"Over recent years, tabloid readers have become familiar with the concept of the 'white working class', those thought to have been 'left behind' by globalization, including immigration. Such sentiments were weaponized by politicians on all sides to fuel the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the Brexit campaign. And this racialized narrative has emerged repeatedly in mature democracies - in the political campaigns of Trump, Le Pen and others - and continues to gain traction in the guise of economic nationalism and populism. The need to understand the putative emergence of the white working class has become both intellectually significant and politically urgent. In Race and the Undeserving Poor, Robbie Shilliam does just this. He charts the development over the past 200 years of a shifting postcolonial settlement that has produced a racialized distinction between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor, the latest incarnation of which is a distinction between a deserving, neglected white working class and 'others' who are undeserving, not indigenous, and not white. Shilliam's analysis shows that the white working class are not an indigenous constituency, but a product of the struggles to consolidate and defend imperial order that have shaped British society since the abolition of slavery." --

For the first time in over twenty-five years. the issue of poverty -- and our failure to deal with it -- is back at the top of the policy agenda and on the front page of the news. In this magisterial overview social historian Michael B. Katz, examines the ideas and assumptions that have shaped public policy from the sixties War on Poverty to the current war on welfare. Closely argued and lucidly written. The Undeserving Poor transcends the barriers that have channeled the American discussion of poverty and wealth into a narrow, self-defeating course, and points the way to a new, constructive approach to our major social problem. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Do we judge the poor? Do we fear them? Do we have a moral obligation to help those in need? The moral and social grounds of solidarity and deservedness in relation to aid for poor people are rarely steady. This is particularly true under contemporary austerity reforms, where current debates question exactly who is most ‘deserving’ of protection in times of crisis. These arguments have accompanied a rise in the production of negative and punitive sentiments towards the poor. This book breaks new ground in the discussion of the moral dimension of poverty and its implications for the treatment of the poor in mature welfare states, drawing upon the diverse political, social and symbolic constructions of deservedness and otherness. It takes a new look at the issue of poverty from the perspective of public policy, media and public opinion. It also examines, in a topical manner, the various ways in which certain factions contribute to the production of stereotyped representations of poverty and to the construction of boundaries between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ in our society. Case studies from the UK and Italy are used to examine these issues, and to understand the impact that a moralising of poverty has on the everyday experiences of the poor. This is valuable reading for students and researchers interested in contemporary social work, social policy and welfare systems.

With welfare reform a burning political issue, this special anniversary edition of the classic history of welfare in America has been revised and updated to include the latest bipartisan debates on how to “end welfare as we know it.”In the Shadow of the Poorhouse examines the origins of social welfare, both public and private, from the days of the colonial poorhouse through the current tragedy of the homeless. The book explains why such a highly criticized system persists. Katz explores the relationship between welfare and municipal reform; the role of welfare capitalism, eugenics, and social insurance in the reorganization of the labor market; the critical connection between poverty and politics in the rise of the New Deal welfare state; and how the War on Poverty of the '60s became the war on welfare of the '80s.

Tackling one of the most volatile issues in contemporary politics, Martin Gilens's work punctures myths and misconceptions about welfare policy, public opinion, and the role of the media in both. Why Americans Hate Welfare shows that the public's views on welfare are a complex mixture of cynicism and compassion; misinformed and racially charged, they nevertheless reflect both a distrust of welfare recipients and a desire to do more to help the "deserving" poor. "With one out of five children currently living in poverty and more than 100,000 families with children now homeless, Gilens's book is must reading if you want to understand how the mainstream media have helped justify, and even produce, this state of affairs." —Susan Douglas, The Progressive "Gilens's well-written and logically developed argument deserves to be taken seriously." —Choice "A provocative analysis of American attitudes towards 'welfare.'. . . [Gilens] shows how racial stereotypes, not white self-interest or anti-statism, lie at the root of opposition to welfare programs." -Library Journal

"There are places where history feels irrelevant, and America's inner cities are among them," acknowledges Michael Katz, in expressing the tensions between activism and scholarship. But this major historian of urban poverty realizes that the pain in these cities has its origins in the American past. To understand contemporary poverty, he looks particularly at an old attitude: because many nineteenth-century reformers traced extreme poverty to drink, laziness, and other forms of bad behavior, they tried to use public policy and philanthropy to improve the character of poor people, rather than to attack the structural causes of their misery. Showing how this misdiagnosis has afflicted today's welfare and educational systems, Katz draws on his own experiences to introduce each of four topics--the welfare state, the "underclass" debate, urban school reform, and the strategies of survival used by the urban poor. Uniquely informed by his personal involvement, each chapter also illustrates the interpretive power of history by focusing on a strand of social policy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: social welfare from the poorhouse era through the New Deal, ideas about urban poverty from the undeserving poor to the "underclass," and the emergence of public education through the radical school reform movement now at work in Chicago. Why have American governments proved unable to redesign a welfare system that will satisfy anyone? Why has public policy proved unable to eradicate poverty and prevent the deterioration of major cities? What strategies have helped poor people survive the poverty endemic to urban history? How did urban schools become unresponsive bureaucracies that fail to educate most of their students? Are there fresh, constructive ways to think about welfare, poverty, and public education? Throughout the book Katz shows how interpretations of the past, grounded in analytic history, can free us of comforting myths and help us to reframe discussions of these great public issues.

Do ominous reports of an emerging "underclass" reveal an unprecedented crisis in American society? Or are social commentators simply rediscovering the tragedy of recurring urban poverty, as they seem to do every few decades? Although social scientists and members of the public make frequent assumptions about these questions, they have little information about the crucial differences between past and present. By providing a badly needed historical context, these essays reframe today's "underclass" debate. Realizing that labels of "social pathology" echo fruitless distinctions between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, the contributors focus not on individual and family behavior but on a complex set of processes that have been at work over a long period, degrading the inner cities and, inevitably, the nation as a whole. How do individuals among the urban poor manage to survive? How have they created a dissident "infrapolitics?" How have social relations within the urban ghettos changed? What has been the effect of industrial restructuring on poverty? Besides exploring these questions, the contributors discuss the influence of African traditions on the family patterns of African Americans, the origins of institutions that serve the urban poor, the reasons for the crisis in urban education, the achievements and limits of the War on Poverty, and the role of income transfers, earnings, and the contributions of family members in overcoming poverty. The message of the essays is clear: Americans will flourish or fail together.