, 1996; Camina, 2004).
‘Get in the real world’
As well as its social, psychological and moral worth, long-term worklessness meant long-term reliance on meagre welfare benefits which consigned families to enduring poverty. Highly restricted social lives, the absence of days out and holidays and precise household budgeting – yet often being hungry and cold – were common material signifiers of what it was like to be poor, for these families. Kerry White (31, Glasgow) lived with her three young children, and was receiving Income Support. She had been out of employment for several years and now did voluntary work with ex-offenders. Kerry was brought up in poverty; an experience that continued for her own children: I find you’re just existing. I can barely feed the weans [children] week to week. That’s what kills me, because of the way I was brought up, do you know what I mean? I just want to be comfortable; that they’re fed and clothed and got what they need. And I can’t do that on benefits. It’s a real struggle … I’ve been brought up with rough houses all my life … There should be more jobs, more opportunities.
Middle-generation interviewees talked matter-of-factly about the hardships their families had faced. When participants were asked directly about tabloid headlines about ‘welfare scroungers’ or politicians’ statements that some people might prefer to live on benefits, an angrier tone was sometimes evident: It’s crap. It’s no way to live. It’s no good for your self-esteem, being out of work … They don’t make it easy for you …. how they can think that it is? I think it’s just an excuse for them – ‘oh it’s the layabouts’ fault’. But believe me I’m struggling. I don’t abuse the system and I’m struggling. (Michelle Gordon, 45, Glasgow) Oh fuck off! These people who run the newspapers, they haven’t got a fucking clue … They haven’t had to live like us … I could do their life. I bet they couldn’t do my life … like these MPs who are fiddling … Get them to live on our street! Get them to live here for four weeks! They couldn’t fucking do it. Get in the real world. (Vera Lamb, 54, Middlesbrough)
‘This is a bad life’
A discourse of ‘low aspirations’ as explanatory of why people, especially young people, are in poverty has been influential in government policy (Cummings et al., 2012) and is said to typify cultures of worklessness (e.g. Page, 2000).
Some in the middle generation still hoped to be able to find a job and were actively looking for one. Archie Wilson (42, Glasgow) had only ever been employed for three years since leaving school (because of prolonged drug-related offending and imprisonment). Yet, life on the dole now drove his commitment to work. He got up ‘early every morning’, calling into factories and garages on the off-chance they had jobs going, and to visit the Job Centre: I just hope I get a job … Once I get a job I’ll get myself … everything sorted out. I just want a job so I can just live my life … Because I cannot live off that [benefits], do you know? You’re always skint and I hate that … I would rather be out grafting and getting money … It’s killing me being unemployed; it’s killing me so it is. So I’m dying to get a job, I prefer to work.
Many in the middle generation, however, now seemed resigned to long-term worklessness and to have largely given up the search for jobs. A theory of cultures of worklessness implies that this can be the result of low aspirations. Extensive research literature shows, however, that pessimism, fatalism and ‘the discouraged worker effect’ are typical outcomes of long-term unemployment (e.g. Jahoda, 1982; Ashton, 1986). Prolonged unemployment and the multiplicity of problems that middle-generation interviewees had faced (as we describe later) meant that – while they clung to the view that working was better than not working – they had a realistic assessment of their chances of employment in what were very depressed local labour markets. Davie Harris (55, Glasgow and currently receiving ESA) had a history of drug and alcohol-related crime and imprisonment which had kept him out of the labour market for most of his life. He asked: … who is going to employ somebody like me, that’s uneducated and got psychotic problems? … I think my life’s more or less … not finished [but] I’ve got nothing else to do, nothing else to look forward to, really. Just a bit of peace in my life. That’s what I hope for; to stay out of jail, have a relationship with my wee granddaughter.
Terry Jamieson (44, Glasgow) had a particularly depressed view of the future. Like Davie, he had a long record of problematic drug use and imprisonment (and was now in receipt of DLA). He said that being sexually abused as a boy ‘took his life away’. He said of his hopes for the future: ‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Because this is a bad life. For me anyway, know what I mean? I don’t bother with anyone. I keep myself to myself. I just want left alone’. Alice Hopkins (53, Middlesbrough) suffered from severe depression (which had worsened since the death of her husband), agoraphobia and mobility problems. She received ESA (her son, Martin, 34, was her full-time carer) and together they lived very financially and socially constrained lives. She said: ‘no, I don’t really think of the future. It’s day to day. I just get up each day, really. It’s hard because some days I don’t really want to get up’. Alice added: ‘and who would employ me, really? Because I would be bursting into tears or I would be a jabbering idiot. Who would want to employ me? No-one!’
