States of Imposture: Scroungerphobia and the Choreography of Suspicion

Abstract

This chapter explores the choreography of suspicion in welfare to work services. It is concerned with the bureaucratic manifestations of a policy discourse preoccupied with ‘scroungers’, benefit fraud and deception. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, it attends to the everyday encounters through which such suspicions were enacted and experienced. The chapter argues that a regime of behavioural welfare conditionality effectively formalised suspicion as a matter of policy and practice, and in so doing undermined the claims made by welfare to work services to be sources of help and support. Ironically, once formalized, and by undermining the ostensible service aims, this suspicion also rendered the welfare bureaucrats as potential fakes and frauds.