This book examines the patterns, characteristics, causes and coping mechanisms of the poor in Afghanistan applying econometric and statistical techniques. The authors address and identify the extent of poverty in Afghanistan over the years, the spatial patterns and regional imbalances of poverty in Afghanistan, the distinguishing characteristics of the poor in Afghanistan, and explore shocks faced by the poor in Afghanistan as well as subsequent coping strategies. Based on household level data collected under the 'National Risk Vulnerability Assessment' (NRVA) survey of 2003, 2005, 2007/08 and 2011/12 of Afghanistan, the authors identify options that may enable policy makers and other stakeholders to further enable the inclusion of the poor in development processes and to successfully cope with poverty and its adverse outcomes. This short book will be of interest to students, researchers, academicians, policymakers, international agencies and NGOs at international and national levels.

The theme of this book is that economic growth is key, but institutions and other national and subnational attributes matter as well. They are critical to explaining differences in social development and poverty reduction across countries and subnational areas that cannot be accounted for by growth alone. The book concludes that a more complete strategy needs to consider various institutional factors at the national and subnational levels to achieve rapid and sustained poverty reduction. Indeed, paying attention to these factors will benefit both growth and poverty reduction.

Active Labour Market Policies aim to assist people not in work into employment through a range of interventions including job search, preparation, training and in-work support and development. While policies, programmes and scholarship predominantly focus on jobseekers' engagement with these initiatives, this book is the first text to shed light on the employer's perspective. Bringing together renowned scholars from social and public policy and human resource management, the book draws on empirical studies, comparative case studies and real-life examples from practice, providing a comprehensive analysis of this under-explored issue. This go-to resource will inform HRM and public policy scholarship and promote collaborations between the disciplines.

The New Southern European Diaspora: Youth, Unemployment, and Migration uses a qualitative and ethnographic approach to investigate the movement of young adults from areas in southern Europe that are still impacted by the 2008 economic crisis. With a particular focus on Spain, Portugal, and Italy, Ricucci examines the difficulties faced by young adults who are entering the labor market and are developing plans to move abroad. Ricucci further investigates mobility and its drivers, relationships among mobile youth and their social networks, perceptions of intra-European Union youth mobility, and the role of institutions, especially schools, in the development of mobility plans. This book is recommended for scholars of anthropology, political science, and economics.

The ongoing campaign of 'western development' launched in 1999 and the recent Chinese government initiative of 'building a harmonious society' highlight the urgency and significance of analyzing inequality and poverty. Prominent contributors from China and around the world explore trends of inequality and poverty in China, identify their causes and assess their consequences. Issues explored within this volume include regional/personal variation in incomes, measures of human wellbeing - such as health and education - the gap between the coastal regions (which have strongly benefited from the expansion of China's exports) and the interior regions, and urban-rural disparity. This volume also examines the impact that a variety of different factors have had in determining inequality and poverty and their dynamics. Factors examined include resource endowment, location (including proximity to major transport links such as coastal ports), historical differences in the pace of economic development, the uneven impact of economic reform and imbalance in the provision of economic and social infrastructure.

Why does child poverty exist in industrialized countries? In an attempt to answer this question, this book examines monetary and non-monetary poverty among immigrant children in Western Europe, with particular reference to France and Switzerland.
Set within the context of the current controversial debate on European immigration policy, this book presents an analysis of empirical data on immigrant child poverty and discusses the suitability of existing approaches such as justice-as-fairness and capability, while providing an alternative approach based on child rights and social justice. The book examines the impact of low incomes of immigrant parents and their precarious legal status in the host country which handicaps them in education, employment and the housing market.

Stigma and Social Support on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program delves into the daily complex lives of individuals on the program and the hardships the program has on participants. The author provides examples of experiencing stigmatization while on SNAP and possible methods to help improve, or lessen, the stigma with the use of positive social support. The chapters include the author's personal experiences on SNAP, factors influencing enrollment, overall views of the program, stigma, disclosure concerns of enrollment, social support, and implications from the findings. Chapters addressing statistical findings and theory application are also included. Stigma and Social Support on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program provides an in-depth view on the themes of stigma while enrolled in SNAP such as embarrassment, feelings of failure, fear of being perceived as lazy, and feelings of judgment. This book serves as a useful tool for researchers of stigma and welfare programs, as well as for policy makers to improve aspects of the program that are causing some of the most vulnerable populations such as typically unrepresented and exploited groups (e.g., immigrants, migrant/temporary workers, and racial/ethnic minorities) to feel more stigmatized than other groups.

