Governare i poveri

Abstract

Vincent Dubois’ well-known book La vie au guichet. Relation administrative et traitement de la misere, published in its Italian edition in 2018, focuses on the relations between bureaucrats and service users in two local services where income support measures are provided. In his analysis, the author applies the perspective of the street level bureaucracy, though enriched with a greater attention to the relations of domination, regulation and construction of identity that results from a fruitful encounter with the rich French tradition on the topic.In the observed interactions, “negotiated” identities are shaped through the personal relationships that are established at the counter. Such interactions appear to be the crucial moment in which previous identities are not only “impersonated”, but also to some extent “put back into play”. However, the analysis goes far beyond the micro level of personal relations. Rather, the counter represents the place where a social actor, the poor, meets the entire community, or rather “society in its most exacerbated form”. In this context of structural asymmetry, the relationship of the community with its poor is built, and the social status of the poor takes shape.Though twenty years have passed since its first edition, and many things have changed in the social dynamics and policy structure, Dubois’ book is still extremely useful in analysing the contemporary scenario.