Setting ‘heights a wee bit higher’
One of the most telling findings, against a theory of intergenerational cultures of worklessness, was parents’ commitment that their children should not end up in the same situation as them. They were unanimous that a life of ‘welfare-dependent’ worklessness was not acceptable, never mind preferable, for their children. Roy Cunningham (50, Middlesbrough), had been out of employment for over twenty years due to a long-standing disability (‘it’s soul destroying, it’s just killed me’). Currently all his children were out of work: ‘what I want is for my family to have jobs, you know? They’re not asking for anything big, that’s the thing, they are not, like, being greedy’. Linda White (51, Glasgow) said simply that she wanted her children’s life to ‘be a lot better than mine’. Kenny Jamieson (48, Glasgow) said of his children who were in jobs: ‘I think they’ve seen what I’ve been through and chose not to go that way. And I’m proud of them. I’m proud of my wee girl. I’m proud of my wee boy’.
These parents had little social, cultural or financial capital that might help their children into the labour market. For instance, because of their own long-term unemployment they had weak connections to informal social networks that are still valuable in helping working-class people into jobs (MacDonald and Marsh, 2005). Nevertheless, parents did what they could to help their children in the search for work. Susan Morrison (39, Glasgow) did a newspaper delivery round with her younger children so as: ‘to give them a wee start, to learn how to earn money’. To provide support, Peter McGinn (55, Glasgow) would wait outside on the pavement while his unemployed daughter Jade (18) attended job interviews. He said ‘I know I’ve wasted most of my life so I don’t want obviously for them to do the same’. Jade confirmed this: ‘my Dad’s always on my back … pushing me to get a job all the time. He always pushes us [his children]’.
The younger generation interviewees also expressed strongly pro-work attitudes (even though their employment to date had been minimal or non-existent), sometimes directly stating that they did not want to end up in the same situation as their parents. Unusually we interviewed three members of the Martin family, from Glasgow, together. Here Leanne (17) describes how her ambitions have been influenced by what she has observed of the depressing reality of her mother Claire’s (36) and Uncle Douglas’s (47) long-term worklessness:
So can I ask you Leanne, do you think it’s important to work?
Aye, cause I don’t want to just … and I don’t mean this bad Mum, against my Dad or you Uncle Douglas, but I don’t want to just sit, just sit …
End up like us.
Vegetating.
Aye.
For young people, having a job was about more than having money or staving off boredom. Unemployment represented a life on hold. There was no future because the markers of adulthood – independent accommodation and starting a family – were all difficult without a job. Charlotte Harris (21, Glasgow) was currently on Income Support, bringing up her infant daughter. She wanted to return to college so as not to become stuck in a low quality job: ‘I know I’m on Income Support and stuff but I don’t see me doing this for the rest of my life, definitely not. In the next five years I want to be working my way up in a job’. She also hoped, in the process, to move away from ‘the Ghetto’ (as her part of Parkhill was known) to somewhere ‘quiet’ so that her daughter was not brought up in the neighbourhood. She concluded that, in comparison with her parents, she had ‘set her heights [sic] a wee bit higher’.
Repeated rejections from employers meant, however, that some young people seemed on the cusp between conventional aspirations for work and collapse into a fatalistic acceptance of the possibility of long-term worklessness. ‘I don’t expect it, I hope it’, said Verity Lamb (16, Middlesbrough) about the prospect of getting a job. Mark McGinn (18, Glasgow) remarked that in five years’ time he would like to have a ‘steady job, steady income, a wee family and things’ because ‘a job isn’t just a job … it’s the future of your life’. He went on to say, however, that he had ‘lost hope. I wouldn’t expect … see, if I applied, if I went for a job and they actually did [even] reply to me, I’d be shocked’.
Summary and discussion: Families, deprivation and long-term worklessness
It was impossible for us to locate families where ‘three generations have never worked’ – despite repetitious, bald statements from politicians and others about such families being emblematic of the problem of worklessness in the UK and despite intensive fieldwork explicitly designed to reach such families. Even two-generation workless families account for a miniscule fraction – less than half of one per cent – of workless households in the UK (Gaffney, 2010). Indeed, whilst writing this article (in spring 2013), a response from Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to a Freedom of Information Request, stated that ‘statistical information on the number of UK families that never work is not available’ (see Macmillan, 2013). The Minister also revealed that his frequent assertions about ‘three generations of families that have never worked’ were, therefore, based on ‘personal observations’ (Macmillan, 2013). Bizarrely, the same letter then states that ‘a research report was produced by the University of Bristol in 2011 looking at this issue. This reports that there are pockets in Britain where there are two and three generations of families who are unemployed’. Duncan Smith is referring here to Macmillan’s (2011) study; a study which directly rebuts the sorts of claims made by Duncan Smith, that found that at most only 0.3% of multi-generational households had two generations that had never worked and that concludes that three-generation ‘never-worked households’ will be even rarer, if they exist (Macmillan, 2013).
