Geographies of State Support and Welfare

This chapter extends Chapter 3 and its state-focused discussion, asking you to consider the geographies of state support from both a state-centric and client-centred perspective, building on the themes of inequality and especially social justice. The word ‘welfare’ is commonly used as a shorthand expression to denote public or state services, and more specifically ‘the welfare state’. For some readers, particularly in the US, welfare has become a dirty word, used to denote poverty, bad health, despondency, and social disrespect. In this chapter, we examine the lineage of this term and consider how it has become stigmatised and co-opted in certain countries, but not in others. We further seek to clarify its position within the geographies of social justice as one of the core mechanisms for fulfilling the state’s social right’s obligations via (re)distribution, albeit always in a stratified way. Conversely, we consider the outcomes of slowly but surely removing a safety net for urban society versus building it up, in the name of welfare state ‘reform’. We trace its role at the local scale and consider how it has widened housing access and sustained communities yet continues to co-exist with tensions over entitlement and issues of fairness. Finally, we underline how a focus on the welfare state serves to materialise and localise the state, across very specific relations and encounter. Ultimately, the chapter is about the various relationships and encounters created by the welfare state and those who depend on it.