Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T08:07:43.048Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Normative Construction of and Contestation over In-Work Benefits in Hong Kong: A Moral Economy Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2021

Tat Chor Au-Yeung
Tat Chor Au-Yeung*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University, Hong Kong E-mail: tatchorauyeung@LN.edu.hk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Informed by moral economy theories, this article presents a qualitative study of the normative construction of and contestation over a new in-work benefit in Hong Kong, the Low-income Working Family Allowance (LIFA). Using a policy stakeholder approach to examining the public’s ideas and justifications of LIFA, the findings reveal the eligibility-defined entitlement shared by claimants, scepticism towards long working hours conditionality required by LIFA, complex understanding of deservingness and self-reliance, and dissatisfaction with the closing gap between welfare and wages. This article connects moral economy theories to the normative basis of a social security system, offering insights for capturing the dynamics of consensus and controversies about social welfare. It also extends the research on morality and social welfare from Western countries to an Asian context. The case of Hong Kong evidences how policy stakeholders make moral sense of a new welfare in the absence of social right language.

Keywords

moral economyideasjustificationworking poorin-work benefits
Type
Article
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 22 , Issue 2: THEMED SECTION: Mapping the Shifts in Russian and European Welfare Polities , April 2023 , pp. 209 - 225
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Au-Yeung, T. C. (2019) A Political Economy of In-work Benefits in Hong Kong, Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Sheffield.Google Scholar
Beechey, S. (2016) Social Security and the Politics of Deservingness, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Béland, D. (2018) ‘How ideas impact social policy’, in Greve, B. (ed.), Routledge Handbook of the Welfare State, London: Routledge, 278–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Block, F. and Somers, M. (2014) The Power Of Market Fundamentalism, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolton, S. and Laaser, K. (2013) ‘Work, employment and society through the lens of moral economy’, Work, Employment and Society, 27, 3, 508–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booth, W. (1994) ‘On the idea of the moral economy’, American Political Science Review, 88, 3, 653–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carstensen, M. and Hansen, M. (2019) ‘Legitimation as justification: foregrounding public philosophies in explanations of gradual ideational change’, European Journal of Political Research, 58, 2, 582–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chan, C. K. (2011) Social Security Policy in Hong Kong: From British Colony to China’s Special Administrative Region, Lanham: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Clarke, J. and Newman, J. (2012) ‘The alchemy of austerity’, Critical Social Policy, 32, 3, 299–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clegg, D. (2015) ‘The demise of tax credits’, The Political Quarterly, 86, 4, 493–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culpitt, I. (1999) Social Policy and Risk, London: SAGE Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deacon, A. (2002) Perspectives on Welfare: Ideas, Ideologies, and Policy Debates. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Dean, H. (2007) ‘The ethics of welfare-to-work’, Policy and Politics, 35, 4, 573–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dean, H. (2012) ‘Welcome relief or indecent subsidy? The implications of wage top-up schemes’, Policy and Politics, 40, 3, 305–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dwyer, P. (2016) ‘Citizenship, conduct and conditionality: sanction and support in the 21st century UK welfare state’, in Fenger, M., Hudson, J. and Needham, C. (eds.), Social Policy Review 28, Bristol: Policy Press, 41–61.Google Scholar
Dwyer, P. (2020) ‘Questions of conduct and social justice: the ethics of welfare conditionality within UK social security’, in Eleveld, A., Kampen, T. and Arts, J. (eds.), Welfare to Work in Contemporary European Welfare States: Legal, Sociological and Philosophical Perspectives on Justice and Domination, Bristol: Policy Press, 189–209.Google Scholar
Flick, U. (2014) An Introduction to Qualitative Research, Los Angeles: SAGE.Google Scholar
Fong, B. (2015) ‘The politics of budget surpluses: the case of China’s Hong Kong SAR’, International Review of Administrative Sciences, 81, 1, 134–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fouksman, E. (2020) ‘The moral economy of work: demanding jobs and deserving money in South Africa’, Economy and Society, 49, 2, 287–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Götz, N. (2015) ‘“Moral economy”: its conceptual history and analytical prospects’, Journal of Global Ethics, 11, 2, 147–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greve, B. (2018) Social and Labour Market Policy: The Basics, London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guest, G., MacQueen, K. and Namey, E. (2012) Applied Thematic Analysis, London: SAGE Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halpern-Meekin, S., Edin, K., Tach, L. and Sykes, J. (2015) It’s Not Like I’m Poor: How Working Families Make Ends Meet in a Post-welfare World, California: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Handler, J. (2004) Social Citizenship and Workfare in the United States and Western Europe: The Paradox of Inclusion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, M. (2019) The Moral Economy of Activation: Ideas, Politics and Policies, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Hick, R. and Lanau, A. (2019) ‘Tax credits and in-work poverty in the UK: an analysis of income packages and anti-poverty performance’, Social Policy and Society, 18, 2, 219–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kevins, A., Horn, A., Jensen, C. and Van Kersbergen, K. (2020) ‘Motive attribution and the moral politics of the welfare state’, Journal of Social Policy, 49, 1, 145–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, M. M. (2015) Comparative Welfare Capitalism in East Asia: Productivist Models of Social Policy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koos, S. and Sachweh, P. (2019) ‘The moral economies of market societies: popular attitudes towards market competition, redistribution and reciprocity in comparative perspective’, Socio-Economic Review, 17, 4, 793–821.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leung, C. Y. (2014) The 2014 Policy Address, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government.Google Scholar
