Forging new ‘ways of life’? Social policy and nation building in devolved Scotland and Wales

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which social policy is being used to recreate and reproduce a sense of nation and national identity in devolved Scotland and Wales. It argues that devolution has important consequences for our sense of Britishness and of Scottishness and Welshness, not least in relation to the ways in which social policies are presented and legitimated. It is further argued that across the UK there is a marked attempt by New Labour to forge a new sense of nation organized around neo-liberal and market-oriented themes. This is critically mediated within the welfare regimes of these nations in accord with reconstructed ‘ways of life’ that are centred on the themes of work and enterprise.