Social suffering and resistance in the social protection system

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines how social structures and power operate to produce social suffering. It examines practices of resistance and hope despite social suffering and provides strategies to challenge, disturb, and resist the neo-liberal project. The book then explores how the Australian Child Support Program and the social security system construct single mothers through administrative programs and shape and impact their everyday lives. It also investigates an initiative of the social protection system that causes social suffering: the Cashless Debit Card, which is a feature of the automisation and privatisation of the social security system. The book examines another Australian government initiative made possible through broader neoliberal shifts and retractions in the social security system, conditional welfare payments, the penalisation of welfare recipients, the digitisation of the social security system, and the amalgamation of social welfare, tax, immigration, health and criminal justice agency databases.