Women's rough sleeping is a major issue across Europe and is especially problematic within the current economic climate. Based on a European Union DAPHNE III-funded project, this important book tells the story of the women and organisations that took part in the study. Revealing a number of truths about women's rough sleeping across Europe, the authors argue that there is little or no specific provision for this vulnerable and hard to reach group. The book focuses on the adoption of effective policy, strategies and services to meet the needs of homeless women, specifically women rough sleepers who are the victims of domestic abuse. It will be a valuable resource for academics and students of criminology, social policy, law, social work and probation, as well as housing/homelessness practitioners, policy makers, local authorities and NGOs.

Although the absolute number of poor people in the world has declined significantly in recent decades, poverty reduction continues to be a very important issue. There still are very large numbers of poor people, relative poverty is an increasingly concerning problem, and progress on poverty reduction varies enormously from one part of the world to another. Factors contributing to poverty reduction include economic growth, economic integration, and specific poverty-reduction programs, which are often initiated by Western countries. This book considers poverty reduction from a global perspective. Development and Poverty Reduction looks at a wide range of specific subjects, across all continents. It highlights in particular how the issues are perceived from a non-Western perspective and especially how the rise of China is both having a profound impact on poverty reduction globally and also changing the overall way in which development and poverty reduction are approached.

This volume captures the innovative, theory-based, and grounded work being done by established scholars who are interrogating how teacher education can prepare teachers to work in challenging and diverse high-poverty settings. It offers articles from the US, Australia, Canada, the UK and Chile by some of the most significant scholars in the field. Internationally, research suggests that effective teachers for high poverty schools require deep theoretical understanding as well as the capacity to function across three well-substantiated areas: deep content knowledge, well-tuned pedagogical skills, and demonstrated attributes that prove their understanding and commitment to social justice. Schools in low socioeconomic communities need quality teachers most, however, they are often staffed by the least experienced and least prepared teachers. The chapters in this volume examine how pre-service teachers are taught to understand the social contexts of education. Drawing on the individual expertise of the authors, the topics covered include unpacking poverty for pre-service teachers, issues related to urban schooling as well as remote and regional area schooling.

This book examines the underlying assumptions and implications of how we conceptualise and investigate poverty. The empirical entry point for such inquiry is a series of research initiatives that have used mixed method, combined qualitative and quantitative, or Q-Squared ( Q(2)) approaches, to poverty analysis. The Q(2) literature highlights the vast range of analytical tools within the social sciences that may be used to understand and explain social phenomena, along with interesting research results. This literature serves as a lens to probe issues about knowledge claims made in poverty debates concerning who are the poor (identification analysis) and why they are poor (causal analysis). Implicitly or explicitly, questions are raised about the reasons for emphasising different dimensions of poverty and favouring different units of knowledge, the basis for distinguishing valid and invalid claims, the meaning of causation, and the nature of causal inference, and so forth. Q(2) provides an entry point to address foundational issues about assumptions underlying approaches to poverty, and applied issues about the strengths and limitations of different research methods and the ways they may be fruitfully combined. Together, the strands of this inquiry make a case for methodological pluralism on the grounds that knowledge is partial, empirical adjudication imperfect, social phenomena complex, and mixed methods add value for understanding and explanation. Ultimately, the goals of understanding and explanation are best served if research questions dictate the choice of methodological approach rather than the other way around.

Poverty in Contemporary Economic Thought aims to describe and critically examine how economic thought deals with poverty, including its causes, consequences, reduction and abolition. This edited volume traces the ideas of key writers and schools of modern economic thought across a significant period, ranging from Friedrich Hayek and Keynes to latter-day economists like Amartya Sen and Angus Deaton. The chapters relate poverty to income distribution, asserting the point that poverty is not always conceived of in absolute terms but that relative and social deprivation matters also. Furthermore, the contributors deal with both individual poverty and the poverty of nations in the context of the international economy. In providing such a thorough exploration, this book shows that the approach to poverty differs from economist to economist depending on their particular interests and the main issues related to poverty in each epoch, as well as the influence of the intellectual climate that prevailed at the time when the contribution was made. This key text is valuable reading for advanced students and researchers of the history of economic thought, economic development and the economics of poverty.

