Matthew Donoghue
Biographic Data
| ID | 349963 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew Donoghue |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew |
| FAMILY NAME | Donoghue |
| SIGNATURE | DONOGHUE M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0336-1461 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 115 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The resilience trap
In January 2026, the UK government announced the establishment of the Crisis and Resilience Fund (CRF) that will come into force in April 2026 and replace the Household Support Fund. Ostensibly, the CRF aims to alleviate immediate hardship while moving individuals, families and households towards financial resilience. However, drawing on critical work on the ‘gritty citizen’ and on financialisation and resilience, I argue the CRF encapsulates a ‘…
‘Building a social project’? The welfare preferences of minority nationalist parties
Minority nationalist parties increasingly govern welfare domains, yet little is known about how they form welfare preferences. The rescaling of authority to regional levels has compelled them to craft welfare discourses aligned with their communities’ interests, but how and why they develop such stances remains an open question. Integrating insights from time-series cross-section (TSCS) regression and election manifesto analysis of the Scottish N…
Moral crisis/moral critique
The crisis of neoliberal capitalism and liberal democracy has a genesis stretching back a decade or longer. Why is it that, until now, socialists and those on the left have struggled to articulate a coherent counter-hegemonic discourse? We argue that at least part of this failing comes from an ambivalence about making the moral argument for socialist transformation. Both a moral critique of the existing order and the articulation of socialist fut…
Taking back control of the welfare state
Brexit is about more than the UK exiting the EU. For the Conservative Party, it is about reacting to the challenge from the radical right, both in terms of the electoral threat from UKIP and a long-term internal struggle between moderate Conservatives and the more radical Eurosceptic faction within the party. We ask to what extent Brexit could also be considered as the mobilisation of specific welfare chauvinist discourses and practices. Through …
Resilience, discipline and financialisation in the UK’s liberal welfare state
Financialisation has become central to contemporary liberal welfare states. The embedding of asset-based welfare and social investment strategies has emphasised focus on maximising the number of potential consumers, alongside reducing the welfare state’s economic liabilities as much as possible. A central component of this is shifting risk away from the state, individualising risk. The efficacy of this process rests on individuals internalising t…
Structural Foundations of Social Resilience
This article aims to contribute to the theoretical development of the social resilience approach. Recognising the interface between resilience and poverty studies, it proposes a distinct role for resilience research from a critical perspective to understand the dynamics of hardship in exceptional times, such as times of socio-economic crises, rather than explaining the long-term trajectories of poverty. It then provides a conceptual framework on …
Non-monetary poverty and deprivation
Given the continuing interest in multi-dimensional approaches to poverty, the article considers ways in which Senian capability indicators can be used to assess and understand poverty and deprivation. More specifically, we develop novel capability data on 29 dimensions for adults from the US, UK and Italy to explore three core research questions. First, we show that when poverty is seen as capability deprivation, different individuals are identif…
Gritty citizens? Exploring the logic and limits of resilience in UK social policy during times of socio-material insecurity
In recent years, resilience has been invoked as both a pre-emptive and responsive strategy to tackling socio-material insecurity. This article outlines a number of discursive and administrative features that distinguish the rise of resilience from longer-term shifts towards ‘active citizenship’ in British social policy. We use data from two studies of financial hardship to examine how the fetishised ideal of resilience is reified and negotiated i…
Resilience, Agency and Coping with Hardship
This paper aims to contribute to the growing literature on resilience by focusing on coping with hardship during the Great Recession, drawing upon primary data gathered through household and key informant interviews in nine European countries. As the resilience approach highlights agency, the paper examines the nature of household responses to hardship during this period on the basis of the ‘structure-agency problem’. An important contribution of…
When rhetoric does not translate to reality
Austerity localism powerfully explains dynamics of (dis)empowerment at the local level, especially regarding the autonomy and accountability of local authorities and third sector organisations (TSOs) in the UK. Yet these dynamics at institutional level have also a clear impact on individuals, especially the socio-economically vulnerable. This is especially true in a time of cost-containment and welfare retrenchment. This article addresses a gap i…
Beyond Hegemony
The work of Antonio Gramsci is important for the theoretical underpinnings of critical discourse analysis. However, many scholars’ engagement with Gramsci’s work within critical discourse analysis remains surprisingly thin. This article seeks to highlight the detriment to critical discourse analysis of having only a surface engagement with Gramsci. It critically assesses how Gramscian concepts such as hegemony and ‘common sense’ are currently emp…
The narratives of hardship
This paper examines poverty and hardship in Europe after the 2008 crisis, using household interviews in nine European countries. A number of findings deserve highlighting. First, making a distinction between ‘the old poor’ (those who lived in poverty before as well as after the crisis) and ‘the new poor’ (those who fell into hardship after the crisis), we show that hardship is experienced quite differently by these groups. Second, the household n…
Cohesion as ‘common sense
This article engages with popular narratives of community and cohesion, explored through a series of focus groups in Bradford and Birmingham. This article argues that the participants interviewed used discourses propagated by government to make sense of these narratives in their neighbourhoods and communities. The use of these discourses constructs what Gramsci calls a ‘common sense’ position, which legitimises a specific and targeted notion of c…
