Young People and Benefit Sanctions over Time: Illiberal Paternalism

This paper examines the intersection of youth studies and welfare conditionality, focusing on how young people experience benefit sanctions in the UK. Despite a broadening scope in youth studies, the topic of welfare conditionality and its disproportionate punitive impacts on young people remains underexplored. Young people, aged 20-24, are nearly twice as likely to experience a benefit sanction that those aged 30-34; a phenomenon underpinned by structural inequalities such as higher unemployment rates among young people and reduced benefit entitlements for individuals under twenty-five. This paper also adopts intersectional perspectives to illuminate how gender and ethnicity intersect with youth to shape benefit sanction rates and experiences. Drawing on qualitative longitudinal data from the Welfare Conditionality Project, the research explores how young benefit claimants respond to benefit sanctions and how they navigate the the social security system and labour market over time post-sanction.

Furthermore, the paper traces the historical development of benefit sanctions, particularly the intensification of welfare conditionality in the UK post-2012. I critically engage with the concept of libertarian paternalism that seeks to justify this punitive welfare regime, and I argue that intensified benefit sanction rates represent a push toward illiberal paternalism. The research suggests that sanctions not only exacerbate material hardship but also shape the identities of young claimants, acting as the catalyst for emotional bursts of anger among vulnerable young people and fostering long-term alienation from state services. By calling for more engagement from youth studies scholars in welfare reform research, this paper argues that understanding young people’s responses to benefit sanctions can illuminate broader intergenerational inequalities and the ongoing disciplining of marginalized youth through welfare policies.