Nevertheless, ‘cultures of worklessness’ still might help explain why some people are out of work in the long term. By interviewing members of two generations of families that had experienced long-term worklessness we were able to investigate this. This idea is central to contemporary UK policy pronouncements about worklessness and the need for welfare ‘reform’. Here too we were unable to locate evidence to show that long-term worklessness was culturally determined. We investigated the various dimensions of a supposed culture of worklessness – in this article paying particular attention to people’s attitudes, values, experiences and aspirations in respect of work, welfare and worklessness – and on all counts it was impossible to match what is claimed with the accounts we gathered. For instance, informants of whatever generation or gender were agreed about the moral, social, psychological and financial advantages of working over being workless. Importantly, all parents were adamant in wishing that their children did not end up in the same situation as them; a view echoed by the younger generation.
It would take longer than space allows here to provide a proper account of how the members of these families came to be workless and what sort of policy and practice interventions might assist them in overcoming that (see Shildrick et al., 2012a). Some brief comments are necessary though if we are to demonstrate further why a ‘cultures of worklessness’ approach was not useful. Interviewing families allowed us to question this sort of approach and to see how being workless was the result of different processes for different generations.
For the younger generation the story was comparatively straightforward. They had not had a good start in life and they lacked family social, cultural and financial capital that might assist their labour market transitions. Nevertheless, they were not especially different to other disadvantaged working-class young people trying to get jobs at a time of high national unemployment and in very depressed local labour markets (e.g. MacDonald and Marsh, 2005). Many had not had employment but then again many were relatively recent school-leavers. They wanted jobs and were actively looking for them. Their worklessness, we argue, was primarily the outcome of the lack of job opportunities for people like them.
The story for the middle generation was more complex. Characteristically, it was one about how multiple serious life events (sometimes stemming back to childhood), and disadvantages and hardships associated with living long-term often in deep poverty, and participants’ reactions to these deprived situations and stressful events, all combined together to progressively exclude people from local labour markets (that themselves, over the past few decades, progressively offered fewer standard employment opportunities). Variously, failing in/being failed by education, problematic drug use, offending, imprisonment, criminal victimization, domestic violence, multiple bereavements, poor housing, family instability and serious mental and physical ill-health featured heavily in interviews. Of course, not all middle-generation individuals had been affected by all these problems but many had been affected by many of them. Our argument is that these problems combined together in creating their effect but if we were to identify the single, most common ‘factor’ explaining worklessness across these biographies it was ill-health.
Significant ‘welfare reforms’ were being enacted by the UK government at the time of the fieldwork, including increased pressure on claimants to move off sickness and disability benefits (often to Job Seeker’s Allowance). These were having a direct impact on the families we interviewed (e.g. some reported worsening mental health and one woman described her attempted suicide, because of the stress involved). One example was told to us by Alice Hopkins (53, Middlesbrough). Her husband had been declared ‘fit for work’ despite his long-standing, terminal illness: ‘[our appeal] went through in February and it was denied and he was dead. It was denied and he was already dead!’
Therefore, these were biographies that were unusual – even for families in deprived neighbourhoods – in the multiplicity and severity of their inter-linked traumas and problems. Taken together, as the years passed, they took their toll on participants’ well-being. Now, many appeared too ill to be employed. Asking questions about people’s job prospects and job-searching sometimes felt absurd. This accumulation of biographical troubles meant that, regardless of interviewees’ preference to be in work, the likelihood of employment was now slim. For instance, in February 2012 there were 23 people on Job Seeker’s Allowance in Middlesbrough chasing every notified vacancy (ONS, 2012). Our middle-generation interviewees stood at the back of a very long queue for jobs, disadvantaged by their troubled biographies and by employers’ wariness about recruiting from the long-term unemployed (Devins and Hogarth, 2005). Take Peter McGinn (55, Glasgow) as an example. An extensive record of drug-related offending and imprisonment had kept Peter away from employment for most of his adult life. Trying to put this past behind him, he wanted to work: So I apply and apply and apply [for jobs] but there’s nothing there now. If I was an employer, I wouldn’t employ me. You see, although I’ve been in prison, actually, I’m a good worker. I’ve just done too much bad stuff.
