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"This book explores welfare politics, unemployment, and interventions in relation to the labour market from a critical psychological perspective. Using critical fieldwork and theory, the author explores the administration of the unemployed, and the drive to increase labour market participation through strategies of activation. There is a strong and coherent conceptual and theoretical framing for this work, with a critical perspective (essentially, question everything) taking centre stage. It will give an overall coherence in addressing the topic. The theoretical framing is cogent and, in combination with the critical perspective, works well for integrating the material and delivering a fresh approach to this topic. Psychology, Punitive Activation and Welfare will appeal to students engaging with critical psychology, unemployment or policy, by providing a distinct application of theoretical and methodological tools to think differently about the relationship between labour market non/participation, human misery, psychology, and frontline enactment of policy and research"--

Public health measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic have disrupted welfare regimes around the world. The Australian government suspended activation requirements for millions of social security clients and substantially increased payment levels. Both measures go against the dominant policy logic over the past several decades in Australian social policy. When these changes were made, many advocates and academics called for a permanent increase in the rate of payment and a relaxation of activations requirements. The Australian Government insisted the stimulus package was temporary and that there would be a gradual return to the pre-pandemic policy settings. In this article, we examine what was learned during this natural experiment of unconditional higher payments, which temporarily lifted millions of households out of poverty. We argue that a return to pre-pandemic policy settings should not go unchecked as there remains an opportunity to consider alternative approaches to the welfare-work nexus in Australia.

The shame of being poor and asking for charity has been a key theme in sociological research on poverty. This article draws on ethnographic research across two charity centres in Australia to address the overemphasis on shame as the dominant feeling of being poor and trying to help. We find that hope and anger are key emotions that sit alongside shame. Service providers tried to cultivate hope for a brighter poverty-free future. Hope was important for people in poverty, but they had smaller versions of hope informed by their everyday struggle. They were also angry at hope lost. Participants co-constructed charity and their experiences of poverty as a messy problem space where difficult and hopeful emotions hang together. The article contributes to the literature by coupling 'negative' and 'positive' feelings of poverty to trace a 'political economy of hope' within the welfare state that nuances people's experiences of charitable help.

AbstractPurposeDomestic violence (DV) is a problem of global significance and remains a gendered issue that disproportionately affects women and children. Prevalence studies on women's experiences of DV suggest that around 50% of victims identify as mothers. The effects of DV on mothers and children are well documented, raising implications for their protection. Civil protection orders are a legal tool used to reduce and prevent experiences of DV. Research on protection order effectiveness is mixed with research suggesting that the ongoing relationship between a respondent and aggrieved parent around child contact presents ongoing opportunities for re-victimization. This study contributes to the scant literature on the implications of protection orders on parental responsibilities.MethodThe study draws on surveys with duty lawyers and focus groups with police officers. A thematic analysis was used to examine perceptions and experiences of 'no contact' protection orders and respondent parent non-compliance where mutual children are involved.ResultsFindings suggest that ambiguous 'no contact' conditions and a lack of clarity around their implications for child contact play a key role in respondent parent non-compliance, ranging from uninformed non-compliance to the strategic use of children as a form of coercive control in non-compliance.ConclusionFindings raise implications for specialist legal advice and support for parents affected by DV to sit alongside protection order court proceedings. Findings highlight the need for greater system accountability to ensure court-issued protection orders take a family-centred approach that align with parental responsibilities and ensure child and adult victims' safety and wellbeing.

AbstractIndigenous women are disproportionately affected by the prevalence and severity of domestic and family violence (DFV) perpetrated by men against women in Australia. The impact of their experiences is further exacerbated by the level of social and cultural marginalisation affecting Indigenous communities, families and individuals along with regional, rural or remote living. The pervasive, ongoing impact of colonisation, dispossession and transgenerational trauma continues to shape the experiences of Indigenous women and their communities, including their help‐seeking decisions and opportunities, and their level of trust in and access to adequate and culturally sensitive support services. In this paper, we explore the experiences of Indigenous women affected by DFV in two regional Australian settings through face‐to‐face interviews with women (n = 13) and community stakeholders (n = 18). The findings of this study highlight the complex role of social and cultural marginalisation, spiritual (dis)connectedness and role of family as both a stressor and a protective factor. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

For people experiencing housing instability, considerable uncertainty and future risks coincide with a lack of affordable housing supply. Housing instability often entails movement across different forms of accommodation while facing the possibility of homelessness. Thinking with anticipation outlined by Adams et al. as a regime of knowledge espousing specific governing principles, this study explores storytelling about the future by people experiencing housing instability. Here, anticipation manifests as agentic future orientation in hopes, practices and social norms geared towards secure housing. Drawing on narrative interviews and participant-produced photographs collected in 2022 in an urban centre in Queensland, Australia, we analyse how participants imagine their futures and what they consider right and actionable. Our findings highlight how such imaginings leaned on and challenged the linearity inscribed in metaphors depicting a predictable progression towards stable housing through appropriate action in the present.

Abstract
Assertive outreach is becoming an increasingly salient feature of policy responses to homelessness—and particularly rough sleeping—with the aim of supporting people to access secure housing. Despite its demonstrated successes, existing research points to structural challenges practitioners face in navigating complex and fragmented service systems to provide people sleeping rough with a continuum of care. This study examines an Australian organisation's efforts to collaboratively and systematically overcome these challenges by bringing together government, community and service practitioners from multiple sectors in their delivery of an assertive outreach programme. Using an ethnographic research design, this article draws on observations of outreach practices and service provider administrative quantitative data, as well as qualitative interviews and focus groups conducted with assertive outreach service providers. Our findings demonstrate that through flexible and collaborative social work practices, practitioners were able to see people sleeping rough, share information across services and support people into a range of housing, health and other forms of services. Critically, however, structural barriers such as a lack of affordable and social housing prevented assertive outreach from ending people's homelessness. We foreground the critical implications of these findings for social work.