Kate Brown

‘Vulnerability’: Handle with Care

‘Vulnerability’ is now a popular term in the lexicon of every-day life and a notion frequently drawn upon by policy-makers, academics, journalists, welfare workers and local authorities. This essay explores some of the ethical and practical implications of ‘vulnerability’ as a concept in social welfare. It highlights how ideas about vulnerability shape the ways in which we manage and classify people, justify state intervention in citizens’ lives, allocate resources in society and define our social obligations. The lack of clarity and limited analysis of the concept of ‘vulnerability’ in welfare arenas is highlighted as concerning, particularly given that those seen as most in need of support seem to be implicated in commonly held views about ‘the vulnerable’. I argue that far from being innocuous, ‘vulnerability’ is so loaded with political, moral and practical implications that it is potentially damaging to the pursuit of social justice. Two opposing presentations of the notion are set out in order to illustrate that ‘vulnerability’ is a concept that should be handled with more care.

Questioning the Vulnerability Zeitgeist: Care and Control Practices with ‘Vulnerable’ Young People

This article provides insights into how the concept of vulnerability operates in welfare and disciplinary processes for young people who are considered ‘vulnerable’. It reports from empirical qualitative research conducted in a large city in England which included interviews with vulnerable young people and with professionals working with this group. Findings highlight that despite differences of opinion about what constitutes ‘vulnerability’, it is a popular and powerful conceptual mechanism which underpins the delivery of service interventions for certain young people. A relationship between vulnerability and ‘transgression’ is revealed, calling into question dichotomous representations of young people as either ‘vulnerable victims’ or ‘dangerous wrong-doers’. It is argued that whilst it can be utilised in the pursuit of more ‘caring’ interventions with those who are seen to be ‘in need’, vulnerability is also a concept relevant to debates concerning selective welfare systems and behavioural regulation.

The Many Faces of Vulnerability

Social injustices, structural and personal crises as well as intensifying stress on some citizens seem increasing preoccupations in contemporary society and social policy. In this context, the concept of vulnerability has come to play a prominent role in academic, governmental and everyday accounts of the human condition. Policy makers and practitioners are now concerned with addressing vulnerability through an expansive range of interventions. As this special issue draws attention to, a vulnerability zeitgeist or ‘spirit of the time’ has been traced in contemporary welfare and disciplinary arrangements (Brown, 2014 , 2015 ), which now informs a range of interventions and approaches to social problems, both in the UK and internationally. As prominent examples, ‘vulnerable’ people are legally entitled to ‘priority need’ in English social housing allocations (Carr and Hunter, 2008 ), vulnerable victims of crime are seen as requiring special responses in the UK criminal justice system (see Roulstone et al ., 2011 ; Walkgate, 2011 ), ‘vulnerable adults’ have designated ‘protections’ under British law (Dunn et al ., 2008 ; Clough, 2014 ) and vulnerable migrants and refugees are increasingly prioritised within international immigration processes (Peroni and Timmer, 2013 ). There is a long tradition in the field of social policy of critiquing the implications of particular concepts as mechanisms of governance, from poverty (Townsend, 1979 ; Lister, 2004 ) and social exclusion (Levitas, 1998 ; Young 1999 ) to risk (Beck, 1992 ; Kemshall, 2002 ) and resilience (Ecclestone and Lewis, 2014 ; Wright, 2016 ). Yet while vulnerability seems to be one of the latest buzzwords gathering political and cultural momentum, critiques and empirical studies of how it is operationalised in different policy and practice contexts are less well elaborated.

Pragmatic, progressive, problematic: Addressing vulnerability through a local street sex work partnership initiative

Whilst it remains a criminal activity to solicit sex publicly in the UK, it has become increasingly popular to configure sex workers as ‘vulnerable’, often as a means of foregrounding the significant levels of violence faced by female street sex workers. Sex work scholars have highlighted that this discourse can play an enabling role in a moralistic national policy agenda which criminalises and marginalises those who sell sex. Yet multiple and overlapping narratives of vulnerability circulate in this policy arena, raising questions about how these might operate at ground level. Drawing on empirical data gathered in the development of an innovative local street sex work multi-agency partnership in Leeds, this article explores debates, discourses and realities of sex worker vulnerability. Setting applied insights within more theoretically inclined analysis, we suggest how vulnerability might usefully be understood in relation to sex work, but also highlight how social justice for sex workers requires more than progressive discourses and local initiatives. Empirical findings highlight that whilst addressing vulnerability through a local street sex work multi-agency partnership initiative, a valuable platform for shared action on violence in particular can be created. However, an increase in fundamental legal and social reform is required in order to address the differentiated and diverse lived experiences of sex worker vulnerability.

The governance of vulnerability: regulation, support and social divisions in action

Purpose Diverse narratives and practices concerned with “vulnerability” increasingly inform how a range of social issues are understood and addressed, yet the subtle creep of the notion into various governance arenas has tended to slip by unnoticed. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of vulnerability in responding to longstanding and on-going dilemmas about social precariousness and harm. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on in-depth qualitative research into how vulnerability was operationalised in services for “vulnerable” young people in an English city, prominent narratives of vulnerability are traced, which operate in relation to a variety of often-dissonant service user responses. Findings The paper shows the governance of vulnerability as a dynamic process, informed by policy developments and wider beliefs about the behaviours of “problem” populations, interpreted and modified by interactions between practitioners and young people, and in turn shaping lived experiences of vulnerability. Patterns in this process illuminate how vulnerability narratives re-shape long-running tensions at the heart of social welfare interventions between a drive to provide services that might mitigate social precariousness and an impetus towards regulating behaviour. Originality/value The paper argues that although gesturing to inclusivity, the governance of vulnerability elaborates power dynamics and social divisions in new ways. Resulting outcomes are evidently varied and fluid, holding the promise of further social change.

Introduction: Vulnerability and Social Justice

At the same time as failures to adequately protect ‘the most vulnerable’ seem to have become a pervasive feature of the political landscape, policies which seek to address vulnerability have proliferated. Government actors, public officers, researchers, media commentators, charities and members of the public alike use vulnerability to articulate an array of personal and political troubles, yet alongside this seemingly shared narrative a multitude of ideologically inclined assumptions and agendas operate by stealth. How vulnerability is drawn upon to frame social issues reworks and reconfigures long-running contestations related to moral dimensions of the welfare subject, understandings of the ‘self’ and wider beliefs about human behaviour. At a time when the pressures of contemporary life increasingly find release through aggression against the socially marginalised (see Wacquant, 2009 ; Harrison and Sanders, 2014 ; Atkinson, 2015 ), vulnerability has become a key concept for social policy research. As I have argued elsewhere, the concept of vulnerability appears to be something of a zeitgeist or ‘spirit of the time’ (Brown, 2014a , 2014b , 2015 ), extending into and shaping responses to a vast array of policy matters.