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Scrounger narratives and dependent drug users: welfare, workfare and warfare

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journal contribution
posted on 2016-10-19, 09:41 authored by Emma Wincup, Mark MonaghanMark Monaghan
Since 2008 political and media attention has focused on the allegedly problematic behaviour of drug users who ‘choose’ to pursue their ‘habit’ at the expense of the hardworking taxpayer. This forms part of the ‘new welfare commonsense’, which censures welfare dependency and stigmatises drug users as ‘undeserving’ claimants, entrenching the ‘war on drug user’ discourse. This article makes a significant contribution to recognising that stigma is a substantial barrier to recovery. It identifies ways of challenging the ‘scrounger’ narrative as applied to drug users through more informed media reporting and less coercive approaches to address drug and welfare dependency.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies

Published in

The Journal of Poverty and Social Justice

Volume

24

Issue

3

Pages

261-275

Citation

WINCUP, E. and MONAGHAN, M.P., 2016. Scrounger narratives and dependent drug users: welfare, workfare and warfare. Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 24(3), pp. 261-275.

Publisher

© Policy Press

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2016-08-02

Publication date

2016-10-03

Copyright date

2016

Notes

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edited version of an article published in Journal of Poverty and Social Justice. The definitive publisher-authenticated version WINCUP, E. and MONAGHAN, M.P., 2016. Scrounger narratives and dependent drug users: welfare, workfare and warfare. Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 24(3), pp. 261-275. is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/175982716X14721954315084

ISSN

1759 8273

eISSN

1759-8281

Language

  • en