Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the withdrawal of many British working class people from democratic politics as a reaction to their increasing dependance on, and involvement with, the welfare state.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the withdrawal of many British working class people from democratic politics as a reaction to their wider experiences of the welfare state. Much current commentary has analysed problems of political apathy and disenchantment among the British working class as resulting from people's exclusion from the wider political and economic system. In doing so, attention has often been deflected from the intimate ways in which many working class people have come to rely on the welfare state, and its agencies, in their everyday lives, calling on it to secure material entitlements as well as to mobilise and pass judgement on relationships they engage in beyond the official sphere. This paper suggests that such uses of the welfare state can be seen as an impromptus way of enacting a political sociality whose logic is often opposed to, and in conflict with, that of democratic narratives. While such conflict produces multifaceted experiences of the self and the state, this paper shows how it ultimately compromises the potential of any aspirational politics of the working class.