Rights, Recognition and Judgment: Reflections on the Case of Welfare and Asylum
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-856X.2011.00461.x |
| Date | 01 February 2012 |
| Published date | 01 February 2012 |
| Author | Lydia Morris |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Rights, Recognition and Judgment:
Reflections on the Case of Welfare
and Asylum
Lydia Morris
This article begins with Marshall’s essay on citizenship and its significance in confirming equal
social standing, seen here as a precursor to work on rights and recognition. Taylor and Honneth are
taken as exemplars of a dialogical perspective, whereby recognition through rights can provide a
source of identity formation, though Honneth’s approach is broader in scope, being less confined to
the issue of cultural rights. This work is argued to be complementary to the status-based approach
to rights found in Lockwood’s work on civic stratification, and the insights derived from both
authors provide the basis for interrogation of a legal case history on UK withdrawal of welfare from
in-country asylum claimants. Analysis of this history draws attention to the role of judgment in
forging a link between rights and recognition.
Keywords: recognition; welfare; human rights; citizenship
This article explores the value of bringing together a literature which takes as its
focus the concept of ‘recognition’, with a more traditional sociological literature
having ‘rights’ as its point of departure. It sets out the complementarity of these
two perspectives and outlines the scope for their inter-relation, before using the
emergent framework to interrogate a particular legal history on the removal of
welfare support from in-country asylum seekers. It is argued that while a rights/
recognition literature can inform analysis of this history, the legal cases in turn
help expand the scope for recognition theory to incorporate a more cosmopolitan
perspective.
The article therefore makes three contributions to a political theory of
recognition:
(1) It outlines the gains to be made from a fuller engagement with British socio-
logical work within the tradition of citizenship, and the need for recognition
theory to think more seriously about questions of national membership,
alongside claims to universal human rights.
(2) It advocates an integration of the work of Axel Honneth with that of David
Lockwood, and argues that the combined insights of both invite a consider-
ation of the way that social esteem may be influenced by universal principles,
thereby engaging a more cosmopolitan perspective.
(3) It argues for a more central place for judgment in recognition theory, with
respect both to its role in interpreting questions of human dignity, and to its
potential significance in shaping perceptions of social worth.
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856X.2011.00461.x BJPIR: 2012 VOL 14, 39–56
© 2011 The Author.British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2011
Political Studies Association
Citizenship and Social Status
While T. H. Marshall’s (1950) work on ‘Citizenship and Social Class’ is the classic
starting point for sociological understanding of membership, it is essentially an
essay about rights: their historical development, their mutual interdependence and
their importance in confirming equal social standing or status. In this sense, Mar-
shall’s work may be seen as a precursor to attempts to link rights and recognition,
and he begins by endorsing the claim of all ‘to be admitted to a share in the social
heritage ... a claim to be accepted as full members of the society, that is, as citizens’
(Marshall 1950, 6). His emphasis throughout is on the status equality attaching to
citizenship, and though the terminology is different, we can read in this focus an
awareness of the potential significance of ‘recognition’ as a basis for social cohesion.
Marshall’s developmental account of citizenship through three phases of rights—
civil, political and social—is well known, and he notes the particular significance of
social rights in securing full participation. The notion of equal social worth is
identified as the driving force behind this elaboration of citizenship rights (Marshall
1950, 24), and one effect is argued to have been an undermining of the significance
of class inequality. Hence:
There is a basic human equality associated with the concept of full mem-
bership of a community ... [such that] the inequality of the social class
system may be acceptable provided equality of citizenship is recognised
(Marshall 1950, 6).
This equal status is in turn seen as contributing to social integration, which derives
from ‘a sense of community membership based on loyalty to a civilisation which is
a common possession’ (Marshall 1950, 24).
Despite charges of evolutionary reasoning, Marshall’s historical account of the
unfolding of fuller membership can be read in terms of status struggles (see
Honneth 1995, 117)—against serfdom in relation to civil rights, against economic
privilege in relation to political rights, and against social ostracism in relation to
social rights. While Marshall argues that given an equal status of citizenship, a
degree of class inequality can still be tolerated, this should not be such as to create
incentives for change that spring from dissatisfaction. He is aware, however, that
the promise of citizenship can raise expectations and illuminate inequalities that
will motivate struggles for ever fuller approximation to the ideal (cf. Turner 1988).
We can therefore derive from his work an analytical framework which associates
rights with claims to status or ‘recognition’, and sees in rights both an expressive
framework for established social relations and a contested terrain for claims to fuller
inclusion. This insight has informed more contemporary writing on rights and
recognition (e.g. Honneth 1995).
Marshall is clearly aware that citizenship may fall short of its promise, and that
conflicts within the social system may become too sharp to sustain. In fact, his
developmental account of citizenship makes reference to a variety of ways in which
rights themselves can act as a possible source of inequality through their imperfect
administration and delivery. Despite this more sceptical dimension of his work, the
major criticism of Marshall has been his failure to recognise that citizenship is not
40 LYDIA MORRIS
© 2011 The Author.British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2011 Political Studies Association
BJPIR, 2012, 14(1)
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