Criminologists have known for decades that income inequality is the best predictor of the local homicide rate, but why this is so has eluded them. There is a simple, compelling answer: most homicides are the denouements of competitive interactions between men. Relatively speaking, where desired goods are distributed inequitably and competition for those goods is severe, dangerous tactics of competition are appealing and a high homicide rate is just one of many unfortunate consequences. Killing the Competition is about this relationship between economic inequality and lethal interpersonal violence. Suggesting that economic inequality is a cause of social problems and violence elicits fierce opposition from inequality's beneficiaries. Three main arguments have been presented by those who would acquit inequality of the charges against it: that "absolute" poverty is the real problem and inequality is just an incidental correlate; that "primitive" egalitarian societies have surprisingly high homicide rates, and that inequality and homicide rates do not change in synchrony and are therefore mutually irrelevant. With detailed but accessible data analyses and thorough reviews of relevant research, Martin Daly dispels all three arguments. Killing the Competition applies basic principles of behavioural biology to explain why killers are usually men, not women, and counters the view that attitudes and values prevailing in "cultures of violence" make change impossible.

Developing a contemporary account of political friendship and synthesizing it with the radical movement of degrowth, this book provides the ethical grounding and the rationale of an alternative economy which serves human flourishing. The Aristotelian political friendship embodies active concern for the others' well-being that contemporary societies lack; the crucial problems of ecological destruction and global poverty illustrate this friendship deficit. Arguing for the need for re-embracing a friendly civic ethos and re-aligning the economy with moral objectives, the author updates the Aristotelian idea and identifies it with democratic-autonomous political-economic praxis that ensures citizens' self-actualization. Degrowth movement questioning economic growth and productivism, and privileging a simpler life with less material goods, favours political friendship precisely because it nourishes its unconscious substratum namely human instinctual sociality. The call for genuine democratic political praxis that political friendship implies could enable the degrowth movement to retain its radical character and accomplish the shift to an economy which serves life. The book is worthwhile studying by students and researchers across social sciences and especially by scholars in the fields of sociology, philosophy, and politics, but also a broader readership sensitive to the issues of social and environmental sustainability will find this work extremely interesting.

Social work and poverty: A critical approach provides a timely review of the key issues facing social workers and service users in working together to combat poverty.First, it situates social work and poverty within a historical context, then analyses definitions and theories of poverty along with their importance in enabling anti-oppressive practice with service users. It goes on to evaluate the Welfare Reform Act 2012 in relation to the negative impact on service users and social workers alike. Key areas of social work and social care are covered with regard to the effects of poverty including, uniquely, access to food, obesity and problematic drug use. Finally the impacts of globalisation on social work and issues of poverty are explored. The book will be of interest to students, researchers and academics in social work and policy makers working in related areas.

This book provides an explanation of some of the root causes of civil upheaval and violent political conflict in Mexico by examining the cases of Oaxaca and Nuevo Leon in the period from 2000 to 2006. Oaxaca and Nuevo Leon represent 'two Mexicos': the rich Mexico and the poor Mexico. The author assesses two main groups of explanatory factors--socioeconomic and institutional--and examines some of the mechanisms through which these variables operate and interact with other factors (e.g., resources, opportunities, and government actions) to generate massive political turmoil. Evidence presented here shows that institutional factors are the primary sources of major political conflict in Mexico. Socioeconomic factors are significant but not predominant.

