Paper short abstract:

I would like to explore the role of perceptions and narratives in shaping understandings of rights, as well as how status and contributions to society can determine access to cash transfers/state assistance in different ways depending on how these contributions are valued and recognised (or not).

Paper long abstract:

- Cash transfers can be rights-determining rather than rights-based, especially where policies are not enshrined in legislation. They can be subject to sometimes rapid and frequent changes in design and targeting (e.g. short-lived pilot schemes), with material consequences for recipients. For example, in Zambia beneficiaries were removed from the cash transfer scheme when eligibility criteria changed.

- While the link between rights and duties/responsibilities has been recognised and explored in conceptual work on social protection and rights (e.g. Ulriksen and Plagerson, 2014), it is often not considered in studies of specific programmes – particularly how perceptions/expectations of responsibilities (among policymakers and within communities) can shape the design and acceptability of cash transfer schemes e.g. undervaluing of care work.

- Rights and duties can have temporal and sometimes generational elements. For example contributions in the past, such as by elderly people who can no longer work, are widely accepted as a basis for receiving state assistance. Veterans who fought in Timor-Leste’s independence struggle in the past are perceived to have “special and different rights”. Their rights are prioritised and they receive much higher government transfer amounts than other groups in society suggesting that redistribution is shaped by maintaining peace and stability rather than poverty, despite high malnutrition and stunting in Timor-Leste. On the other hand, cash transfers linked to present/future contributions such as investments in the nutrition and education of children are more likely to be questioned, with suspicions that the money will be spent on the ‘wrong things’.