The political economy of welfare in a time of coronavirus: Post-productivism as a state of exception

Within months, Covid-19 has fundamentally reconfigured the relationship between the market and the state in Ireland. The ‘Great Lockdown’ has administered a shock to global patterns of production and consumption not seen since the Great Depression (Gopinath, 2020) causing unprecedent levels of job-loss. In Ireland, the hardship of this job-loss has been partially cushioned by the social security response to the crisis, and the introduction of a Pandemic Unemployment Payment. For the hundreds of thousands of citizens receiving this and related payments, welfare has replaced market earnings as their means of subsistence. This is a major adjustment not only in the economic lives of these citizens but also in the ‘productivist’ footing of Ireland’s welfare state.