As wage labor was restructured social inclusion and exclusion also began playing a role in welfare and citizenship. As Sears points out, women who did qualify for welfare on the basis of their household circumstances (as they were fitted into the mold of inherently dependent) were mostly relegated to a lower level of services that combined lower benefits with greater stigma. As social inclusion became synonymous with market participation, and consumerism culture, we see how exclusion also started relying on, and perpetuating the idea of hyper-individualism that neoliberalism so heavily leans on, as the politics of exclusion naturalizes the differentiation of the working class by blaming the conditions of the excluded on their own individual traits.

In “New Citizens for an Age of Uncertainty,” Carpenter phrases a neoliberal citizen as one whose responsibilities lie within the spheres of individual consumerism and market-oriented values. She suggests several inherent contradictions present within the concept of neoliberal citizenship which rise from the clash of neoliberal economic principles and customary notions of citizenship. One of them is the discrepancies that lie between the expectation of economic participation and consumer choices, that almost tie an individual’s societal worth to the aforementioned factors, along with the implicit inability of certain, especially marginalized, groups, and individuals unable to entirely engage with and immerse themselves into the market due to socioeconomic barriers. This innate different highlights and worsens inequalities while overlooking systemic disadvantages, indicative of the inclusivity of this doctrine.

The title “shadow state,” meanwhile, renders the scene of the covert and furtive operation of state power that functions outside the delineations of formal, official political institutions. 

Both terms hold significant and notable illustrative faculty and connotations when it comes to describing present-day procedures employed by the state.