Thus, we would not wish to substitute a simplistic, one-sided, structural explanation in place of the idea of cultures of worklessness. As suggested above, although part of it, simple ‘lack of jobs’ does not explain the middle generation’s very long-term detachment from the labour market. William Julius Wilson, debating the causes of worklessness in the US ghetto, commented that: In emphasizing the powerful role of the environment in shaping the lives of inner-city residents, we should not … deny the existence of unflattering behaviors that emerge from blocked opportunities … some of these behaviors, which often impede the social mobility of inner-city residents, represent cultural responses to constraints and limited opportunities that have evolved over time. (Wilson, 1996: xviii)
Writing in respect of the UK, Ken Roberts (2001: 113) says something similar: even if the original and continuing background cause of social exclusion is a lack of work, it could still be the case that the culture developed in adapting to this situation becomes an additional impediment to the social and economic ascent of those concerned.
Acknowledging that some of our middle-generation participants described in graphic terms – at times, in some instances – their ‘unflattering behaviours’ (e.g. offending, violence) does not mean that this was a root cause of their worklessness. To be clear, of the two options posed by Macmillan (2011) in seeking to explain intergenerational unemployment, ours is a ‘deprivation story’ not a ‘welfare dependency story’. Going further, primarily this is a story about the consequences for families of the economic dispossession that has been visited upon the working class of Britain’s old industrial centres over the last third of the 20th century as played out amongst some of the most disadvantaged and impoverished members of that class. The older generation in this study were described as having lives typical of the old working class; lives in which manual employment predominated for men and, despite the traditions of heavy industry in these places, for women as well. Theirs was a culture of work, not of worklessness. This culture of working-class employment was, after all, the basis on which Glasgow became ‘the second city of the British Empire’ and Middlesbrough, in its heyday, famous for its industrial prowess.
Sticking with the question of culture but reversing the assumptions of the ‘cultures of worklessness’ thesis, one of the most striking findings of the study is the extent to which the value of work remains so culturally alive to people who, in the case of the middle generation, have become so physically distanced from it and, with the younger generation, who so far have been largely deprived of it. Critically, if we could not find a culture of worklessness amongst these extreme cases this is unlikely to be a viable explanation for the general and more common experience of worklessness in the UK. Rather than policy pronouncements that presume their preference for welfare dependency – and that progressively introduce workfare into the British system and reduce the social security and benefit entitlements of unemployed people – what seems most likely to challenge the worklessness of research participants like ours is the better availability of opportunities to be other than workless. To repeat Kerry White: ‘there should be more jobs, more opportunities’ or, as Roy Cunningham put it, ‘we’re not asking for anything big … not, like, being greedy’ about the sort of opportunities necessary. Admittedly some in the middle generation now appeared physically or mentally incapable of doing the sort of jobs that, under current conditions, are ever likely to be available to them. That was not true for all. Employment was imaginable for some. This was certainly true for the younger generation for whom a job would mark a step away from the possibility of sinking into the long-term worklessness, and wider problems, that have scarred their parents’ lives.
Conclusion: Shooting zombies
It is hard not to think of the idea of (intergenerational) cultures of worklessness as ‘a zombie argument’. Referring to a roll call of theories and studies that morally condemn the poor, on at best the shakiest of evidence, Paul Spicker (2007: 102) describes zombie arguments as ones that ‘no matter how many times they are shot down in flames or have a stake driven through their heart … seem to get up again afterwards’. Yet despite the long insistence that poverty is culturally inherited through families, and characterized by a learned predilection to worklessness, evidence remains scant. Indeed, in a scathing response to the government’s strategy for social mobility and child poverty, the Poverty and Social Exclusion research group (2011: 2) remarked that: Despite almost 150 years of scientific investigation, often by extremely partisan investigators, not a single study has ever found any large group of people/households with any behaviours that could be ascribed to a culture or genetics of poverty … all credible evidence has shown that it is not ‘transmitted’ to children by their parents’ genes or culture.
Yet the idea of poor families as embedded in a culture of worklessness and welfare dependency, across generations, remains central to government welfare reform, and strongly implicated in its strategies for child poverty, social mobility and social justice. When politicians and others assert ad nauseam that there are ‘three (or four) generations of families where no-one has ever worked’ it certainly feels like we are dealing with a zombie argument. President FD Roosevelt famously noted, however, that mere ‘repetition does not transform a lie into a truth’ 1 and, as Spicker (2007: 102) goes on to argue, just because these arguments ‘keep coming back’ does not mean ‘we should lie down and let the zombies win’. As all horror film buffs know, a zombie can, in fact, be dismembered and halted in its tracks. We hope the evidence of this article provides some ammunition towards that end.
Footnotes
Funding
This research was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.