Resilience, Hardship and Social Conditions
This paper provides a critical assessment of the term 'resilience' - and its highly agent-centric conceptualisation - when applied to how individuals and households respond to hardship. We provide an argument for social conditions to be embedded into the framework of resilience analysis. Drawing on two different perspectives in social theory, namely the structure-agent nexus and path dependency, we aim to demonstrate that the concept of resilienc…
Welfare and cohesion contested
When rhetoric does not translate to reality
Austerity localism powerfully explains dynamics of (dis)empowerment at the local level, especially regarding the autonomy and accountability of local authorities and third sector organisations (TSOs) in the UK. Yet these dynamics at institutional level have also a clear impact on individuals, especially the socio-economically vulnerable. This is especially true in a time of cost-containment and welfare retrenchment. This article addresses a gap i…
Resilience, Hardship and Social Conditions
This paper provides a critical assessment of the term 'resilience' - and its highly agent-centric conceptualisation - when applied to how individuals and households respond to hardship. We provide an argument for social conditions to be embedded into the framework of resilience analysis. Drawing on two different perspectives in social theory, namely the structure-agent nexus and path dependency, we aim to demonstrate that the concept of resilienc…
Beyond Hegemony
The work of Antonio Gramsci is important for the theoretical underpinnings of critical discourse analysis. However, many scholars’ engagement with Gramsci’s work within critical discourse analysis remains surprisingly thin. This article seeks to highlight the detriment to critical discourse analysis of having only a surface engagement with Gramsci. It critically assesses how Gramscian concepts such as hegemony and ‘common sense’ are currently emp…
The narratives of hardship
This paper examines poverty and hardship in Europe after the 2008 crisis, using household interviews in nine European countries. A number of findings deserve highlighting. First, making a distinction between ‘the old poor’ (those who lived in poverty before as well as after the crisis) and ‘the new poor’ (those who fell into hardship after the crisis), we show that hardship is experienced quite differently by these groups. Second, the household n…
Taking back control of the welfare state
Brexit is about more than the UK exiting the EU. For the Conservative Party, it is about reacting to the challenge from the radical right, both in terms of the electoral threat from UKIP and a long-term internal struggle between moderate Conservatives and the more radical Eurosceptic faction within the party. We ask to what extent Brexit could also be considered as the mobilisation of specific welfare chauvinist discourses and practices. Through …
Resilience, discipline and financialisation in the UK’s liberal welfare state
Financialisation has become central to contemporary liberal welfare states. The embedding of asset-based welfare and social investment strategies has emphasised focus on maximising the number of potential consumers, alongside reducing the welfare state’s economic liabilities as much as possible. A central component of this is shifting risk away from the state, individualising risk. The efficacy of this process rests on individuals internalising t…
Non-monetary poverty and deprivation
Given the continuing interest in multi-dimensional approaches to poverty, the article considers ways in which Senian capability indicators can be used to assess and understand poverty and deprivation. More specifically, we develop novel capability data on 29 dimensions for adults from the US, UK and Italy to explore three core research questions. First, we show that when poverty is seen as capability deprivation, different individuals are identif…
Welfare and cohesion contested
Resilience, Agency and Coping with Hardship
This paper aims to contribute to the growing literature on resilience by focusing on coping with hardship during the Great Recession, drawing upon primary data gathered through household and key informant interviews in nine European countries. As the resilience approach highlights agency, the paper examines the nature of household responses to hardship during this period on the basis of the ‘structure-agency problem’. An important contribution of…
Structural Foundations of Social Resilience
This article aims to contribute to the theoretical development of the social resilience approach. Recognising the interface between resilience and poverty studies, it proposes a distinct role for resilience research from a critical perspective to understand the dynamics of hardship in exceptional times, such as times of socio-economic crises, rather than explaining the long-term trajectories of poverty. It then provides a conceptual framework on …
Gritty citizens? Exploring the logic and limits of resilience in UK social policy during times of socio-material insecurity
In recent years, resilience has been invoked as both a pre-emptive and responsive strategy to tackling socio-material insecurity. This article outlines a number of discursive and administrative features that distinguish the rise of resilience from longer-term shifts towards ‘active citizenship’ in British social policy. We use data from two studies of financial hardship to examine how the fetishised ideal of resilience is reified and negotiated i…
Cohesion as ‘common sense
This article engages with popular narratives of community and cohesion, explored through a series of focus groups in Bradford and Birmingham. This article argues that the participants interviewed used discourses propagated by government to make sense of these narratives in their neighbourhoods and communities. The use of these discourses constructs what Gramsci calls a ‘common sense’ position, which legitimises a specific and targeted notion of c…
Welfare and cohesion contested
The narratives of hardship
This paper examines poverty and hardship in Europe after the 2008 crisis, using household interviews in nine European countries. A number of findings deserve highlighting. First, making a distinction between ‘the old poor’ (those who lived in poverty before as well as after the crisis) and ‘the new poor’ (those who fell into hardship after the crisis), we show that hardship is experienced quite differently by these groups. Second, the household n…
