Gibson, Stephen and Crossland, Matthew and Hamilton, Jason (2018) Social citizenship and immigration: Employment, welfare and effortfulness in online discourse concerning migration

The emerging social psychology of citizenship has made use of qualitative methods to explore people ’s understandings of issues such as polity membership and its as sociated rights and responsibilities. Whereas there is a burgeoning tradition of work on conceptions of polity membership, as well as on civil and political citizens hip, relatively little work has thus far focussed on the concept of social citizenship – that aspect of citizenship which ensures that citizens have access to a basic income and standard of li ving. The present paper explores this in the context of debates over polity membership in relation to E ur pean Union (EU) immigration in the United Kingdom. Data collected from posts to a n internet discussion forum are analysed using an approach informed by discursive an d rhetorical psychologies. The findings indicate a range of arguments in relation to soc ial citizenship that were used by posters to suggest that EU immigration would have a negative eff ect on the UK, and that such arguments frequently involved particular constru ctions of groups (e.g. ‘immigrants’, ‘Romanians’, ‘Eastern Europeans’) as likely to claim welfare benefits, or as low-skilled. However, pro-immigration arguments could equally involve outgroup derogation, but in these arguments posters constructed images of subgroups of British citizens (e.g. ‘white working class Brits’) in order to suggest that immigration solved problems brought about due to the psychological deficiencies of these sub-groups. It is sugges ted that this constitutes a previously under-explored dimension of immigration discourse, and th at renewed attention to social citizenship and welfare can bring these complexiti es nto focus. SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION 3 Social citizenship and immigration: Employment, welfare and effortfulness in online discourse concerning migration to the UK. Citizenship is a concept with a rich tradition of scholarship in the wider social sciences, yet which has – until recently – received only sporadic attention within social psychology (for overviews, see Condor, 2011a; Stevenson, Dixon, Hopkins & L uyt, 2015). As Condor (2011a) has noted, citizenship can be seen as a highly con tested concept, and as such any attempt to define citizenship is fraught with di fficulty. However, it is useful for present purposes to sketch an initial working definition of ci tizenship in order to delimit the sorts of issues that might be approached under the broad heading of ci tizensh p. Isin and Wood’s (1999) work is a useful starting point: they describe citizensh ip as ‘both a set of practices (cultural, symbolic and economic) and a bundle of rig hts and duties (civil, political and social) that define an individual’s membership in a polity’ (p. 4, italics in original). Thus, polity membership can be seen to confer rights and responsibili ties on citizens, and these can be withheld from those who are not citizens. I in and Wood’s distinction between civil, political and social rights and duties follows Marshall’s (1950/1992) classic outline of civil, political and social citizenship. Such a distinction is ins tructive insofar as it highlights three core domains to which citizenship pertains: rights to politica participation, such as voting in elections (political citizenship), rights to individual freedom , such as freedom of speech, movement and association (civil citizenship) and rights to a bas ic income and standard of living, where ‘standard of living’ not only connotes an economic standard, but also rights to participate in cultural activity (social citizenship ). As Condor (2011a ) notes, some authors have argued that Marshall’s tripartite distinction between civil, political and social citizenship i s inadequate to capture the complexities of the multifaceted nature of the relationsh ip between individual and polity. Of particular relevance for the present study, the notion of ec nomic citizenship has been SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION 4 proposed as a way of capturing the nexus of relations surrounding employment and economic freedom. For example, following a well-established tradition of fe minist critique of the gendered assumptions enshrined in welfare regimes, Kessler -Harris (2003) argued that existing ideas of social citizenship are in fact something of an obstacle to imagining alternative conceptions of citizenship which enable women to be accorded full citizenship. Kessler-Harris proposed economic citizenship as a conceptual veh ic e for moving towards a less gendered idea of citizenship, and defined it thus: ‘The achievement of economic citizenship can be measured by the possession and exercise of the privileges and opportunities necessary for me n and women to achieve economic and social autonomy and independence.’ (Kessler-Harris, 2003, p. 159) Included in KesslerHarris’s conception of economic citizenship are rights that others have suggested fall into one of Marshall’s (1950/1992) original categories. For example, KesslerHarris argued that rights to pursue one’s chosen occupation – which Marshall saw as a fundamental component of civil citizenship – should in fact be seen as part of economic citizenship. For present purposes, we will retain the original distinction be twe n political, civil and social citizenship, but an awareness of the way in whic h t is distinction is contested at the level of theory is important as we turn to explore the wa y in which these issues are contested in popular discourse. A framework which draws on both Marshall’s (1950/1992) and Isin and Wood’s (1999) definitions provides a useful starting point for mapping some of the burgeoning literature on citizenship in social psychol ogy, and for appreciating the specific contribution that qualitative methodological approaches can make to th psychological study of citizenship. Isin and Wood’s (1999) definition allows for an expanded conception of citizenship beyond the formal legal arena to encompass more dif fuse social-cultural practices. In exploring the way in which these practices are oriented t o and enacted, qualitative SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION 5 approaches are well-placed to make a contribution to the study of citizenship. Isin and Wood suggest that for sociologists, citizenship can be understood as ‘competent membership in a polity’ (Isin & Wood, 1999, p. 4). Gibson and Hamilton (2011) have argued that, for socia l psychologists influenced by recent developments in qualitative methodologies, this raises the question of how social actors themselves understand competent membership of a polity, and indeed how they deal with competing constructions of polity itself. Such an approach follows directly from the social constructionist positions on citizen ship articulated by Shotter (1993) and Haste (2004). Furthermore, the distinction between the political, civil and social domains allows for a focus on how social actors understand, define and enact rights and responsibilities across various interconnected spheres of activity, including political participation (political citizenship), protest and the use of public space (civil citize nship) and the welfare system and public services (social citizenship). The burgeoning litera ture on the social psychology of citizenship can be characterised as having begun to address seve ral of these areas. For example, some work has been concerned with voting and other forms of political participation (e.g. Botindari & Reicher, 2015; Condor & Gibson, 2007; Gibson & Ha milton, 2013; Riley, Morey & Griffin, 2010); other work has addressed the use of public space (e.g. Blackwood, Hopkins & Reicher, 2015; Di Masso, 2012, 2015; Dixon, Levine & McCauley, 2006); and an overarching concern with the broader issue of polity me mbership can be identified in work concerned with issues around identity, belongi ng and intergroup relations (e.g. Abell, Stevenson & Condor, 2006; Andreouli & Howarth, 2013; Figgou, 2015; Gibson, 2015; Gibson & Hamilton, 2011; Gray & Griffin, 2014; Hopkins & Blackwood, 2011). Clearly these distinctions are best thought of as heuristics rather than absolutes, with areas of overlap across the studies cited above (e.g. the use of public space in rotest is a form of political participation). However, what this does highlight is hat whereas there is a SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION 6 developing psychological literature on political and civil rights and responsibilities, as well as on conceptions of polity membership more broadly, there is as yet relatively little work exploring social citizensh ip. It is this which forms the focus of the present study. Social Citizenship In the UK, as in many liberal democracies during the 20 th century, and particularly since the end of the Second World War, it is the welfare stat which has been the vehicle through which social rights and responsibilities have been tr anslated into policy (Dwyer, 2000). The responsibilities of a contributory welfare system – that people pay taxes to fund welfare for those who have fallen on hard times – have long been enshrined in the welfare state (Rees, 1995). However, in recent years – since the advent of Thatcherism, and accelerated under the ‘Third Way’ (Giddens, 1998) approach of the New Labour governments of 1997-2010 – the responsibilities associated with social rights have increasingly been emphasised in such a way as to foreground the governance of individual conduct and subjectivity . This process of ‘responsibilization’ (Clarke, 2005) has led to rights to receive welfare payments and other social benefits (e.g. s ocial housing) increasingly being made contingent on individuals demonstrating that they have m et certain responsibilities concerning efforts to secure employment (Dwyer, 2004; Lund, 1999). Indeed, Lister (2002, p. 127) argued that, under New Labour, paid emp loyment had become the ‘supreme citizenship responsibility’. As argued by Rose (2000 , p. 1407), in this context ‘[c]itizenship