'One of the most exciting and provocative books that I've read in a long time' - Mike Davis, author of Planet of the Slums Can people who live in shantytowns, shacks and favelas teach us anything about democracy? About how to govern society in a way that is inclusive, participatory and addresses popular needs? This book argues that they can. In a study conducted in dozens of South Africa's shack settlements, where more than 9 million people live, Trevor Ngwane finds thriving shack dwellers' committees that govern local life, are responsive to popular needs and provide a voice for the community. These committees, called 'amakomiti' in the Zulu language, organise the provision of basic services such as water, sanitation, public works and crime prevention especially during settlement establishment. Amakomiti argues that, contrary to common perception, slum dwellers are in fact an essential part of the urban population, whose political agency must be recognised and respected. In a world searching for democratic alternatives that serve the many and not the few, it is to the shantytowns, rather than the seats of political power, that we should turn.

This book is about the courageous decision taken by the Government of a Ceara, Brazil, to tackle the painful economic and social conflict caused by the enormous gap between rich and poor. Instead of confining their attempts to easy solutions like transfer payments, the Governor of the State, Tasso Ribeiro Jereissati, decided in 2001 to cut straight into the roots of the problem, aiming to develop a genuine understanding of the conflict between growth and distribution, and thereby provide real, long-term solutions to the state's problems. Pedro Sisnando Leite, then Secretary of Rural Development, led this effort together with other state secretaries, particularly Monica Clark Nunes Cavalcante, Carlos Matos Lima and Alex Araujo.The book presents the results of a unique harmonic integration between academic research, public policy elaboration, and concrete implementation of public measures. The policies devised, implemented and evaluated in this book are focused on potential solutions to this market failure, at both the regional level and the local level. Studied and endorsed by many academics and policy makers around the world, the model of Ceara provides a unique and exemplary solution to conflict and inequality.

In spite of living often unspeakably hard, endlessly challenging lives, rural folks, no matter how poor, remain tirelessly optimistic and believe things will get better next year. One struggling farmer explained it this way: "Sometimes I feel like a jackass in a hailstorm - I just have to stand here and take it...but what the hell - it'll stop hailing sooner or later". Trying to survive on the richest farmland in America has produced some of the nation's poorest people. Yet, this book argues, as pertains to rural poverty, the usual definitions and criteria don't always apply, the known predictors of poverty don't necessarily hold up -and rural people save themselves again and again, because they know no one else will. The book also refutes the common image of the poor as lazy slackers who don't want to work. In reality, the rural heartland is populated by fiercely independent, politically astute, extremely hard-working men and women who possess a wide array of useful skills - and who struggle year over year to stay afloat in small-town economies that rise and fall on the whims of remote farm policy decisions, a volatile world-wide marketplace, and Mother Nature, who is a fickle, wildly unpredictable business partner.

Since the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971, political philosophers in the English-speaking world have shared a broad consensus that social justice should be understood as a matter of fair distribution of social resources. Many contemporary political philosophers disagree sharply about what would count as a fair distribution of social resources, yet agree that if social resources were to be distributed fairly, then social justice would exist. In Beyond Redistribution, Kevin M. Graham argues that political theories operating on a distributive understanding of social justice fail to address adequately certain forms of social injustice related to race. Graham argues that political philosophy could understand race-related injustice more fully by shifting its focus away from distributive inequities between whites and nonwhites and toward white supremacy, the unfair power relationships that allow whites to dominate and oppress nonwhites. Beyond Redistribution offers a careful, detailed critique of the positions of leading contemporary liberal political philosophers on race-related issues of social justice. Graham's analysis of the racial politics of police violence and public education in Omaha, Nebraska, vividly illustrates why the search for racial justice in the United States must move beyond redistribution.

From both theoretical and practical perspectives, this book systematically expounds the important theories, key measures and major achievements in the field of poverty alleviation in China, and sums up the important experience of poverty alleviation, it answers the significant question why China has been able to lift itself out of poverty and build a moderately prosperous society in an all round way. China has accumulated experience for achieving the two centenary goals, and contributed Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions to the global cause of poverty reduction.

EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Access to justice for all, regardless of the ability to pay, has been a core democratic value. But this basic human right has come under threat through wider processes of restructuring, with an increasingly market-led approach to the provision of welfare. Professionals and volunteers in Law Centres in Britain are struggling to provide legal advice and access to welfare rights to disadvantaged communities. Drawing upon original research, this unique study explores how strategies to safeguard these vital services might be developed in ways that strengthen rather than undermine the basic ethics and principles of public service provision. The book explores how such strategies might strengthen the position of those who provide, as well as those who need, public services, and ways to empower communities to work more effectively with professionals and progressive organisations in the pursuit of rights and social justice agendas more widely.

Today's globalised world means offshore finance, airport boutiques and high-speed Internet for some people, against dollar-a-day wages, used t-shirts, and illiteracy for others. How do these highly skewed global distributions happen, and what can be done to counter them? New Rules for Global Justice engages with widespread public disquiet around global inequality. It explores (mal)distributions in relation to country, class, gender and race, with international examples drawn from Australia to Zimbabwe. The book is action-oriented and empowering, presenting concrete proposals for 'new rules' in regard to climate change, corruption, finance, food, investment, the Internet, migration and more.