Cohesion as ‘common sense
This article engages with popular narratives of community and cohesion, explored through a series of focus groups in Bradford and Birmingham. This article argues that the participants interviewed used discourses propagated by government to make sense of these narratives in their neighbourhoods and communities. The use of these discourses constructs what Gramsci calls a ‘common sense’ position, which legitimises a specific and targeted notion of c…
Resilience, Hardship and Social Conditions
This paper provides a critical assessment of the term 'resilience' - and its highly agent-centric conceptualisation - when applied to how individuals and households respond to hardship. We provide an argument for social conditions to be embedded into the framework of resilience analysis. Drawing on two different perspectives in social theory, namely the structure-agent nexus and path dependency, we aim to demonstrate that the concept of resilienc…
Beyond Hegemony
The work of Antonio Gramsci is important for the theoretical underpinnings of critical discourse analysis. However, many scholars’ engagement with Gramsci’s work within critical discourse analysis remains surprisingly thin. This article seeks to highlight the detriment to critical discourse analysis of having only a surface engagement with Gramsci. It critically assesses how Gramscian concepts such as hegemony and ‘common sense’ are currently emp…
Resilience, Agency and Coping with Hardship
This paper aims to contribute to the growing literature on resilience by focusing on coping with hardship during the Great Recession, drawing upon primary data gathered through household and key informant interviews in nine European countries. As the resilience approach highlights agency, the paper examines the nature of household responses to hardship during this period on the basis of the ‘structure-agency problem’. An important contribution of…
When rhetoric does not translate to reality
Austerity localism powerfully explains dynamics of (dis)empowerment at the local level, especially regarding the autonomy and accountability of local authorities and third sector organisations (TSOs) in the UK. Yet these dynamics at institutional level have also a clear impact on individuals, especially the socio-economically vulnerable. This is especially true in a time of cost-containment and welfare retrenchment. This article addresses a gap i…
Structural Foundations of Social Resilience
This article aims to contribute to the theoretical development of the social resilience approach. Recognising the interface between resilience and poverty studies, it proposes a distinct role for resilience research from a critical perspective to understand the dynamics of hardship in exceptional times, such as times of socio-economic crises, rather than explaining the long-term trajectories of poverty. It then provides a conceptual framework on …
Non-monetary poverty and deprivation
Given the continuing interest in multi-dimensional approaches to poverty, the article considers ways in which Senian capability indicators can be used to assess and understand poverty and deprivation. More specifically, we develop novel capability data on 29 dimensions for adults from the US, UK and Italy to explore three core research questions. First, we show that when poverty is seen as capability deprivation, different individuals are identif…
Gritty citizens? Exploring the logic and limits of resilience in UK social policy during times of socio-material insecurity
In recent years, resilience has been invoked as both a pre-emptive and responsive strategy to tackling socio-material insecurity. This article outlines a number of discursive and administrative features that distinguish the rise of resilience from longer-term shifts towards ‘active citizenship’ in British social policy. We use data from two studies of financial hardship to examine how the fetishised ideal of resilience is reified and negotiated i…
Resilience, discipline and financialisation in the UK’s liberal welfare state
Financialisation has become central to contemporary liberal welfare states. The embedding of asset-based welfare and social investment strategies has emphasised focus on maximising the number of potential consumers, alongside reducing the welfare state’s economic liabilities as much as possible. A central component of this is shifting risk away from the state, individualising risk. The efficacy of this process rests on individuals internalising t…
Moral crisis/moral critique
The crisis of neoliberal capitalism and liberal democracy has a genesis stretching back a decade or longer. Why is it that, until now, socialists and those on the left have struggled to articulate a coherent counter-hegemonic discourse? We argue that at least part of this failing comes from an ambivalence about making the moral argument for socialist transformation. Both a moral critique of the existing order and the articulation of socialist fut…
Taking back control of the welfare state
Brexit is about more than the UK exiting the EU. For the Conservative Party, it is about reacting to the challenge from the radical right, both in terms of the electoral threat from UKIP and a long-term internal struggle between moderate Conservatives and the more radical Eurosceptic faction within the party. We ask to what extent Brexit could also be considered as the mobilisation of specific welfare chauvinist discourses and practices. Through …
The resilience trap
In January 2026, the UK government announced the establishment of the Crisis and Resilience Fund (CRF) that will come into force in April 2026 and replace the Household Support Fund. Ostensibly, the CRF aims to alleviate immediate hardship while moving individuals, families and households towards financial resilience. However, drawing on critical work on the ‘gritty citizen’ and on financialisation and resilience, I argue the CRF encapsulates a ‘…
‘Building a social project’? The welfare preferences of minority nationalist parties
Minority nationalist parties increasingly govern welfare domains, yet little is known about how they form welfare preferences. The rescaling of authority to regional levels has compelled them to craft welfare discourses aligned with their communities’ interests, but how and why they develop such stances remains an open question. Integrating insights from time-series cross-section (TSCS) regression and election manifesto analysis of the Scottish N…
Sociology (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Economics (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Political economy (6 works)