Erika Gubrium

Poverty in Global Perspective: Is Shame a Common Denominator?

Focussing on the psychosocial dimensions of poverty, the contention that shame lies at the ‘irreducible absolutist core’ of the idea of poverty is examined through qualitative research with adults and children experiencing poverty in diverse settings in seven countries: rural Uganda and India; urban China; Pakistan; South Korea and United Kingdom; and small town and urban Norway. Accounts of the lived experience of poverty were found to be very similar, despite massive disparities in material circumstances associated with locally defined poverty lines, suggesting that relative notions of poverty are an appropriate basis for international comparisons. Though socially and culturally nuanced, shame was found to be associated with poverty in each location, variably leading to pretence, withdrawal, self-loathing, ‘othering’, despair, depression, thoughts of suicide and generally to reductions in personal efficacy. While internally felt, poverty-related shame was equally imposed by the attitudes and behaviour of those not in poverty, framed by public discourse and influenced by the objectives and implementation of anti-poverty policy. The evidence appears to confirm the negative consequences of shame, implicates it as a factor in increasing the persistence of poverty and suggests important implications for the framing, design and delivery of anti-poverty policies.

Contending with Border-making in the Social Constructionist Interview

As a part of the border-making process that occurs during the social constructionist interview, realities and various preassumed roles are created by researchers and by their respondents. Arbitrary lines are set between researcher and respondent during the interview as the researcher seeks to better understand and tell the story of his or her interviewee in a clear and controlled manner. The authors do not consider the Romanticist aim of obtaining structure-free experience; rather, they contend with the inevitable border-making process of communication. This article explores the social constructionist interview by examining how to contend with four forms of border making: (a) the borders of control, (b) research agendas as border making, (c) language and discipline as border making, and (d) the border-making influences of roles and socialization. Examples from a multicultural research interview project are used to contextualize the argument.

Subsidiarity and social citizenship : social assistance schemes in Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and Norway

Previous research has emphasised that conditionality impinges on social citizenship. However, a systematic assessment examining the impact of functional and territorial subsidiarity has been overlooked. Developing seven operational criteria – rights, means testing, conditionality, voice and choice, discretion, benefits adequacy and supplementary system – we determined levels of subsidiarity and social citizenship in social assistance schemes. Analysing the benefit reform trajectories of Austria, Belgium, Norway and Switzerland, we conclude that social assistance schemes have not improved. Low benefits, means testing and work linkage have strengthened functional subsidiarity, whereas questions of voice and choice are rarely on the agenda. Caseworkers’ discretion and local administration have sustained territorial subsidiarity. Therefore, considering the potential role that benefits could play in the welfare state, low up-take minimises the redistributive potential and, in general, risk has substantially shifted towards social assistance.

Researcher Linguistic Vulnerability: A Note on Methodological Implications

We reflect on the experiences of a researcher conducting a pilot exercise project with marginalized research participants within the substance use disorder treatment field, in a language that was nonnative to her. While the project collected and analyzed quantitative data, the researcher was motivated by qualitative inquiry’s commitment to reducing participant–researcher distance and power differences. Despite multiple sources of power imbalances favoring the researcher, the ability of participants to speak their native language to a nonnative researcher, and the researcher’s active recognition of her linguistic vulnerability, appeared to afford them an unexpected source of power within the context of the project. We discuss the researcher’s observations of these power dynamics and their implications for cross-cultural research and when working with marginalized research participants.

The ‘activation turn’ and the new horizontal division of labour at the local level: the case of social assistance services in Austria, Belgium, Norway and Switzerland: Changes, Challenges and Policy Implications for Europe in Times of Austerity

In this chapter we focus on social assistance services, such as housing, childcare, counselling, food and other types of benefits, that are provided to people receiving a guaranteed subsistence income from the state, defined here as social assistance beneficiaries. These services are delivered by social workers in public agencies, often collaborating with other public and non-profit service providers at the local level. We will specifically address how the ‘horizontal division of labour’ (Martinelli, Chapter 1, in this volume) among government actors and a variety of social service providers (public, non-profit and for-profit) has been affected by the socalled ‘activation turn’ (Kazepov, 2010; Raeymaeckers and Dierckx, 2013) in social assistance. In recent decades, most European countries have made a transition to an ‘active’ welfare state, whereby social policies are aimed at facilitating the transition of people in poverty to the labour market. This shift is defined as the ‘activation turn’. In most European welfare states, this turn has reallocated the tasks of social workers and caseworkers at the local level from supporting the vulnerable target group of social assistance beneficiaries by providing services in different life domains towards supporting labour market activation (Raeymaeckers and Dierckx, 2013). In some countries, such as Switzerland, a trend towards vertical subsidiarity is observed, whereby responsibilities concerning services for and the activation of

Investing in work: exclusionary inclusion in Austria, Belgium and Norway

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of two social investment strategies (labour activation and governance coordination) targeted to social assistance clients within three different welfare-system coordination cases, with focus on social and economic inclusion. Design/methodology/approach The authors focus on the impact of reform at micro (individually experienced impact), meso (impact across settings) and macro (socio-structural impact) levels. Findings While social investment reform has given some clients new opportunities, in no study case were clients fully able to use the incentive-driven strategies. Reforms have led to a “Matthew effect”: the better resourced reap the largest benefit from new services on offer while the less resourced have their marginal socioeconomic position reinforced. Clients may internalise their relative activation success. Intimate connections between macro- and micro-impacts may have heightened the sense of social and economic exclusion, stigma and shame experienced by those who are most vulnerable. Social implications Social investment reform (labour activation) may not be a model that reduces social and economic exclusion and it may, instead, reify socioeconomic marginalisation, enhancing sense of stigma and shame and reducing self-efficacy. Originality/value Scholars have assessed social investment according to its economic performance, but there has been a lack of research considering impact of reform on socioeconomic inclusion.

Antipoverty Measures: The Potential for Shaming and Dignity Building through Delivery Interactions

The special issue focuses on the impact of antipoverty measures—accounting for social and structural dimensions in the poverty experience and moving beyond an income-only focus—in five country cases: China, India, Norway, Uganda, and the United States. Particularly, we focus on the implications of shame in the delivery of antipoverty measures, as an individual and social phenomenon that relates to feelings of self-inadequacy, as well to a lack of dignity and recognition. We analyze delivery interactions through an analytic framework of rights, discretion and negotiation, as this enables us to parse out how policy delivery interactions presumed or enabled individual choice, ability, control, and voice. We suggest social citizenship can structure the relationships between welfare recipients and administrators. As a concept, it expands the objects of social rights beyond the materiality of human life (e.g., housing, pensions) to include intangible processual elements (e.g., dignity) in the construct of rights.

Poverty, shame, and the class journey in public imagination

Bringing together social science and literary sensibilities, this article employs a focused content analysis of the texts of three influential Norwegian novels for their personal portrayal of the relationship between modernization, the new welfare state, poverty, and shame. As significant facets of public imagination, the big and little stories presented in the novels deploy a decidedly social psychology, in which individual accounts reflexively relate to social life. Featuring associated characters and identities, the novels construct possible experiences. In this context, emotions such as shame are taken to be indigenous ingredients of modernization and the welfare state. The lessons of a lyrical sociology for understanding personal experience and social change are discussed in the conclusion.