Homeless Voices: Stigma, Space, and Social Media argues that the best sources for how to address issues of homelessness are people experiencing homelessness themselves, particularly as they express their experiences through personal blogs and memoirs. Mary L. Schuster discusses how space and land have been historically denied to marginalized communities who still feel the effects to this day, along with examining the conditions and limitations of common spaces often assigned to those experiencing homelessness, culminating in an analysis of how the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has impacted homelessness. Schuster focuses on two vulnerable groups that often experience homelessness: victims of domestic violence and unaccompanied youth, particularly those who struggle with gender identity and unstable housing. This book includes a variety of case studies, examining public meetings and court decisions, public policy symposiums, and personal interviews, and ultimately finds that intersectionality-specifically age, race, gender identity, and ethnicity-plays a large part in understanding and experiencing homelessness. By shifting our attention to the diverse voices who experience homelessness themselves, Schuster claims, we can finally begin to remedy this crisis. Scholars of media studies, sociology, and urban development will find this book particularly useful.

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.

* Fascinating reading for advanced undergraduate and any postgraduate students of discourse studies as well as those with an interest in the relationship between charity, poverty and social exclusion. The conceptual material will also appeal more widely to researchers who wish to study processes of psychologisation and neoliberal government from a critical perspective * Direct applications of concepts to the real-world example of food banks offer an accessible entry into Foucault's thought and can offer practical guidance for those designing empirical projects in critical psychology * Addresses a clear gap in the market for a book that engages critically with the discourses and power dynamics in charity settings and may even inform the practices of anti-poverty campaigners and encourage critical reflection among food bank volunteers

* Fascinating reading for advanced undergraduate and any postgraduate students of discourse studies as well as those with an interest in the relationship between charity, poverty and social exclusion. The conceptual material will also appeal more widely to researchers who wish to study processes of psychologisation and neoliberal government from a critical perspective * Direct applications of concepts to the real-world example of food banks offer an accessible entry into Foucault's thought and can offer practical guidance for those designing empirical projects in critical psychology * Addresses a clear gap in the market for a book that engages critically with the discourses and power dynamics in charity settings and may even inform the practices of anti-poverty campaigners and encourage critical reflection among food bank volunteers

* Explores and explains what happens when citizens cannot pay the debts they owe to their governments * Provides insights for students and academics in criminology, sociology, public policy, and economics, as well as policymakers and government officials interested in effecting change * Unique in addressing the various ways in which governments have become privileged creditors, using their power to collect debts owed to them by their citizens

International migration is one of the prominent facts in the contemporary world, which affects the political, socio-economic and cultural processes both in origin and destination countries. Historically, Western Europe has been one of the most attractive destinations for migrants because of the level of socio-economic development and political stability. However, there are many complex institutional, socio-economic and cultural issues to be addressed to achieve the integration of migrants and to eliminate social inequalities between the native populations and migrants in these host countries. In this respect, this book examines some aspects of socio-economic disparities between native populations and the migrants in Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Different migration histories, labour market features and welfare state characteristics of these countries are expected to provide insight about how the integration-related and inequality-related issues emerge in diverse social and institutional settings. The study covers the empirical analyses of the disparities in the labour market and accessing the social benefits between 2004 and 2016 by using comparable cross- country survey data. These analyses attempt to demonstrate the relationships between these two domains. The study has a comparative approach, which aims at providing comparable evidence both across the countries and over time in each of the selected countries.

This book addresses itself to the relationship between the ideological and material which has long occupied a primary place in Marxist scholarship and is seen to be of central importance to feminist analysis. This book looks at some aspects of the debate in the context of Asia.;In particular, it examines the role that ideology can play both as a disabling and an enabling factor in the lives of women seeking to earn a livliehood for themselves and their families under conditions of poverty.;The case studies relate to a mixed set of Asian countries, with an associated diversity of cultural and economic conditions.;Haleh Afshar is also editor of "Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil", "Women and Ideology" and "Women, State and Ideology". Bina Agarwal is editor of "Structures of Patriarchy: State, Community and Household in Modernising Asia" and author of "Mechanisation in Indian Agriculture" and "Cold Hearths and Barren Slopes: The Woodfuel Crisis in the Third World".

The aim of this analysis is to cover the most important elements of the political press, and thus to paint a coherent picture of the way in which Danish newspapers has discussed the subject of the unemployed over a period of 150 years.