Marchal, S. and Marx, I. (2018) ‘Stemming the tide: what have European Union countries done to support low-wage workers in an era of downward wage pressures?’, Journal of European Social Policy, 28, 1, 18–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mau, S. (2003) The Moral Economy of Welfare States: Britain and Germany Compared, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Millar, J. (2018) ‘Social security and work obligations’, in Millar, J. and Sainsbury, R. (eds.), Understanding Social Security (3rd edn), Bristol: Policy Press, 39–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, L. (2016) ‘The moral economy of austerity: analysing UK welfare reform’, The British Journal of Sociology, 67, 1, 97–117.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neumark, D. (2016) ‘Policy levers to increase jobs and increase income from work after the Great Recession’, IZA Journal of Labor Policy, 5, 6, 1–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2011) Taxation and Employment, OECD Tax Policy Studies, No. 21, OECD Publishing, doi.org/10.1787/9789264120808-en.Google Scholar
Palomera, J. and Vetta, T. (2016) ‘Moral economy: rethinking a radical concept’, Anthropological Theory, 16, 4, 413–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peeters, R. (2019) ‘Manufacturing responsibility: the governmentality of behavioural power in social policies’, Social Policy and Society, 18, 1, 51–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polanyi, K. (1944) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Romano, S. (2017) Moralising Poverty: The ‘Undeserving’ Poor in the Public Gaze, London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rooney, C. and Gray, J. (2020) ‘Changing family dynamics and in-work benefits’, Social Policy and Society, 19, 2, 185–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sachweh, P. (2012) ‘The moral economy of inequality: popular views on income differentiation, poverty and wealth’, Socio-Economic Review, 10, 3, 419–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sayer, A. (2011) Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sayer, A. (2018) ‘Welfare and moral economy’, Ethics and Social Welfare, 12, 1, 20–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, V. (2008) ‘Discursive institutionalism: the explanatory power of ideas and discourse’, Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 303–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schreier, M. (2018) ‘Sampling and generalization’, in Flick, U. (ed.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection, London: SAGE Publications, 84–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, J. (1976) The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Simons, H. (2009) Case Study Research in Practice, London: SAGE Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spicker, P. (2013) Reclaiming Individualism: Perspectives on Public Policy, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Steensland, B. (2010) ‘Moral classification and social policy’, in Hitlin, S. and Vaisey, S. (eds.), Handbook of the Sociology of Morality, New York: Springer, 455–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sykes, J., Križ, K., Edin, K. and Halpern-Meekin, S. (2015) ‘Dignity and dreams: what the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) means to low-income families’, American Sociological Review, 80, 2, 243–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tach, L., Halpern-Meekin, S., Edin, K. and Amorim, M. (2019) ‘“As good as money in the bank”: building a personal safety net with the Earned Income Tax Credit’, Social Problems, 66, 2, 274–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor-Gooby, P., Hvinden, B., Mau, S., Leruth, B., Schoyen, M. A. and Gyory, A. (2019) ‘Moral economies of the welfare state: A qualitative comparative study’, Acta Sociologica, 62, 2, 119–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1971) ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past and Present, 50, 76–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Oorschot, W. and Roosma, F. (2017) ‘The social legitimacy of targeted welfare and welfare deservingness’, in van Oorschot, W., Roosma, F., Meuleman, B. and Reeskens, T. (eds.), The Social Legitimacy of Targeted Welfare, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 3–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vandelannoote, D. and Verbist, G. (2020) ‘The impact of in-work benefits on work incentives and poverty in four European countries’, Journal of European Social Policy, 30, 2, 144–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watts, B. and Fitzpatrick, S. (2018) Welfare Conditionality, London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, S. (2010) ‘Ethics’, in Castles, F., Leibfried, S., Lewis, J., Obinger, H. and Pierson, C. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19–31.Google Scholar
Whitworth, A. (2016) ‘Neoliberal paternalism and paradoxical subjects: confusion and contradiction in UK activation policy’, Critical Social Policy, 36, 3, 412–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, V. and Au-Yeung, T. C. (2019) ‘Expediting youth’s entry into employment whilst overlooking precariousness: flexi-employability and disciplinary activation in Hong Kong’, Social Policy and Administration, 53, 5, 793–809.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Working Family Allowance Office (2020) ‘Eligibility criteria’, https://www.wfsfaa.gov.hk/wfao/en/eligibility.htm [accessed 15.07.2020].Google Scholar