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This article considers the welfare policy of New Zealand's National-led government (2008-2017) within the context of international welfare conditionality. I propose that reforms undertaken during the National-led government's nine years in office align with a recent 'conditionality turn' that has taken place in high-income Anglophone countries. The article situates National's welfare reforms within similar changes undertaken by governments in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Canada and Ireland. As in New Zealand, welfare reform in these countries has emphasised behavioural conditionality targeting lone mothers, the sick and young people. Considering the reforms within the context of international welfare conditionality emphasises the endurance of ideas underpinning the reforms. The article argues that welfare conditionality has become embedded in the New Zealand welfare system and is shaping the policy of the Labour-led government elected in 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I draw from recent writing in relation to 'affect' to examine the affective economy of welfare: how affect circulates and attaches to individuals in ways that can be both beneficial and detrimental. This article is based on my doctoral research with lone mothers receiving Sole Parent Support, a welfare benefit paid in Aotearoa/New Zealand to single parents with one or more dependent children aged 14 years or younger. Utilising Sara Ahmed's (2014) metaphor of an affective economy, I consider what has value within the context of welfare. The concept of value here relates to both the specific notion of economic exchange and the more 'slippery' interpretation of what matters to people (Skeggs, 2011). Both understandings of the term have purchase for this discussion. Welfare provision in Aotearoa/New Zealand is, first and foremost, an economic exchange: a process whereby financial support is provided to enable a person to meet their most basic needs. The receipt of welfare is inherently connected, however, to social worth. In being dependent upon welfare a person's value becomes diminished. In this article, I consider the ways in which research participants negotiated value in the welfare setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I consider humour and laughter as a response to welfare practices, specifically in a New Zealand context. Analysing data from focus group interviews with 64 New Zealand lone mothers receiving welfare, I consider the laughter that accompanied accounts of being badly treated by welfare staff and frustrated by administrative practices surrounding the pursuit of financial assistance. My analysis focuses on the "affective practices" (Wetherell, 2012, p.12) of focus group participants as they spoke about accessing their welfare entitlements. Notions of movement and transformation are integral to the analysis, which considers how laughter moved the women and moved between them, creating a sense of group cohesion. I propose that laughing about difficult situations in relation to welfare receipt offered participants a way of responding to their experiences and, ultimately, a new way of feeling about these encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]