Welfare to Work: Critical Interventions

15-16 September 2010
University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

Confirmed speakers
  • Professor Lisa Adkins, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • Professor Wendy Chan, Simon Fraser University, Canada
  • Professor Priya Kandaswamy, Portland State University, US
  • Marta Russell (journalist and author)
  • Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
  • Lucy Williams (Northeastern University, US)

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    This two day workshop will focus on the gendered, racialised and ableist effects of the proposed ‘workfare’ regime. It will bring prominent overseas scholars and activists with experience of ‘workfare’ into conversation with UK-based legal scholars and benefits activists. Our aim is to begin a critical, interdisciplinary conversation within the field of gender, sexuality and law about workfare’s potential effects on low-income communities, especially in relation to interconnected experiences of disability, single parenthood, racism and gender.

    Themes for the workshops include:

    1. Welfare reform in a neo-liberal landscape: Privatisation and private sector involvement in the provision of welfare benefits;
    2. Contesting and Surviving Welfare Reform: Governmental strategies versus grassroots struggles;
    3. Welfare Reform and criminalisation of poverty: ‘Benefits fraud’, benefits sanctions and the carceral state; and
    4. Welfare to Work: Critical interventions into ‘work for your benefit’.

    Registration for the event is free of charge, and travel/accomodation bursaries will be available.

    For further information, contact Sarah Slowe or see our blog.

    Organisers
    Sponsors