The controversial ‘bedroom tax,’ or what officially was called ‘the under-occupancy penalty,’ was a substantial reduction of Housing Benefit imposed on UK council house tenants, who were deemed to have one or more rooms than they required. Since similar measures had already been applied to the private rented sector, it was officially regarded as ‘only fair’ and came into force from 2013, and is still on the statute books. It was, however, essentially a cruel victim-blaming measure at a time of housing shortage, exacerbating rent arrears for an extremely marginalised group of people, and confronting them with a possible threat of eviction. It was part of a raft of additional measures, which created a harsher benefits environment, aimed at encouraging ‘individual responsibility’ by the poor, as part of the 2012 Welfare Reform Act, the centrepiece of which was the flagship Universal Credit reform.

Though these were justified as attempts to create greater rationality and ‘fairness’ into the benefits system, there was no doubt that they were primarily imposed in the wider grand cause of pursuing ‘austerity’ and reducing public expenditure in the name of ‘austerity.’ As a result, the gap between the so-called deserving and undeserving was deliberately widened, as benefits of the poor were frozen and made harder to get, while old age pensions were inflation-proofed in the political expectation that might deliver votes for the conservative-led government. As for the bedroom tax itself, Ian Duncan Smith as the minister responsible, defended it on the grounds that the taxpayer could not afford to subsidise spare rooms that people did not need. It was also generally justified in terms of neoliberal rational choice notions that individual tenants without rooms they needed would move, and scarce public housing would thereby be appropriately reallocated to those in greater need.

Kelly Bogue's excellent book shows the wider context in which this all occurred, linking the bedroom tax to the social and political environment, which gave rise to it, and the crisis in income maintenance and housing policy that it failed to tackle. She shows clearly that it in fact magnified the insecurity of impoverished and materially struggling people, which is structurally explained through Waquant's theory of ‘advanced marginality.’ However, the great strength of the book is its grounding in deep and empathetic ethnographic research into the lives of people living on a Midlands council estate, on how they managed before and after the imposition of the bedroom tax, in the light also of the other pressures being exerted on their lives. It takes us through their feelings of apprehension as they struggled to deal with yet another set of impositions, including the insecurity caused by the fact that their Housing Association failed to properly communicate the implications of the tax to them. It shows us that real people are not abstract individual rational-choice pawns, in that many sought to absorb the costs of the penalty in order to maintain their existing housing arrangements, linked to neighbourhood friendship and family ties. She shows how these were materially based on networks of assistance that helped them deal with poverty, which was now drawn upon to help deal with the bedroom tax. However, in terms that are distressing because she narrates the experiences of real individuals, there were negative effects on the psychological health and wellbeing of tenants, which also often distressed their children.

Bogue also demonstrates how all this further undermined a fragile sense of personal worth and sometimes led to feelings that other people, less deserving than themselves, were being treated better. In some cases, the frustrations that they felt were translated into overt racist hostility. Thus, the bedroom tax, and welfare reform generally, were policies that magnified underlying social tensions in potentially dangerous ways. Her work thus helps to explain how the bedroom tax and so-called welfare ‘reform,’ connect to wider developments such as the negative Brexit vote of 2016, and generally the rise of an anti-immigration and socially divisive populist politics.

This is therefore not a narrowly focused book about the bedroom tax and its specific impacts on an already vulnerable group of people. It shows how one thing connects to others in people's lives, and that any policy intervention needs to understand how people live their lives collectively in communities and neighbourhoods, not just as isolated individuals. The book is a model of how to research and explain social policy in committed and impassioned ways, by connecting broader structural processes to the lived experiences of real people. It shows how poor people in contemporary Britain try to survive, get by and lead meaningful lives, often despite rather than because of external state interventions into their lives. It would be much better if policies worked with, rather than so often against vulnerable people, is the powerful and persuasive underlying message. With that in mind, it is strongly recommended for all students, researchers and practitioners of social policy.

有争议的“卧室税”，或正式称为“入住不足的罚款”，是对英国议会房屋租户征收的住房福利大幅减少，他们被认为拥有超过他们所需的一间或多间房间。由于类似的措施已经应用于私人租赁部门，因此被官方认为是“唯一公平的”，并于 2013 年生效，并且仍在法规中。然而，在住房短缺的情况下，这基本上是一种残酷的受害者指责措施，加剧了极端边缘化群体的租金拖欠，并使他们面临可能被驱逐的威胁。作为 2012 年《福利改革法案》的一部分，这是一系列额外措施的一部分，这些措施创造了更恶劣的福利环境，旨在鼓励穷人“承担个人责任”，

尽管这些被证明是为了在福利制度中创造更大的理性和“公平”，但毫无疑问，它们主要是为了追求“紧缩”和以“紧缩”的名义减少公共支出的更广泛的宏伟事业。结果，所谓的应得与不应得之间的差距被故意拉大，因为穷人的福利被冻结并且更难获得，而养老金在可能为保守派带来选票的政治预期中是抗通胀的——领导的政府。至于卧室税本身，伊恩·邓肯·史密斯作为负责部长进行了辩护，理由是纳税人无力补贴人们不需要的闲置房间。

Kelly Bogue 的优秀著作展示了这一切发生的更广泛背景，将卧室税与引发它的社会和政治环境联系起来，以及它未能解决的收入维持和住房政策危机。她清楚地表明，它实际上放大了贫困和物质斗争中的人们的不安全感，这在结构上可以通过 Waquant 的“高级边缘化”理论来解释。然而，这本书的强大之处在于它对居住在米德兰兹议会庄园的人们的生活进行深入而富有同情心的民族志研究，了解他们在征收卧室税之前和之后如何管理，以及其他对他们的生活施加的压力。这让我们了解了他们在努力应对另一套强制措施时的忧虑情绪，包括由于他们的住房协会未能正确向他们传达税收的影响而造成的不安全感。它向我们表明，真实的人不是抽象的个人理性选择的棋子，因为许多人试图吸收惩罚的成本，以维持他们现有的住房安排，与邻里友谊和家庭联系。她展示了这些在物质上是如何建立在帮助他们解决贫困问题的援助网络上的，而这些援助网络现在被用来帮助解决卧室税问题。然而，由于她讲述真实个人的经历而令人痛苦，这对租户的心理健康和福祉产生了负面影响，

博格还展示了这一切如何进一步削弱了脆弱的个人价值感，有时还会导致其他人比自己更不值得被对待的感觉。在某些情况下，他们所感受到的挫败感被转化为公开的种族主义敌意。因此，卧室税和一般福利改革是以潜在危险的方式放大潜在的社会紧张局势的政策。因此，她的工作有助于解释卧室税和所谓的福利“改革”如何与更广泛的发展联系起来，例如 2016 年的英国退欧投票，以及反移民和社会分裂民粹主义政治的兴起。

因此，这不是一本关于卧室税及其对已经很脆弱的人群的具体影响的狭隘书。它展示了人们生活中的一件事如何与他人联系在一起，并且任何政策干预都需要了解人们如何在社区和社区中集体生活，而不仅仅是作为孤立的个体。这本书是如何通过将更广泛的结构过程与真实人们的生活经历联系起来，以坚定和热情的方式研究和解释社会政策的典范。它展示了当代英国的穷人如何努力生存、勉强度日并过上有意义的生活，而这往往不是因为外部国家干预他们的生活。如果政策与弱势群体合作而不是经常针对弱势群体，那就更好了，是强大而有说服力的潜在信息。考虑到这一点，强烈建议所有学生、研究人员和社会政策从业者使用。