Originally published in 1981, Automatic Poverty provides a much-needed alternative to the Radical Right's analysis. The book argues that Britain's economic decline is symptomatic of an advanced stage of industrialisation in which productive processes are increasingly mechanised, but output remains static. Under these circumstances workers become redundant, the income of the working class diminishes, and dependence on the state increases. The 'Ricardo phenomenon' has become long-term feature of the British economy, and the author shows that neither Keynesian nor monetarist policies can remedy its consequences. It reflects a critical stage in the development of capitalism.

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 study analyses poor relief in pre-industrial Europe from 1800 to 1850, as a survival strategy of the poor and as a control strategy of the elites. It deals with poverty and the problems of the poor, but also with wealth and the concerns of the elites and of the middle classes. A simple model of poor relief is presented, based on insights derived from history, sociology and welfare economics. It is tested against the historical records of Amsterdam from 1800 to 1850. The study brings out some of the perennial problems of social policy, past and present, as well as some aspects of Old Regime charity, now vanished.

An examination of the ways that digital technologies play an increasingly important role in the lives of precarious workers, far beyond the gig economy apps like Uber and Lyft. Over the past three decades, digital technologies like smartphones and laptops have transformed the way we work in the US. At the same time, workers at both ends of the income ladder have experienced rising levels of job insecurity and anxiety about their economic futures. In Left to Our Own Devices, Julia Ticona explores the ways that workers use their digital technologies to navigate insecure and flexible labor markets. Through 100 interviews with high and low-wage precarious workers across the US, she explores the surprisingly similar "digital hustles" they use to find work and maintain a sense of dignity and identity. Ticona then reveals how the digital hustle ultimately reproduces inequalities between workers at either end of polarized labor markets. A moving and accessible look at the intimate consequences of contemporary capitalism, Left to Our Own Devices will be of interest to sociologists, communication and media studies scholars, as well as a general audience of readers interested in digital technologies, inequality, and the future of work in the US.

Early education and care has become a central policy area in many countries. As services expand rapidly, it is crucial to examine whether children from disadvantaged backgrounds receive provision of the highest possible quality. In this original, topical book, leading experts from eight countries examine how early education and care is organised, funded and regulated in their countries. Bringing together recent statistical evidence, the book gives an up-to-date picture of access to services by different groups, providing rich insights on how policies play out in practice, and the extent to which they help or hinder disadvantaged children to receive high quality provision. An equal start? reveals the common tensions and complexities countries face in ensuring that early education and care is affordable, accessible and of high quality. Its critical examination of the potential for better policies ensures that An equal start? will be of interest to academic readers as well as policy makers and practitioners.

This book examines the long-term impact of redundancy on a workforce who lost their jobs when a Sheffield steel company closed one of its plants. The authors set the key findings of a large number of detailed interviews in the context of the discussion of economic decline, deindustrialization, redundancy, unemployment and employment policy. They also analyse current debates about the impact of recession, the role of trade unions and possible solutions to structural unemployment. "After Redundancy" provides valuable insights into the impact of recession on a workforce accustomed to relative affluence. It also records interesting shifts in attitudes towards trade unions and the Labour Party. The book is intended for second or third year undergraduates and researchers in sociology of work, sociology of Britain, industrial sociology, industrial relations, labour studies and employment policy studies.

'Work hard, have fun, make history' proclaims the slogan on the walls of Amazon's warehouses. This cheerful message hides a reality of digital surveillance, aggressive anti-union tactics and disciplinary layoffs. Reminiscent of the tumult of early industrial capitalism, the hundreds of thousands of workers who help Amazon fulfil consumers' desire are part of an experiment in changing the way we all work. In this book, Alessandro Delfanti takes readers inside Amazon's warehouses to show how technological advancements and managerial techniques subdue the workers rather than empower them, as seen in the sensors that track workers' every movement around the floor and algorithmic systems that re-route orders to circumvent worker sabotage. He looks at new technologies including robotic arms trained by humans and augmented reality goggles, showing that their aim is to standardise, measure and discipline human work rather than replace it. Despite its innovation, Amazon will always need living labour's flexibility and low cost. And as the warehouse is increasingly automated, worker discontent increases. Striking under the banner 'we are not robots', employees have shown that they are acutely aware of such contradictions. The only question remains: how long will it be until Amazon's empire collapses?

