This book provides key insights into the nature of officer-recipient relationships and shows how they have non-negligible impacts on the way recipients feel and think about themselves and their lives using mixed methods and subjective and psychosocial well-being approaches. The importance of placing well-being at the heart of policy is widely accepted. Yet, it is far less clear how this can be translated into practice. Discussion has tended to focus on the outcomes of policy and particularly on the metrics to assess well-being. While these are important debates, they can obscure an equally vital dimension: the processes of policies and the effect that implementation can have on the experiences - and ultimately well-being outcomes - of the recipients. This is the subject matter of this book. By taking the world-renowned case of the Oportunidades-Prospera conditional cash transfer programme in Mexico, it provides an in-depth account of interactions between officers and recipients and how these influenced programme delivery and well-being outcomes. It particularly scrutinizes the implementation of the health conditionalities of Oportunidades-Prospera by physicians working in the health clinics of rural and indigenous localities.

Poverty is South Africa's greatest challenge. But what is 'poverty'? How can it be measured? And how can it be reduced if not eliminated? In South Africa, human science knowledge about the cost of living grew out of colonialism, industrialization, apartheid and civil resistance campaigns, which makes this knowledge far from neutral or apolitical. South Africans have used the Poverty Datum Line (PDL), Gini coefficients and other poverty thresholds to petition the state, to chip away at the pillars of white supremacy, and, more recently, to criticize the postapartheid government's failures to deliver on some of its promises. Rather than promoting one particular policy solution, this book argues that poverty knowledge teaches us about the dynamics of historical change, the power of racism in white settler societies, and the role of grassroots protest movements in shaping state policies and scientific categories. Readers will gain new perspectives on today's debates about social welfare, redistribution and human rights, and will ultimately find reasons to rethink conventional approaches to advocacy.

For too long a conventional wisdom has held sway, suggesting that poor people in poor countries are not supportive of democracy and that democracies will be sustained only after a certain average level of wealth has been achieved. Evidence from 24 diverse countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America examined in this volume shows how poor people do not value democracy any less than their richer counterparts. Their faith in democracy is as high as that of other citizens, and they participate in democratic activities as much as their richer counterparts. Democracy is not likely to be unstable or unwelcome simply because poverty is widespread. Political attitudes and participation levels are unaffected by relative wealth. Education, rather than income or wealth, makes for more committed and engaged democratic citizens. Investments in education will make a critical difference for stabilizing and strengthening democracy.

Should a citizen's right to social welfare be contingent on their personal behaviour? Welfare conditionality, linking citizens' eligibility for social benefits and services to prescribed compulsory responsibilities or behaviours, has become a key component of welfare reform in many nations. This book uses qualitative longitudinal data, from repeat interviews with people subject to compulsion and sanction in their everyday lives, to analyse the effectiveness and ethicality of welfare conditionality in promoting and sustaining behaviour change in the UK. Given the negative outcomes that welfare conditionality routinely triggers, this book calls for the abandonment of these sanctions and reiterates the importance of genuinely supportive policies that promote social security and wider equality.

Transnational corporations are one of the most important actors in the global economy, occupying a more powerful position than ever before. In their persistent battle to increase profits, they have increasingly turned to the developing world, a world that holds many attractions for them. But what is their impact on the poor? Now in its second edition, Big Business, Poor Peoples finds that these corporations are damaging the lives of millions of poor people in developing countries. Looking at every sector where transnational corporations are involved, this vital book is packed with detail on how the poor are affected. The book exposes how developing countries' natural resources are being ceded to TNCs and how governments are unwilling or unable to control them. The author argues that TNCs, answerable to no one but their shareholders, have used their money, size and power to influence international negotiations and taken full advantage of the move towards privatization to influence government policies; sovereignty is passing into corporate hands, and the poor are paying the price. But people are fighting back: citizens, workers, and communities are exposing the corporations and looking for alternatives. The first edition of this path-breaking book put the issue of transnational corporations and the poor firmly on the agenda. This second edition contains significant new and updated material and is an essential read for anyone who wants to know more about the effects of corporate power on the poor.

International migration is a life-changing process, but do the migrants and their families fare economically better than those who stayed behind? Drawing on the largest database available on labour migration to Europe, this book seeks to shed light upon this question through an exploration of poverty outcomes for three generations of settler migrants spanning multiple European destinations, as compared with their returnee and stayer counterparts living in Turkey. As well as documenting generational trends, it investigates the transmission of poverty onto the younger generations. With its unique multi-site and intergenerational perspective, the book provides a rare insight into the economic consequences of international migration for migrants and their descendants.

Over recent years, tabloid readers have become familiar with the concept of the "white working class", those thought to have been "left behind" by globalization, including immigration. Such sentiments were weaponized by politicians on all sides to fuel the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the Brexit campaign. And this racialized narrative has emerged repeatedly in mature democracies - in the political campaigns of Trump, Le Pen and others - and continues to gain traction in the guise of economic nationalism and populism. The need to understand the putative emergence of the white working class has become both intellectually significant and politically urgent. In Race and the Undeserving Poor, Robbie Shilliam does just this. He charts the development over the past 200 years of a shifting postcolonial settlement that has produced a racialized distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, the latest incarnation of which is a distinction between a deserving, neglected white working class and "others" who are undeserving, not indigenous, and not white. Shilliam's analysis shows that the white working class are not an indigenous constituency, but a product of the struggles to consolidate and defend imperial order that have shaped British society since the abolition of slavery.

Money was already tight for UK families living on a low income before the COVID-19 pandemic, but national lockdowns made life much harder. Telling the stories of these families, this book exposes the ways that pre-existing inequalities, insecurities and hardships were amplified during the pandemic for families who were already in poverty before COVID-19, as well as those pushed into poverty by the economic fallout it created. Drawing on the Covid Realities research programme, and developed in partnership with parents and carers, it explores experiences of home-schooling, social security receipt and government, community and charitable support. This book sets out all that is wrong with the status quo, while also offering a powerful agenda for change. Also see 'COVID-19 Collaborations: Researching Poverty and Low-Income Family Life during the Pandemic' (Open Access) to find out more about the challenges of carrying out research during COVID-19.

A survey in 1776 recorded almost 2,000 parish workhouses operating in England, while the number in Wales was just nineteen. The New Poor Law of 1834 proved equally unattractive in much of Wales - some parts of the country resisted providing a workhouse until the 1870s, with Rhayader in Radnorshire being the last area in the whole of England and Wales to do so. Our image of these institutions has often been coloured by the work of authors such as Charles Dickens, but what was the reality? Where exactly were these workhouses located - and what happened to them? People are often surprised to discover that a familiar building was once a workhouse. Revealing locations steeped in social history, Workhouses of Wales and the Welsh Borders is a comprehensive and copiously illustrated guide to the workhouses that were set up across Wales and the border counties of Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. It provides an insight into the contemporary attitudes towards such institutions as well as their construction and administration, what life was like for the inmates, and where to find their records today.

As societies become more technically advanced and jobs require more expertise, young people are forced into a prolonged state of social marginality. Employment during adolescence could provide significant experiences for growth into later work roles, but most societies are not equipped to provide adolescents with meaningful work experience. In Youth Unemployment and Society, a group of historians, psychologists, economists and sociologists provide a cross-national examination of trends in youth unemployment and intervention strategies in the United States and Europe. Assessing the causes of aggregate societal unemployment rates, the authors address factors that make individuals more vulnerable to unemployment and consider the developmental consequences of this experience. The volume also examines how persistently high rates of youth unemployment affect society's values, beliefs, and institutions.

Music Downtown Eastside draws on two decades of research in one of North America's poorest urban areas to illustrate how human rights can be promoted through music. Harrison's examination of how gentrification, grant funding, and community organizations affect the success or failure of human rights-focused musical initiatives offers insights into the complex relationship between culture, poverty, and human rights that have global implications and applicability. The book takes the reader into popular music jams and music therapy sessions offered to the poor in churches, community centers and health organizations. Harrison analyzes the capabilities music-making develops, and musical moments where human rights are respected, promoted, threatened, or violated. The book offers insights on the relationship between music and poverty, a social deprivation that diminishes capabilities and rights. It contributes to the human rights literature by examining critically how human rights can be strengthened in cultural practices and policy.

Confined in their governmental offices and with their eyes fixed on the opinion polls, politicians and state officials are all too often oblivious to the lives of their citizens. On the other hand, the ordinary men and women who have so much hardship in their lives, and so few means to make themselves heard, are obliged either to protest outside the official frameworks or remain locked in the silence of their despair.

Under the direction of Pierre Bourdieu, a team of sociologists spent three years analysing the new forms of social suffering that characterize contemporary societies - the suffering of those who are denied the means of acquiring a socially dignified existence, as well as the suffering of those who are poorly adjusted to the rapidly changing social and economic conditions of their lives.

Declining housing estates, the school, the family, street-level state services, the everyday world of social workers, teachers and policemen, factory workers and white-collar clerks, the universe of small farmers and artisans, of teachers and of the unemployed and partly employed: these are just some of the spaces where conflict occurs, where specific discriminations and recriminations, tensions and contradictions, abound and accumulate, and where new forms of suffering are produced and experienced by ordinary people in the course of their daily lives.

