Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 24:4 (2025) ► pp.593–615

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

The static welfare claimant vs. the dynamic migrant

Contrasting figures of personhood in YouTube comments

ORCiD logo with link | Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Published online: 24 May 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.23192.dal
Abstract
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 . 2021. ‘Figures of Personhood: Time, Space, and Affect as Heuristics for Metapragmatic Analysis’. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 272 (1): 47–73. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar 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.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Enregistering figures of personhood
  • 3.Discursive representations of benefits claimants and immigrants
  • 4.Peasants, cosmopolitans, somewheres, and anywheres
  • 5.Benefits Street on YouTube
  • 6.Time, space, affect analysis
  • 7.The static welfare claimant vs. the dynamic migrant: Analysing contrastive figures of personhood
    • 7.1The welfare claimant
    • 7.2The migrant
    • 7.3Comparing the welfare claimant and migrant in interaction
      • 7.3.1“[M]ost people are victims of their own circumstance…”
      • 7.3.2“[H]ave to move far far away from the place she lives…”
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
References (55)
References
Agha, Asif. 2005. ‘Voice, Footing, Enregisterment’. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15 (1): 38–59. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. ‘Large and Small Scale Forms of Personhood’. Language & Communication 31 (3): 171–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aldamen, Yasmin. 2023. ‘Xenophobia and Hate Speech towards Refugees on Social Media: Reinforcing Causes, Negative Effects, Defense and Response Mechanisms against That Speech’. Societies 13 (4): 83. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, and Tony McEnery. 2015. ‘Who Benefits When Discourse Gets Democratised?’ In Corpora and Discourse Studies, edited by Paul Baker and Tony McEnery, 244–65. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barlai, Melani, Birte Fähnrich, Christina Griessler, and Markus Rhomberg. 2017. The Migrant Crisis: European Perspectives and National Discourses. Vol. 131. LIT Verlag Münster.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bennett, Samuel, Jessika ter Wal, Artur Lipiński, Małgorzata Fabiszak, and Michał Krzyżanowski. 2013. ‘The Representation of Third-Country Nationals in European News Discourse: Journalistic Perceptions and Practices.’ Journalism Practice 7 (3): 248–65. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Block, David. 2014. Social Class in Applied Linguistics. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2005. Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brighton Analytics. 2024. ‘Shoplifting Crime and Safety Statistics | CrimeRate’. 2024. [URL]
Brooker, Charlie. 2014. ‘Benefits Street – Poverty Porn, or Just the Latest Target for Pent-up British Fury?’ The Guardian, January 2014. [URL]
Channel 4. 2014. ‘“Demonised” or “Humane”? Row Breaks out on Benefits Street’. 2014. [URL]
Clegg, Nick. 2017. ‘Bridging the Generational Divide in the UK’. 2017. [URL]
Creese, Angela, and Adrian Blackledge. 2020. ‘Stereotypes and Chronotopes: The Peasant and the Cosmopolitan in Narratives about Migration’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 24 (4): 419–40. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crystal, David. 1989. ‘Asian Americans and the Myth of the Model Minority’. Social Casework 70 (7): 405–13. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Daly, John Scott. 2024. ‘The Selective Foregrounding of Social Structures in Factual Welfare Television: A Multimodal Analysis’. Social Semiotics 34 (1): 21–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Benedictis, Sara, Kim Allen, and Tracey Jensen. 2017. ‘Portraying Poverty: The Economics and Ethics of Factual Welfare Television’. Cultural Sociology 11 (3): 337–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dean, Jodi. 2021. ‘Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism?’ In Architecture and Collective Life, edited by Penny Lewis, Lorens Holm, and Sandra Costa Santos, 42–54. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donnelly, Tom, Jason Begley, and Clive Collis. 2017. ‘The West Midlands Automotive Industry: The Road Downhill’. Business History 59 (1): 56–74. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Duncan, Seth, and Lisa Feldman Barrett. 2007. ‘Affect Is a Form of Cognition: A Neurobiological Analysis’. Cognition and Emotion 21 (6): 1184–1211. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dweck, Carol S. 2006. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Edgerly, Stephanie, Emily K. Vraga, Kajsa E. Dalrymple, Timothy Macafee, and Timothy K. F. Fung. 2013. ‘Directing the Dialogue: The Relationship between YouTube Videos and the Comments They Spur’. Journal of Information Technology & Politics 10 (3): 276–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ellis, John. 2014. ‘Benefits Street – Who Benefits?’ CST Online. [URL]