This book investigates one of the most pervasive forms of modern slavery: bonded labour, whereby labour is linked with a credit agreement, leaving a debtor bound to repay their debt through long-term servitude. Drawing on cases from Nepal and India, the author adopts a human rights-based approach, interpreting slavery as a violation of human rights, and focusing on the empowerment of slaves as rights holders. Ultimately the book aims to explore the links between rights, power inequality and oppression, and to uncover ways to achieve the full liberation of bonded labourers. Identifying the factors and forces that contribute to and reinforce the situation of bonded labour in South Asia, the book demonstrates how systems of bonded labour are connected to long-term processes of colonisation, dispossession, migration, nationalisation of natural resources, and the introduction of private land ownership. Despite the fact that the United Nations has reported debt bondage as the most prevalent form of forced labour worldwide, there it is still little known about the real practical impacts of this approach to the lives of marginalised people. Based on extensive ethnographic research, this book will be a useful guide to students and scholars of modern slavery, international development, and South Asian studies.

Drawing together multidisciplinary research exploring everyday life in Europe during times of economic crisis, this book explores the ways in which austerity policies are lived and experienced - often alongside other significant social, political and personal change. With attention to the inequalities produced by these processes and the measures used by individuals, families and communities to help them 'get by', it also envisages hopeful, affirmative socio-political futures. Arranged around the themes of intergenerational relations and exchanges, ways of coping through crises, and community, civic and state infrastructures, Austerity Across Europe will appeal to social scientists with interests in everyday life, family practices, neoliberal state policy, poverty and socio-economic inequalities.

Lost Childhood explores the everyday lives of street children in India. It presents insights on their life on the streets to provide a comprehensive understanding of why they are driven to extreme means of livelihoods. This volume, * Inquiries into the histories of street children, and discusses their socio-economic and socio-demographic characteristics to provide a sense of their living conditions; * Sheds light on the social injustice experienced by these children, their health and hygiene, and also looks at the insecurities faced by the children in their interactions with the society; * Uses detailed field research data to highlight issues that affect the lives of street children such as education, gender discrimination, and their social networks; * Suggests a way forward that would not only benefit street children but will also be of use to the community in understanding their lives, problems, and help explore this issue in further detail. The book will be useful to scholars and researchers of human geography, development studies, child development, urban poverty, and social justice. It will also be of interest to policymakers, social workers, and field workers who work with street children.

Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan - Pioneer of Microcredit & Guru of Rural Development is a collection of ten articles and two poems on Dr. A.H. Khan - a world renowned social scientist and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Dr. Khan was a guru of rural development, pioneer of microfinance and recipient of many prestigious awards. He led the way in rural development and poverty alleviation. Dr. A.H. Khan was founder of two world-famous institutions, i.e. Bangladesh (previously Pakistan) Academy for Rural Development (BARD) and Orangi Pilot Project (OPP). Dr. Khan was also recognized by many academics, world leaders and global organizations, such as the World Bank, for his contributions to poverty alleviation. Dr. Khan passed away on October 09, 1999, and per his will, he was laid to rest on the premises of the OPP. In honor of this great social scientist, his nephew, scholar and historian Nasim Yousaf, has published this work as a tribute to Dr. A.H. Khan on his 13th death anniversary. This compilation of pieces highlights Dr. Khan's work and achievements. This work contains articles authored by well-respected and illustrious scholars in their field and includes poems from an expert on rural development. The articles also include statements and views of a number of prominent and learned persons on Dr. Khan. These articles contribute to the enrichment of scholarship in the fields of microcredit, rural development, poverty alleviation and self-reliance based development. The author and compiler, Nasim Yousaf, is a recognized historian and his works have been published globally in various mediums. Additional contributions have been included from the following distinguished persons: Professor Norman Uphoff of Cornell University, Professor Emeritus George H. Axinn of Michigan State University and Akbar Khan, son of Dr. Khan. This work includes bios of the author and contributors as well as information on Dr. Khan's children. Sources, where available, are included within or at the end of each article.

On January 20, 1949 US President Harry S. Truman officially opened the era of development. On that day, over one half of the people of the world were defined as "underdeveloped" and they have stayed that way ever since. This book explains the origins of development and underdevelopment and shows how poorly we understand these two terms. It offers a new vision for development, demystifying the statistics that international organizations use to measure development and introducing the alternative concept of buen vivir: the state of living well. The authors argue that it is possible for everyone on the planet to live well, but only if we learn to live as communities rather than as individuals and to nurture our respective commons. Scholars and students of global development studies are well-aware that development is a difficult concept. This thought-provoking book offers them advice for the future of development studies and hope for the future of humankind.