Welfare‐to‐Work, Structural Injustice and Human Rights
| Author | Virginia Mantouvalou |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12530 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
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Modern Law Review
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2230.12530
THE
MODERN LAW REVIEW
Volume 83 September 2020 No. 5
Welfare-to-Work, Structural Injustice
and Human Rights
Virginia Mantouvalou∗
This article discusses welfare-to-work schemes, places schemes with strict conditionality in the
theoretical framework of structural injustice, and argues that they may violate human r ights law.
Welfare-to-work schemes impose obligations on individuals to seek and accept work on the
basis that otherwise they will be sanctioned by losing access to social support. The schemes are
often presented as the best route out of poverty. However, the system in the UK, characterised
by strict conditionality,coerces the poor and disadvantaged into precarious work, and conditions
of in-work poverty. Forcing people to work in these conditions creates and sustains widespread
and routine structures of exploitation. The article further argues that a framework of ‘state-
mediated structural injustice’ is the best way of explaining the wrong. It finally claims that this
injustice violates principles that are enshrined in human rights law, which the authorities have
an obligation to examine and address.
INTRODUCTION
Questions of social justice are sometimes analysed by focusing on individual
responsibility.1This may be the individual responsibility of the poor for free-
riding on the welfare support system instead of trying hard to obtain a job
or a job that pays better than their current one, the individual responsibility
of the unemployed for their predicament, or the individual responsibility of
unscrupulous employers for exploiting workers. This focus is convenient for
governments. It suggests that they are not responsible for the domination or
∗Professor of Human Rights and Labour Law, Faculty of Laws, UCL. I am deeply grateful to Harr y
Arthurs, Hugh Collins, John Hendy, Jeff King, George Letsas, Maeve McKeown, Guy Mundlak,
Amir Paz-Fuchs, Jonathan Wolff, Lea Ypi and three anonymous referees for comments on a draft.
Many thanks are also due to Natalie Sedacca for excellent editorial assistance. Earlier versions were
presented at a staff seminar at UCL and a seminar of the London Labour Law Discussion Group.
Many thanks are due to all participants for comments and suggestions. All URLs were last accessed
14 February 2020.
1 For discussion of some of the debates, see I.M. Young, Responsibility for Justice (Oxford: OUP,
2013) ch 1. For a critique of egalitarian theories that focus on individual responsibility, see J.
Wolff, ‘Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos’ (1998) 27 Philosophy and Public Affairs 97.
C2020 The Author.The Moder n Law Review C2020 The Modern Law Review Limited. (2020) 83(5) MLR 929–954
Welfare-to-Work, Structural Injustice and Human Rights
exploitation suffered by workers or other s; instead, private actors are morally
responsible and perhaps legally liable. The role of the state appears to be simply
to take certain corrective steps to address the relevant wrongs.
In response to theories that focus heavily on individual responsibility, Iris
Marion Young developed the concept of structural injustice.2She did so in
order to assess the role, not of a single action, but of whole structures that
place some groups in a position of disadvantage. She developed a type of
responsibility that she called the ‘political responsibility’ of actors who act
rationally and legitimately but who benefit from structural injustice. In this
article, I consider welfare-to-work schemes by situating them in the theoretical
framework of structural injustice. Welfare-to-work schemes are schemes that
impose obligations on individuals to seek and accept work on the basis that
otherwise they will be sanctioned by losing access to welfare support. The
article shows that because these schemes deploy coercive conditionality they
generate structures of exploitation which amount to what I call ‘state mediated
structural injustice’.
The first part of the article examines the development of these schemes in the
United Kingdom and explains that the system has become especially punitive.
The second part of the article turns to empir ical research, primarily in the
field of social policy. It examines the effects of welfare conditionality, which
connects welfare benefits to certain behaviour, on people’s lives in the UK.3
My concern here stems from the growing realisation through this scholarship
that welfare-to-work schemes with strict conditionality force individuals into
exploitative work and in-work poverty. The concept of exploitation is, of
course, contested.4For the purposes of this article, exploitation occurs when
someone takes advantage of a person’s vulnerability by violating that person’s
labour rights in order to make a profit. Here it is shown that instead of finding
a route out of poverty through paid work, many are forced into in-work
poverty. Welfare-to-work schemes thereby often turn the unemployed poor
into working and exploited poor.
Against this background, the third part of the article examines the respon-
sibility of the state, using Young’s account of structural injustice as a starting
point. Young developed her theory assuming that there is no specific unjust law
or policy in place. Unlike Young, though, my aim is to attribute responsibility
to the state for state-mediated structural injustice. This is responsibility for state
actions that can be viewed as having a prima facie legitimate aim, but which cre-
ate patterns that are very damaging for large numbers of people. My argument
2 Young, ibid. For an early discussion of the main concepts, see I.M. Young, Justice and the Politics
of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990) ch 2.
3 For an introduction, see B. Watts and S. Fitzpatrick, Welfare Conditionality (Abingdon-on-
Thames: Routledge, 2018).
4 Literature on the topic of exploitation includes: A. Reeve (ed), Modern Theories of Exploitation
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1987); R. Goodin, Reasons for Welfare (Pr inceton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); A. Wertheimer, Exploitation (Pr inceton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999); R. Sample, Exploitation: What It Is and Why It’s Wrong (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); J. Wolff, ‘Structures of Exploitation’ in H. Collins, G. Lester
and V. Mantouvalou (eds), Philosophical Foundations of Labour Law (Oxford: OUP, 2018) 175; V.
Mantouvalou, ‘Legal Construction of Structures of Exploitation’ in the same volume, 188.
930 C2020 The Author. The Modern Law Review C2020 The Modern Law Review Limited.
(2020) 83(5) MLR 929–954
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