WELFARE POLICIES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF WELFARE RELATIONS IN A RESIDUAL WELFARE-STATE - THE CASE OF HONG-KONG

Each welfare system has its own welfare relations for shaping and main taining certain types of welfare practices and welfare ideologies. Wel fare relations concern the distribution of welfare responsibilities am ong various social institutions, the public's welfare expectations and entitlements, and the status of welfare recipients. Welfare policies, which am a legal basis of the dominant class's philosophy as well as a mechanism for policing welfare recipients' use of benefits, play an important role in shaping and constructing the welfare relations of a country. This paper discusses how welfare policies construct the requi red welfare relations with regard to Hong Kong's social security syste m. It is argued that the persistence of Hong Kong's residual welfare m odel is partly based on the residual welfare relations which facilitat e family-centred and market-oriented welfare practices.