Feltwell, Tom, John Vines, Karen Salt, Mark Blythe, Ben Kirman, Julie Barnett, Phillip Brooker, and Shaun Lawson. 2017. ‘Counter-Discourse Activism on Social Media: The Case of Challenging “Poverty Porn” Television’. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 26 (3): 345–85. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fisher, Mark. 2014. ‘Classless Broadcasting: Benefits Street’. New Humanist. [URL]
Foucault, Michel. 1969. L’Archéologie du Savoir. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goodhart, David. 2017. The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
gov.uk. 2018. ‘England and Wales 2011 Census’. [URL]
. 2022. ‘Key Stage 4 Performance: Academic Year 2020/21’. [URL]
Hudson, Michael. 2012. ‘The Road to Debt Deflation, Debt Peonage, and Neofeudalism’. Levy Economics Institute of Bard College Working Paper, no. 708. [URL].
Jensen, Tracey. 2014. ‘Welfare Commonsense, Poverty Porn and Doxosophy’. Sociological Research Online 19 (3): 1–7. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jensen, Tracey, and Imogen Tyler. 2015. ‘“Benefits Broods”: The Cultural and Political Crafting of Anti-Welfare Commonsense’. Critical Social Policy 35 (4): 470–91. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. 2016. ‘Enregisterment: How Linguistic Items Become Linked with Ways of Speaking’. Language and Linguistics Compass 10 (11): 632–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kotz, David M. 2009. ‘The Financial and Economic Crisis of 2008: A Systemic Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism’. Review of Radical Political Economics 41 (3): 305–17. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leeuwen, Theo van. 2003. ‘The Representation of Social Actors’. In Texts and Practices, edited by Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard, 32–70. Routledge. [URL]
MacDonald, Robert, Tracy Shildrick, and Andy Furlong. 2014. ‘“Benefits Street” and the Myth of Workless Communities’. Sociological Research Online 19 (3): 1–6. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCann, Philip. 2016. The UK Regional-National Economic Problem: Geography, Globalisation and Governance. Routledge. [URL].
McGiffin, Carol. 2014. ‘Benefits Street Is “Poverty Porn” and of Little Benefit to Anyone but Channel 4’. The Daily Mirror, 30 August 2014. [URL]
McIntosh, Marjorie K. 2005. ‘Poverty, Charity, and Coercion in Elizabethan England’. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 457–79. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McKenzie, Lisa. 2017. ‘“We Don’t Exist to Them, Do We?”: Why Working-Class People Voted for Brexit’. Competition & Change 21(3): 199–210. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morrison, James. 2019. Scroungers: Moral Panics and Media Myths. London: Zed Books. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nelson, Fraser. 2014. ‘In Defence of Channel 4’s Benefits Street’. The Spectator (blog). 2014. [URL]
Osborne, George. 2010. Comprehensive Spending Review Speech. October 20. [URL].
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul. 2014. ‘Figures of Personhood’. Paper presented at AAA-AAAL Colloquium “Conceptualizing Linguistic Difference: Perspectives from Linguistic Anthropology,” AAAL Annual Meeting, Portland, Oregon, March 22–25, 2014. [URL]
. 2021. ‘Figures of Personhood: Time, Space, and Affect as Heuristics for Metapragmatic Analysis’. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 272 (1): 47–73. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paterson, Laura L., Laura Coffey-Glover, and David Peplow. 2016. ‘Negotiating Stance within Discourses of Class: Reactions to Benefits Street’. Discourse & Society 27 (2): 195–214. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reyes, Angela. 2004. ‘Asian American Stereotypes as Circulating Resource’. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 14 (2–3): 173–92.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. ‘Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life’. Language & Communication 23 (3–4): 193–229. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Suart, Paul. 2014. ‘Benefits Street TV Show Lied to Us, Say Winson Green Residents’. BirminghamLive. 2014. [URL]
Taylor-Gooby, Peter. 2013. The Double Crisis of the Welfare State and What We Can Do about It. Basingstoke: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Welshman, John. 2013. Underclass: A History of the Excluded since 1880. 2nd ed. Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wiggan, Jay. 2012. ‘Telling Stories of 21st Century Welfare: The UK Coalition Government and the Neo-Liberal Discourse of Worklessness and Dependency’. Critical Social Policy 32 (3): 383–405. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wild, Trevor. 1989. ‘Deindustrialisation and New Industrialisation in Britain and West Germany’. Area 21 (3): 334–36.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wood, Helen. 2014. ‘Benefits Britain the Live Debate: Hiding in the Light’. CST Online (blog). 2014. [URL]
YouTube comment, DaWei [pseudonym]. 2018. commenting on ‘Benefits street episode 3, series 1’, YouTube video, 45:31, posted by Paul Brown [pseudonym], December 24, 2026. [URL]
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue