State surveillance of welfare recipients: an examination of Irish efforts to limit welfare fraud

• In Event: Regulating harm: States, corporations, and the social harms resulting from the failures of law and regulation

Abstract

This paper examines the role of surveillance by the Irish Department of Social Protection and Welfare (DSPW) with a primary focus on the ‘Welfare Cheats Cheat Us All’ Campaign. This campaign, launched in April 2017, is one of the most obvious manifestations of the DSPW’s efforts to engage the Irish public in the surveillance and reporting of welfare recipients. The campaign is just one example of a series of neoliberal logics and policy changes to welfare programs and structures in Ireland, and while these have been engaged with by the academy, the role of surveillance and surveillance technologies has yet to be explored. Drawing on primary data collected through Freedom of Information requests as well as policy documents, legislation, and regulation, this paper explores how the public are encouraged to engage in lateral surveillance to identify individuals committing welfare fraud. ‘Good citizens’ are encouraged to blow the whistle on ‘bona fide’ and ‘cheating’ welfare recipients alike for the state to assess all suspicious cases. The paper questions how surveillance of welfare recipients is conducted in Ireland through the lens of the Welfare Cheats Campaign, as well as examining the ideas, norms, and beliefs that allow for the accepted surveillance of welfare recipients. Through the lens of lateral surveillance (Andrejevic 2005), I argue that the DSPW and the Cheats Campaign encouraged direct surveillance and control of welfare recipients helped by criminalisation and responsibilisation. Hostile neoliberal logics result in the Irish government categorizing and controlling welfare recipients as risks to be managed rather than individuals who need support.

Author

• Ciara Bracken-Roche, Maynooth University