Zoe Williams asks – somewhat rhetorically – what might be the impact of the endless growth of “poverty porn” on those who rely on benefits for all or most of their income (TV’s fixation with people on benefits breeds suspicion, 9 February). What my research with out-of-work benefit claimants shows – see policypress.co.uk/for-whose-benefit – is the ways in which the stereotypical, demeaning and one-dimensional characterisations that such shows so often feature contribute to a climate in which claimants feel that their behaviours and actions are being endlessly critiqued and found wanting.
The individuals I spoke to had often internalised negative descriptors – self-describing as a “scrounger” or “a bum” – even where they were hard at work caring for children, looking for employment or adapting to independent life after a childhood in care.
Living with poverty and benefits stigma had detrimental consequences for individuals’ self-esteem, mental health and citizenship status. “Poverty porn” and shows like The Moorside may be successfully recasting poverty as light entertainment, but their impact on those struggling to get by on benefits is anything but.
Dr Ruth Patrick
Postdoctoral researcher, School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool
• Zoe Williams states: “It is this [anti-welfare benefits] culture that has generated the hatred of immigration that is most intense in deprived communities.” Is that true? Is there any research/study that proves the location of this intense hatred? She seeks to explain this intensity of hatred by claiming it is the result of being “left behind”.
But it is widely reported that the overwhelming majority of Conservative party members – as well as many of the party’s MPs – harbour a hatred of immigration. Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech was not the espousal of someone from a “benefits upbringing”. Nigel Farage and the ever-changing leadership of Ukip do not come from a “benefits upbringing”.
It is arguable that if hatred of immigration is not based on hardship and deprivation – that is, in the better-off – it is more intense than that of the “left behind”. I believe Zoe Williams’s statement is largely a media perception – old and new media – and, as she concludes, “everybody needs to think harder about what they’re peddling”.
John Merrell
Leicester
