2006 Jill Vickers Prize

Winner: Alexandra Dobrowolsky (Saint Mary’s University) and Ruth Lister (Loughborough University)

Social Exclusion and Changes to Citizenship: Women and Children, Minorities and Migrants in Britain (2006 CPSA conference paper)

Excerpt from jury report: In this paper, Drs. Dobrowolsky and Lister analyze the current state of citizenship in Britain in light of the rise of political discourses and practices that seek to remedy social exclusion. Reviewing the welfare policies and their retrenchment under the leadership of Tony Blair, they unpack the implications of social exclusion in two highly contested areas: 1) recent welfare restructuring; and 2) immigration and asylum. They examine the centerpiece of new Labour’s social exclusion agenda and welfare reform strategy where the figure of ‘the child’ has emerged as a focal point in a changing citizenship regime – ‘the child’ as a citizen-in-becoming and the future citizen-worker. This has serious repercussions for women in general, racial and ethnic minority women as well as imm/migrant women in particular.