Claiming deservingness: the durability of social security claimant discourses during the Covid-19 pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic created extraordinary conditions for social protection systems globally, with both material and discursive implications. In the UK, these unprecedented circumstances led to an influx of (first-time) social security claims, expectations of increased social solidarity and more positive public discussion around benefits. One might expect this to affect attitudes towards claiming. This article focuses on the accounts of claimants themselves, and how they conceived of their own claims during the pandemic. We analyse in-depth interviews conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic with a large, diverse sample of social security benefit claimants, and draw on concepts of deservingness to show how social security claimants negated stigma through appealing to specific deservingness frames. We show how frames relating to the normative criteria of need, control, contribution and identity were deployed by those who began claiming during the pandemic, as well as those whose claim began pre-pandemic. Despite important points of variation, especially in relation to the categories of control and identity, we find that these deservingness frames did not appear to be disrupted in a major way by the pandemic context, suggesting their notable durability in extraordinary circumstances, with implications for the conditions that can (and cannot) precipitate discursive change or rupture.