This book can be read like a series of short stories - the story of a steel worker who was laid off after twenty years in the same factory and who now struggles to support his family on unemployment benefits and a part-time job; the story of a trade unionist who finds his goals undermined by the changing nature of work; thestory of a family from Algeria living in a housing estate in the outskirts of Paris whose members have to cope with pervasive, everyday forms of racism; the story of a school teacher confronted with urban violence; and many others as well. Reading these stories enables one to understand these people's lives and the forms of social suffering which are part of them. And the reader will see that this book offers not only a distinctive method for analysing social life, but also another way of practising politics.

The publication of this book was a major social and political event in France, where it topped the best-seller list and triggered a wide-ranging public debate on inequality, politics and social solidarity. It will be essential reading for all those - including social scientists, educators, social and political activists and ordinary citizens - who are concerned about the current state of contemporary societies.

This book discusses poverty reduction and inclusive development in China. The relevant research reports included here combine unique perspectives and thorough analysis, and include both comparative and empirical analyses. Although China is the first country to have achieved the UN's Millennium Development Goals, it still faces enormous problems and challenges in terms of narrowing the income gap, reducing poverty and attaining sustainable development. This book not only provides valuable theoretical material to help readers understand inclusive development and poverty reduction in today's China, but also offers relevant government authorities a solid theoretical and practical basis for informed decision-making.

The Politics of the Near offers a novel approach to social unrest in post-apartheid South Africa. Keeping the noise of demonstrations, barricades, and clashes with the police at a distance, this ethnography of a poor people's movement traces individual commitments and the mainsprings of mobilization in the ordinary social and intimate life of activists, their relatives, and other township residents. Tournadre's approach picks up on aspects of activists lives that are often neglected in the study of social movements that help us better understand the dynamics of protest and the attachment of activists to their organization and its cause. What Tournadre calls a "politics of the near" takes shape, through sometimes innocuous actions and beyond the separation between public and domestic spheres. By mapping the daily life of Black and low-income neighborhoods and the intimate domain where expectations and disappointments surface, The Politics of the Near offers a different perspective on the "rainbow nation"-a perspective more sensitive to the fact that, three decades after the end of apartheid, poverty and race are still as tightly interwoven as ever.

The Politics of the Near offers a novel approach to social unrest in post-apartheid South Africa. Keeping the noise of demonstrations, barricades, and clashes with the police at a distance, this ethnography of a poor people's movement traces individual commitments and the mainsprings of mobilization in the ordinary social and intimate life of activists, their relatives, and other township residents. Tournadre's approach picks up on aspects of activists lives that are often neglected in the study of social movements that help us better understand the dynamics of protest and the attachment of activists to their organization and its cause. What Tournadre calls a "politics of the near" takes shape, through sometimes innocuous actions and beyond the separation between public and domestic spheres. By mapping the daily life of Black and low-income neighborhoods and the intimate domain where expectations and disappointments surface, The Politics of the Near offers a different perspective on the "rainbow nation"-a perspective more sensitive to the fact that, three decades after the end of apartheid, poverty and race are still as tightly interwoven as ever.

Around 1.4 billion people presently live in extreme poverty, and yet despite this vast scale, the issue of global poverty had a relatively low international profile until the end of the 20th century. In this important new work, Hulme charts the rise of global poverty as a priority global issue, and its subsequent marginalisation as old themes edged it aside (trade policy and peace-making in regions of geo-political importance) and new issues were added (terrorism, global climate change and access to natural resources). Key updates for the new edition: evaluation of the post-2015 Development Agenda and the Rio+20 exploration of how Colombia and Brazil are pushing a sustainability agenda as a Southern perspective to challenge the aid focus of OECD post-MDGs interests examination and discussion of the gradual shift of power and influence to the BRICs and emerging regional powers (Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa) but the lack of change in global institutions exploration of Russia's lack of participation in the development agenda The first book to tackle the issue of global poverty through the lens of global institutions; this fully updated volume provides an important resource for all students and scholars of international relations, development studies and international political economy.

Founded in Toronto in 1968, the Praxis Corporation was a progressive research institute mandated to spark political discussion about a range of social issues, such as poverty, homelessness, anti-war activism, community activism and worker organization. Deemed a radical threat by the Canadian state, Praxis was put under RCMP surveillance. In 1970, Praxis's office was burgled and burned to the ground. No arrests were made, but internal documents and records stolen from Praxis ended up in the hands of the RCMP Security Service. All this occurred as Pierre Trudeau's Liberal government shifted away from social spending and poverty reduction towards the economic regime of austerity and neoliberalism that we have today. In When Poverty Mattered, Paul Weinberg combines insights gleaned from internal government documents, access to information requests and investigative journalism to provide both a history of radical politics in 1960s Canada and an illustration of misdeeds and dirty tricks the Canadian government orchestrated in order to disrupt activist organizations fighting for a more just society.

Underpinned by the idea of the right to a 'basic minimum', welfare states are a major feature of many societies. However, the lived experiences of persons seeking and receiving welfare payments can often be overlooked. This book seeks to remedy this omission by honouring lived experience as valuable, insightful and necessary. It draws on qualitative interviews with 19 people receiving various working age welfare payments in Ireland to explore stigma, social reciprocity and the notions of the deserving and undeserving poor, and to analyse welfare conditionality in the Irish context. Breaking new ground, this book offers original research findings which contest and inform policy both within Ireland and beyond.

Comparing the effects of unemployment and inadequate employment relative to adequate employment, this text studies their effects on self-esteem, alcohol abuse, depression, and birth weight. Using longitudinal methods, it measures controls for reverse causation (selection) and studies a large representative sample of Americans from their late teens in 1979, to their early 30's in the last decade of the twentieth century through stages of different business cycles. The results point to a rethinking of employment status as a continuum.

For more than four decades, Hugh Segal has been one of the leading voices of progressive conservatism in Canada. A self-described Red Tory warrior who disdains "bootstrap" approaches to poverty, he has always promoted policies, especially a basic annual income, to help the most economically vulnerable. Why would a life-long Tory support something so radical? In this revealing memoir, Segal shares how his life and experiences brought him to this most unlikely of places, beginning with his childhood in a poor immigrant family in Montreal to his time as a chief of staff for Prime Minister Mulroney and to his more recent work as an advisor on a basic income pilot project for the Ontario Liberal government. This book is a passionate argument not only for why a basic annual income makes economic sense, but for why it is the right thing to do.

This book explores the changing spatial distribution of the United States of America's poorest and most affluent counties over the 30 years from 1980 to 2010. While overall rates of poverty have changed somewhat during this period, the geography of counties where affluence and poverty rates are the highest have also shifted as economic fortunes wax and wane. The spatial understanding of poverty and affluence is an important dimension of addressing the complex economic and social contexts within which poverty occurs, and which vary substantially depending on several factors. While there has been significant focus on poverty in the United States, including some analysis of its spatial characteristics, since the 1960s there has been relatively little research on the concomitant geography of affluence. The geographies of poverty and affluence analyzed in this book give a view of spatial economic segregation. Spatial aspects of both the poorest and most affluent counties are focused on, as well as the changing gap and relative geographies between rich and poor over three decades.

The British welfare state is traditionally understood to be comprised of five main services: health, housing, social security, education and the 'personal social services', such as social care and child protection. In this book, Paul Spicker offers an original take on the role of the state in relation to these services, along with three other areas where institutional services have been developed: employment services, equalities and public services, such as roads, parks, libraries and rescue services. Dismissing false and misleading narratives, this book profiles the real problems that need to be addressed and offers inspiration for a better path forward.

By focusing on Mamluk Cairo, Adam Sabra explores the attitude of medieval Muslims to poverty and the experience of being poor in an Islamic society. He also considers the role of pious endowments (waqfs) in sustaining the poor. In this way the book affords fascinating insights into a world far removed from elite society, hitherto the focus of Mamluk studies. This trend, in conjunction with comparisons offered between the Islamic world, Europe and China, will entice a broad range of scholars from within the field and beyond.

This open access book explores the historical, cultural and philosophical contexts that have made anti-poverty the core of Chinese society since Liberation in 1949, and why poverty alleviation measures evolved from the simplistic aid of the 1950s to Xi Jinping's precision poverty alleviation and its goal of eliminating absolute poverty by 2020. The book also addresses the implications of China's experience for other developing nations tackling not only poverty but such issues as pandemics, rampant urbanization and desertification exacerbated by global warming. The first of three parts draws upon interviews of rural and urban Chinese from diverse backgrounds and local and national leaders. These interviews, conducted in even the remotest areas of the country, offer candid insights into the challenges that have forced China to continually evolve its programs to resolve even the most intractable cases of poverty. The second part explores the historic, cultural and philosophical roots of old China's meritocratic government and how its ancient Chinese ethics have led to modern Chinese socialism's stance that "poverty amidst plenty is immoral". Dr. Huang Chengwei, one of China's foremost anti-poverty experts, explains the challenges faced at each stage as China's anti-poverty measures evolved over 70 years to emphasize "enablement" over "aid" and to foster bottom-up initiative and entrepreneurialism, culminating in Xi Jinping's precision poverty alleviation. The book also addresses why national economic development alone cannot reduce poverty; poverty alleviation programs must be people-centered, with measurable and accountable practices that reach even to household level, which China has done with its "First Secretary" program. The third part explores the potential for adopting China's practices in other nations, including the potential for replicating China's successes in developing countries through such measures as the Belt and Road Initiative. This book also addresses prevalent misperceptions about China's growing global presence and why other developing nations must address historic, systemic causes of poverty and inequity before they can undertake sustainable poverty alleviation measures of their own.