James Midgley's work on the ‘social development approach’ to social welfare made a significant contribution to the debate on social welfare in the 1990s. However, his conception of ‘positive welfare’ and the investment function of social welfare have been hijacked by neo-liberalists championing a ‘work-first’ social policy. This paper attempts to extend the debate on the ‘social development approach’, to reflect on concepts such as workfare, work, competitiveness, quality of services, and productivity. This paper starts with a review of the development of the ‘social development approach’, and shows how this has degenerated into ‘capitalist productivism’ in the context of East Asian welfare. It is argued that the over-emphasis on work and productivity in the East Asian context could worsen the disadvantaged position of less competitive groups such as women and low-income families. This paper calls for a fundamental reflection on concepts such as ‘workfare’, ‘work’ and ‘productivity’, and seeks to reinstate the ‘social’ in the social development approach.

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