The promotion of social protection in Sub-Saharan Africa happens in a context where informal labour markets constitute the norm, and where most workers live uncertain livelihoods with very limited access to official social protection. The dominant social protection agenda and the associated literature come with an almost exclusive focus on donor and state programmes even if their coverage is limited to small parts of the populations - and in no way stands measure to the needs. In these circumstances, people depend on other means of protection and cushioning against risks and vulnerabilities including different forms of collective self-organizing providing alternative forms of social protection. These informal, bottom-up forms of social protection are at a nascent stage of social protection discussions and little is known about the extent or models of these informal mechanisms. This book seeks to fill this gap by focusing on three important sectors of informal work, namely: transport, construction, and micro-trade in Kenya and Tanzania. It explores how the global social protection agenda interacts with informal contexts and how it fits with the actual realities of the informal workers. Consequently, the authors examine and compare the social protection models conceptualized and implemented 'from above' by the public authorities in Tanzania and Kenya with social protection mechanisms 'from below' by the informal workers own collective associations. The book will be of interest to academics in International Development Studies, Political Economy, and African Studies, as well as development practitioners and policy communities.

This book describes the experience of joblessness and unemployment in contemporary Poland. It does so by combining qualitative and quantitative data from a special project conducted in Poland after the Great Recession and the long-term Polish Panel Survey (POLPAN) to describe the lives of the jobless: women and men currently out of work, the recently re-employed, and housewives. The book uses a class and inequality perspective to investigate how these women and men became jobless, how they look for and find employment, their household and social activities, and their political participation. It contextualizes these experiences with a description of Poland's economy, labor market and employment policies after the fall of Communism and builds on the active interviewing and social constructionist approaches to explore the complex interviewer-respondent relationship.

The People of the Abyss (1903) is a work of nonfiction by American writer Jack London. Written after the author spent three months living in London's poverty-stricken East End, The People of the Abyss bears witness to the difficulties faced by hundreds and thousands of people every day in one of the wealthiest nations on earth. Inspired by Friedrich Engels's The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) and Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives, London hoped to expose the indignities faced by those left behind by industrialization. In 1902, Jack London traveled to England to live in the slums of London's East End. Hoping to learn about the lives and experiences of the city's working class, he spent three months staying in workhouses, sleeping on the streets, and lodging with a poor family in the area. Drawing on his own experience as a working-class American, and informed by his dedicated understanding of socialism, London recorded what he saw of the lives of London's poor, the hundreds of thousands of humans held back from the nation's progress toward modernization. The People of the Abyss was a popular and critical success upon publication and would inspire the young George Orwell to conduct his own research on poverty and urban life, which he recorded in his groundbreaking work Down and Out in Paris and London. Although he is known more for his contributions to fiction, London was a talented journalist whose experiences as a world traveler and worker allowed him to capture the deprivations of impoverished life while preserving a sense of humanity and advocating for much needed change. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Jack London's The People of the Abyss is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Nearly 200 interviews with legal services lawyers and administrators, bar association officers, judges, and political officials form the basis for this book on the delivery of civil legal services to the poor. Beginning with a brief history of legal assistance programs, Kessler examines the operation of five local programs funded by the national Legal Services Corporation. The activities of poverty lawyers in urban, rural, and suburban settings are described and analyzed and the author offers an explanation for variables in service based on the constraints imposed by the interorganizational environment. The implications of his findings are examined from the perspective of existing theories of organizational behavior, the system's potential for effecting political and legal reform, and current political debates surrounding the future of the Legal Services Corporation.

Welcome to the city shadows in Valdemingomez: a lawless landscape of drugs and violence. Through vivid testimonies and images, Briggs and Monge tell the stories of the people who live there, placing them in a political, economic and social context of spatial inequality and oppressive mechanisms of social control.

Poverty is perceived as an urban problem, yet many in rural Britain also experience hardship. This book explores how and why people in rural areas experience and negotiate poverty and social exclusion. It examines the role of societal processes, individual circumstances, sources of support (markets; state; voluntary organisations; family and friends) and the role of place. It concludes that the UK's welfare system is poorly adapted to rural areas, with the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit and cutbacks exacerbating pressures. Voluntary organisations increasingly fill gaps in support left by the state. Invaluable to those in policy and practice, the book recommends a combination of person-based and place-based approaches to tackle rural poverty.