The static welfare claimant vs. the dynamic migrant
Contrasting figures of personhood in YouTube comments
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6084698 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Scott Daly (0000-0001-8246-3161) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 593-615 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-10 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Language and Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1569-2159 • E-ISSN: 1569-9862 |
| Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1075/jlp.23192.dal |
| OpenAlex | W4398781281 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 33 |
The study analyses YouTube comments attached to an episode of Benefits Street (a British factual welfare television programme) which enregister two figures of personhood: “The static, unmotivated British benefits claimant” and “the dynamic, driven migrant”. Using Park’s (2021) critical heuristic of time, space and affect, the study finds that the welfare claimant figure is constructed as a social failure, and the migrant as both a yardstick (to measure the failure) and a rattan stick (to punish it). The key factor is mobility: The migrant experiences social mobility via mental mobility (i.e., motivation) and spatial mobility (i.e., travelling for opportunities). The welfare claimant’s lack of mental and spatial mobility prevents their social mobility. Ultimately, the paper argues that contrasting the figures represents an attack on rootedness and a celebration of neoliberal mobility based in ideals of meritocracy and the erasure of social class as a relevant construct
Economics · Market economy · Plaintiff · Political science · Welfare · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Law
Discourse
The UK Regional-National Economic Problem
The Financial and Economic Crisis of 2008
Affect is a form of cognition
Asian Americans and the Myth of the Model Minority
The Double Crisis of the Welfare State and What We Can Do About It
Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life
Scroungers Moral Panics and Media Myths
Counter-Discourse Activism on Social Media
Xenophobia and Hate Speech towards Refugees on Social Media
The Representation of Third-Country Nationals in European News Discourse
The selective foregrounding of social structures in factual welfare television
Negotiating stance within discourses of class
Telling stories of 21st century welfare
Benefits broods’
The West Midlands automotive industry
Directing the Dialogue
The representation of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in British newspapers
It's not ideal
Figures of personhood
Enregisterment
Large and small scale forms of personhood
Stereotypes and chronotopes
Poverty, Charity, and Coercion in Elizabethan England
Welfare Commonsense, Poverty Porn and Doxosophy
Benefits Street' and the Myth of Workless Communities
Voice, Footing, Enregisterment
Portraying Poverty
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |