Poverty as a Political Choice: a Comparative Analysis of Reports of the UN Rapporteur’s Visits to the UK and Spain

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of two reports by the UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, one for Spain and one for the UK. In both countries, austerity policies were introduced following the banking crisis of 2008. The UN Rapporteur reports highlight the damage that was done by welfare retrenchment. In particular, the reports document the impact of austerity on the most vulnerable individuals and communities. The paper uses Somers' (2008) conceptual model of citizenship as the basis for a comparative analysis of two reports. Somers' (2008) model of citizenship is a triadic one which sees the state, market and civil society as competing elements. Each one can serve to regulate and limit the influence or excesses of the other two. Somers argues that neoliberalism has seen the dominance of the market at the expense of the role of the state and the institutions of civil society. Austerity policies saw the market dominating. Having examined the context of the two reports and their conclusions, the paper discussed the implications for individual social workers’ practice and the role of social work as a profession in tackling poverty and marginalisation.

Crisis politics of dehumanisation during COVID-19: A framework for mapping the social processes through which dehumanisation undermines human dignity

“…The 2007/2008 financial crisis, on the other hand, accelerated the shrinking of welfare systems, which, in turn, gravely affected the most marginalised populations. The detrimental effects of austerity politics are numerous, lethal, and enduring (Blyth, 2013; Cummins and Gómez-Ciriano, 2021; Regilme, 2019, 2023). In public health, a weak or absent welfare state facilitated increased mortality due to poverty without safety nets (Rajmil and de Sanmamed, 2019) and increasingly unmet medical needs in countries due to reduced state subsidies in public health (Legido-Quigley et al, 2016).…”