Various authors point to the connection between public perceptions of poverty and institutionalised strategies of dealing with the poor. The way the general public perceives the poor, and especially the causes of poverty, is generally assumed to have a profound influence on the legitimacy of anti-poverty policies. Yet studies on popular perceptions of and attributions for poverty are relatively infrequent. Moreover, a considerable share of existing research appears conceptually and/or methodologically inadequate. This article provides a critical review of existing literature that is interwoven into the discussion of the two most common approaches to studying lay poverty attributions: the factor analytical approach and the forced-choice-question approach. With respect to the latter, we present an empirical analysis and interpretation of the four response categories that constitute the core of the forced-choice question included in Eurobarometer.

In this contribution we describe and explain the differences in popular poverty attributions that exist within and between 28 European countries. On the basis of the existing literature we distinguish five predictors: awareness of the existence of poverty, personal experience of disadvantage, personal values, socio-demographic background and structural and cultural country-level characteristics. Using data from the European Values Survey (EVS) 1999/2000, we assess for most of these predictors the extent to which they relate directly to people’s partial ranking of popular poverty attributions. The results of rank-ordered logistic regression models show that differences in popular poverty explanations relate directly to whether one lives in a country with a Catholic tradition and a high level of poverty, their (subjective) experience of disadvantage and personal values. Furthermore, we find that the size of the various associations depends on people’s particular choices of poverty explanations.

By providing information on society at large, the media help to establish and maintain relations between various social groups, such as between younger and older people. They may also disturb the formation or maintenance of such relations,e.g.by stimulating the ‘othering’ of the out-group members. The aim of the present study was to trace how the different strategies of ‘othering’ are applied by Dutch news media in their portrayal of older and younger citizens. The analysis showed that the most notable discrepancies in the media coverage of the two age groups appear in (the nature of) their evaluation. While the negative descriptors of older characters relate more frequently to their (alleged) incompetence, the negative depictions of younger actors refer predominantly to their lack of benevolence. In the case of positive evaluations the reverse is true: older characters are more often presented as warm and younger people as competent. The results of the study are interpreted in the light of literature on social distance and (social) practices of ‘othering’.

The social construction of poverty constitutes an important aspect of a country’s welfare culture. Still amidst studies on poverty measurement, dynamics, causes and consequences, enquiry into the social or cultural (re-)presentations of poverty remains relatively infrequent, especially in Continental Europe. The current study addresses the issue of social/cultural representations of poverty by investigating the media portrayal of poverty in Poland. Qualitative analysis of three dailies published in three research periods (2005–2007–2010) revealed marginalization of poverty in press reports. In the course of investigation, five dominant frames, each conveying a specific image of the poor and featuring them in a particular (social) role, were identified. The two primary frames were the injustice frame and the solidarity frame; the two secondary normality frames were the heroic and anti-heroic frames; the fifth – the instrumental frame proved rather marginal. The (social policy) implications of the media portrayal of the poor are discussed. Parallels between the poverty frames uncovered in Polish media and those revealed in other countries are sketched.

Political discourses in Europe operate at the supranational, national and local level, with supranational institutions providing a normative framework for the policy making at lower governance level. However, the actual appeal of the legal, political and normative frameworks offered by supranational European institutions remains unclear. For example, while 'justice' is deemed constitutive of European values and ideals of democracy, and European institutions offer a clear vision of what 'justice' in pluralistic European societies should imply, relatively little is known about how this normative framework is reflected in national-level politics. The current article aims to close this gap by comparing political discourses on representative justice in six European countries with the European normative framework reconstructed on the basis of documents issued by the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Parliament (EP). The research question we address relates to how the European normative framework on representative justice for minority and vulnerable groups is present and strived for in national political discourses. Our analysis shows that the principles of representative justice set out at the supranational European level lose their appeal at the national level politics permeated with conflicting visions of what is just, for whom and on what moral grounds.