Benefit fraud, occupational community, and oral history

King, S ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9152-9190 and Jones, P ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9210-9112, 2025. Benefit fraud, occupational community, and oral history. Family and Community History, 28 (3), pp. 246-270. ISSN 1463-1180

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Abstract

This article focuses on concepts of occupational community in the recent history of benefit fraud in the UK. It suggests that two ‘community’ reference points (with strong historical foundations) have come to dominate the current literature: physical concentrations of benefit claimants and benefit fraudsters in particular communities, which themselves have a sustained presence in media commentary; and the neighbourhoods in which benefit fraudsters live, some of which hide fraudsters while others are hotbeds of reporting. Drawing on 24 oral histories of benefit fraud and fraudsters alongside other contemporary and historical sources, the article will argue that other forms of community also have a key place in how fraud is understood by ordinary people. In particular, the analysis will suggest, for the first time, that understanding the importance of, and re-creating genuine, occupational community can play an important role in future policies on dissuading fraud.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Family and Community History
Creators:	King, S. and Jones, P.
Publisher:	Informa UK Limited
Date:	October 2025
Volume:	28
Number:	3
ISSN:	1463-1180
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1080/14631180.2025.2583816 DOI 2549174 Other
Rights:	© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Melissa Cornwell
Date Added:	05 Jan 2026 14:07
Last Modified:	05 Jan 2026 14:07
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54916

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