Welfare Citizenship in the Shadow of the Recession in Spain: The Case of Households in

Abstract

Austerity policies, as a response to the economic crisis of 2008, have undermined the capacity of welfare state institutions to deal with inequality and poverty, particularly in Mediterranean countries. This article aims to examine households' civic experience of the Spanish welfare regime. After analysing 24 in-depth interviews of households in hardship in a context of recession, the paper identifies three frameworks encompassing civic interrelations between the state and the individual: the disciplining framework (1), the framework of mistrust (2) and the framework of justice (3). These frameworks give accounts of semantic places and ways of understanding the citizenship experiences of the individuals in these households and the bonds that connect them (or not) to hegemonic discourses about the recession.